Zoran Nastranov

* Report Card
* Remnant Design

**Zoran Nastranov** is a student in Hope's Peak Academy's 2nd class and a participant in Neo Danganronpa 56. His title is the Ultimate Contortionist.

## Appearance

At five feet tall and only 96 pounds, Zoran is quite small in stature and looks very young for his age, having an almost childlike physique. He has pale skin, light gray eyes, and messy, chin-length red hair. When disrobed, his appearance is bony and very thin. Due to his skill as a contortionist, he can manipulate his body in bizarre ways, meaning he has built up some muscles that are rarely used by most people. Most of his musculature is fairly lean, and he is not very physically strong.

Typically, Zoran wears black leggings with black ballet slippers and a black tank top. He wears a black sports jacket, and over the jacket, he wears a maroon parka with fur lining the hood. During Neo Danganronpa 56, Zoran trades in his leggings for black jeans, and he swaps his ballet slippers for Timberland boots, which are more practical footwear in cold and snowy weather. He found both these articles of clothing among the costumes at the military base's theater in Chapter 2.

### Remnant Appearance

As a Remnant of Despair, Zoran's appearance is similar to his default look. However, his hair is shaggier, he is typically covered in filth, and he wears a leather dog collar which is often attached to a leash or chain. Zoran also looks and acts more animalistic as a Remnant, frequently baring his teeth and standing with hunched, suspicious body language.

## History

### Early Life

Zoran remembers very little from the first eight years of his life and knows nothing about his biological family. He spent most of his early years in a single poorly-lit room listening to the radio, which picked up stations primarily in Slavic languages. He has vague memories of being bathed and dressed by an older woman as a very young child, but has no memory of who she was or what their relationship might have been. He spent most of his time listening to the radio, playing with spiders, and figuring out how his body worked. He was unusually flexible and limber, and his first contortion tricks are ones he learned through play. When he was about eight years old, he discovered how to remove a vent cover from the wall and squirm inside. Within days, he made his escape this way.

He spent the next few weeks living naked on the streets with a pack of dogs until he was found and captured by police in the outskirts of Pula, Croatia. When he was found, he was 3 feet 7 inches tall and weighed under 40 pounds. Because of his small size and poor communication skills, police and doctors initially believed him to be around five years old. Only upon examining his teeth did doctors realize he was a severely malnourished eight-year-old. Due to his habit of listening to the radio, he was able to speak and understand others to an extent, but he was very distrustful of other people in general. He also learned quickly that he could garner attention, both positive and negative, by doing contortion tricks. Shortly after he was found, he was legally adopted by an older woman named Dunja Loncar, who took him in with plans for him to join her traveling circus.

Zoran's discovery and integration into the circus was covered extensively by local media as his story was a subject of public fascination. He was encouraged to appreciate the constant attention from strangers, and he was coached to act animalistic, especially when cameras were rolling. Though he never overcame his suspicion of strangers, he was successful in fascinating and amusing the press with his bizarre antics.

When he was sixteen, Dunja died of heart failure at 68-years-old. Zoran was taken in by a trapeze artist couple from the circus troupe, Josip and Ana Kachich, who had acted as surrogate parents to him from the time he first joined the group. Despite the death of their ringmaster, the troupe continued to perform, and Zoran's ability to contort his body in ways that shocked and disturbed audiences increasingly made him a major draw. He became a minor celebrity and even drew the interest of several prominent individuals throughout Europe, most notably Margrethe II, Queen of Denmark. Her gift to him of honorary Danish citizenship was among his proudest achievements. Hope’s Peak Academy soon took notice of the young talent and invited him to attend the academy as a student in its second class.

### Hope's Peak

When he entered Hope's Peak Academy, Zoran was thrust into an unfamiliar world. He had little prior education, spoke poor English, and had no idea how to socialize with his peers. He often acted out in front of his new classmates, sometimes even with violence, though he preferred verbal assault followed by a hasty retreat. He found it troublesome to learn his classmates' names and enjoyed the attention he received with his bizarre antics.

Despite his behavior, Zoran soon latched onto one of his classmates, Cara Fischer. He looked up to her as a maternal figure despite being the same age as her, and they soon developed a deep bond. It was partly due to his implicit trust in Cara that he was taken in by his underclassman, Nero Tamochi. Even without her persuasion, Zoran would have been an easy target to recruit. The circumstances of Zoran's childhood and adolescence molded him into a young man with poor impulse control, a lack of introspection, and a deep-rooted resentment against his circus troupe, the media, and the world at large.

### Ultimate Despair

As a member of Ultimate Despair, Zoran rarely went anywhere alone. He wore a leather dog collar often hooked to a chain leash and became much less verbal, often behaving like With his extraordinary contortion abilities, he was able to infiltrate resistance camps, walled cities, and similarly difficult to access places.

### Rehabilitation

Like most of Class 2, Zoran was given psychological treatment upon being captured by the Future Foundation. During this, Kyra Acker removed his memories of her membership in Ultimate Despair, as she did for everyone undergoing treatment. He was rehabilitated relatively quickly, being discharged on the same day as Katsu Oshiro.

Although he shed his "despair" persona, Zoran's behavior was permanently changed by his experience with Ultimate Despair. Much of the socialization he learned during his time at Hope's Peak Academy was permanently lost. He became far less verbal, relying more on gestures and single-word requests/answers than full sentences. He also remained most comfortable eating from the floor.

## Neo Danganronpa 56

### Chapter 4

On the third evening, after telling stories in the circus ring, Zoran wandered around the basement of the circus area. While there, he saw Johnny, Holly, and Anzu heading to the torture chamber, where Johnny planned to tell the others a ghost story. Before joining the others, Anzu stopped to tell Zoran that she was suspicious of Johnny's intentions. Zoran, not wanting to join the group due to his fear of ghosts, offered to wait outside the chamber to ensure Anzu and Holly's safety. Anzu gratefully accepted his offer and entered the chamber, where she told Johnny that Zoran had gone to bed.

Zoran retrieved a cutlass from the armory and waited in the central basement room. Suddenly, he heard shouts coming from the torture chamber. He ran inside, where he found Holly and Anzu gripping their heads while Johnny brandished a hammer. Zoran held out the cutlass towards Johnny and positioned himself between him and the girls. He berated Johnny for choosing small girls to attack and expressed anger that he would choose to kill two classmates when only one murder was necessary to stop the music. Johnny insisted that he had only been pulling a prank, but Zoran didn't believe him. He told the girls that the three of them should share a room that night to be safe. He stayed close to them as Johnny made his way to his circus dorm. The three then went to Holly's dorm, as it had a futon instead of a mere sleeping bag. Once there, Zoran expressed a desire to kill Johnny for what he'd done. Anzu and Holly dissuaded him from taking action, