Kaede Akamatsu

Kaede is a young woman of above average height who has smooth, ash blonde hair reaching just below her shoulders which is somewhat curved outwards to each side, making it look a lot bigger than it is. Her bangs are parted to the far right, hanging low over her eyes before they're swept behind her ears, with a single arcing ahoge poking out from the back of her parting and two thin clumps of hair sitting over each shoulder, which curve outwards at the ends. Her eyes are tilted inwards a little and are framed by quite long and pronounced upper and lower eyelashes, and in her game sprites their irises are a warm plum color, although in her official reference sheet they’re more of a light purplish-brown.

Kaede wears a long-sleeved pinkish off-white dress shirt with an orange tie at her neck, over which she wears a sleeveless pale pink sweater with a darker pink hem and V-neck collar, her school’s insignia adorned on the left side of her chest. She wears a short, dark purple skirt, which is patterned with five thin black lines with musical notes decorating them, which creates an actual melody, although it doesn’t seem to be any relevant tune, and in her bangs, she wears five small, white barrettes of a similar design. Her knee-high socks are a much colder purple color than her skirt, bearing the same crest as her sweater on their outer sides, and she wears tan lace-up shoes with thick brown soles.

She also carries around a plain white backpack, which has a flap lid, fastened with a rectangular golden clasp, and two small pockets on the sides.

In the Prologue, Kaede wears her school uniform, which consists of a navy blue seifuku, her collar and skirt a slightly darker shade, with a white trim around the collar and a double one around the cuffs, and a red scarf knotted loosely over her chest. She also wears black knee-high socks and penny loafers that are a dark shade of blue (presumably navy), and the white slides in her hair are regular straight ones.

Kaede, alongside K1-B0, is the only Danganronpa V3 character whose design sketches are front-facing.

Kaede is an optimistic hard worker. As a leader type with a firm character, she has a strong will and doesn't hesitate to take action, with her most notable character trait being her strong sense of belief in herself and others. Her main motivation for playing the piano is to see others smiling.

Kaede has a kind personality that makes her think about others before herself. Because of this, she is unable to immediately suspect people, as demonstrated in the demo by her going as far as faking an alibi out of her trust for Makoto, with no rational basis for his innocence. She is willing to lie for good reasons, but appears uncomfortable while doing so and is quite bad at lying. Like the other protagonists before her, she has a very sensitive nature and listens to other people's troubles. However, as seen during her Free Time Events with the other students, she seems to encourage other people to get better even more actively than some other protagonists do, and she isn't afraid to be bold about it and point out their flaws. It appears that she is rather quickly well-liked by the other students.

However, being a pianoholic from a young age, she has a peculiar trait of including music talk into her conversations. She even strongly avoids certain activities such as cooking and certain sports because she fears her fingers might get hurt, affecting her ability to play. After talking to Tsumugi during her Free Time Events, Kaede was quite shocked and disturbed after realizing how heavily her life and identity is centered around piano and how she doesn't really have anything else, and she became desperate to find new hobbies.

Kaede can also be a bit oblivious and silly at times. During K1-B0's Free Time Events, she unintentionally asks questions in a somewhat insensitive manner by making assumptions about his robotic nature. She also pokes Tsumugi's cheek and K1-B0's emergency button without permission, showing that she is quite childish and impulsive. Furthermore, she has a habit of making rather sexual comments towards other girls, such as repeatedly calling Tenko cute, describing Tsumugi's sexy aura and her body, threatening to lift up Tsumugi's skirt and let everyone see her panties in order to make her to talkーShuichi even points out to her that she sounds like a creepy old man. However, ironically, she seems completely oblivious when other girls talk about liking girls. During Tenko and Himiko's Free Time Events, she completely fails to understand that they refer to homosexuality when talking about "playing for the other team" and being attracted to another girl. She is also quite sensitive to vulgarity, as shown in Miu's Free Time Events. While brave and determined, she is shown to be more fearful around certain situations, such as disliking horror movies because they make her scared in the bonus mode.

While a kind and friendly person, Kaede is shown to have a quite firm, sometimes even rather easily angered side as well, as she tends to lash out at others when they annoy her enough. When Shuichi panics after they first met, she yelled at him to shut up in order to calm him down, but also appeared quite annoyed by his nervousness, and later slapped Shuichi upside his head when he wasn't responsive for a short amount of time. She tries to be patient with Miu, but occasionally snaps back at her whenever she gets fed up with her insults, once even angrily telling Miu that she has "nasty cow udders" after Miu repeatedly called Kaede's breasts tiny. During the investigation, she tells Himiko to be quiet and shut up multiple times, having no patience for her nonsensical and unnecessary talk about magic during such serious situation. She is also rather firm with Kokichi, bluntly telling him when she dislikes his behavior and what she thinks about him, such as believing he just wants attention and or is delusional, to which Kokichi responds by stating that Kaede really seems to know how to stand her ground. At one point, she scares off Monokid by yelling at him to shut up. She is also rather firm about illegal actions, scolding Kaito for cheating and Miu for wanting to use drugs to get high.

Indeed, Kaede's tendency to push forward with her own personal justice is her biggest flaw. She refuses to give up when it would be the sensible thing to do and when pushing forward would only make things worse. She also never doubts what she thinks is right and accepts it blindly. At one point she convinced the group to try escape via Monokuma's trap and got called out by Kokichi because of it. This pushy and bossy attitude causes her to become a bit unpopular among some students, though she does appear to feel very bad for it and genuinely just didn't seem to realize how her actions had affected the others at the time. She is also willing to lie during the Class Trials, though only to strengthen the group's unity as Kokichi put it and she feels uncomfortable doing so. When pushed to her limits, Kaede would go as far as attempting to murder the mastermind in order to save her friends from the mass execution in Chapter 1. She always has good intentions and is motivated by her dreams and wish to befriend the other students and get them out of the school. However, Kanda has pointed out that she is unsure whether or not to call Kaede a good person, stating that she doesn't have ulterior motives because she doesn't think she's wrong, and she ends up going a bit crazy when her sense of what is right turns out to be mistaken.

Later, it is revealed that Kaede's memories had been altered to make her act like a person with a completely opposite personality. In reality, Kaede was an introvert who hated people, having difficulties with trusting others and openly stating with a disturbingly bright smile that she had no faith in humanity. Though, it should be noted that it is left unclear whether or not this is true and it could have been a lie made by Tsumugi, as pointed out by Shuichi.

Being the Ultimate Pianist, she was very skilled at playing the piano from a young age. She gained her title as the Ultimate Pianist after winning a contest. Her strongest motive to play the piano was to make her audience smile, and she always remembered her motive during her performances so that she could control her nervousness.

During the Class Trial, Kaede had no intention of hiding her sins from everyone but wanted to unveil the identity of the mastermind beforehand. However, an unexpected turn of events occurred when Shuichi discovered the supposed "truth" that Kaede murdered Rantaro, but refused to speak about that fact as to not condemn his friend. Unfortunately for him, this act of silence, as well as forgetting to mention the camera intervals to Kaede before-hand, caught the suspicion of nearly everyone else in the trial and he is quickly denounced as the culprit. As a result, Kaede is left with no other choice but to protect him, mentally apologizing to everyone for being unable to reveal the mastermind and save everyone. Shuichi realizes this, and vows to no longer be afraid of the truth and reveals her as the "culprit" to everyone else in the trial.

Everyone is shocked and in utter disbelief that Kaede, who wanted to end the Killing Game and save everyone, could be the culprit. Despite this, she goads Shuichi along as to make him reveal the whole truth about her plan, much to everyone's dismay.

After everyone casts their vote, Kaede comes clean fully and admits that she planned to kill the mastermind in order to save everyone and end the Killing Game and that she never intended to hide her sins, but couldn't come clean right away thanks to Monokuma's First Blood Perk. Shuichi is quick to blame himself for coming to the deduction that the mastermind would be in the library, giving Kaede that idea, but she corrects him and says that she brought this upon herself. Monokuma and the Monokuma Kubs are quick to execute her, but Kaito, Tenko, and Gonta immediately jump to her defense despite facing an Exisal. Kaede urges them to stop, saying that she's ready to die. Shuichi criticized her for giving up, but she reassured him that she isn't. She told him that she believed in him and as such, he should believe in himself before being dragged to her execution, which everyone watched in horror. Shuichi was left shattered at the loss of his dear friend.

After the trial, Shuichi, with Kaito's recommendation, visited the Ultimate Pianist's Research Lab. He looked along the wall lined with CD's and plays Claude Debussy's Clair de Lune via the audio player and began to reminisce about Kaede. He made a vow to not look away from the truth anymore and believe in himself, and that that was a promise. Shuichi imagined Kaede's spirit appearing on the chair of the piano and saying "Yup, it's a promise. I leave everything to you Shuichi. Goodbye...", effectively trusting him with her wish.

Despite the fact that Kaede was dead and gone, she was not forgotten. Her desire to end this Killing Game no matter what, to protect everyone, escape, and remain friends afterward had a profound impact on everybody. Shuichi took off his hat the very next morning after the first trial in memory of his dear friend and had her seemingly on his mind throughout the entire Killing Game.

When first entering the Ultimate Anthropologist's Research Lab in Chapter 3, Korekiyo asked Shuichi if he wanted to try speaking to the dead. Shuichi denied this but then thought that there was one person he would want to speak to, that person being Kaede. He still turned Korekiyo down, as there was only one thing that he wanted to tell her, which would be that everyone had escaped and that they were alive. It's been also proven in this chapter that Angie made a life-sized wax effigy of Kaede along with the others that look like Kirumi, Rantaro and Ryoma.

When everyone headed back into the tunnel to reattempt the Death Road of Despair in Chapter 5, using Miu's electrohammers, the remaining survivors aside from Kokichi thought back to Kaede and how they could finally keep their promise to her and escape the Killing Game before heading into the tunnel.

In Chapter 6, during the investigation of the suspended animation room near Kaito's Research Lab, Tsumugi discovered a list of participants for The Gofer Project which lists Kaede as having a twin sister. Later, Tsumugi speculated that the deceased Kaede could have pulled the same "trick" as the twin sisters Junko Enoshima and Mukuro Ikusaba, which was the sisters swapping places before the Killing School Life occurred. In the Class Trial, it was never revealed that Kaede has a twin sister or not, so this information remains ambiguous.

While not physically present during the final trial, Rantaro's case, the case that Kaede was supposedly the blackened of and executed for, is re-opened by survivors Shuichi, Tsumugi, Maki, Himiko, and K1-B0, the Ultimate Robot, after discovering new truths related to that case.

During the Class Trial, Shuichi is eventually able to reveal the full truth about Rantaro's death, as well as Kaede's unjust execution, becoming increasingly outraged and furious at Monokuma and the Monokuma Kubs for breaking their own rules and executing someone who wasn't blackened in the first place. Shuichi vowed on Kaede's kindness, love, and grave, that he would avenge her no matter what. By double-checking everyone's alibis during Rantaro's murder, Shuichi honed in on Tsumugi as the true culprit of Rantaro's murder, as well as the mastermind of the Killing School Semester.

When Tsumugi and Monokuma reveal everything about the participants, claiming that their talent, memory, personality and feelings were all fabricated, Shuichi seemingly falls into despair as his thoughts were mainly on Kaede and his friendship with her along with all his others during his time at Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles. A video depicting Kaede auditioning for Danganronpa was also shown, implicating that the real her was very different from her Killing Game counterpart, an introverted young woman who had no faith in humanity and as a result, "perfect for the Killing Game".

In the end, Kaede could achieve her goal of defeating the mastermind as her death was avenged after Danganronpa finally came to its end in the last execution.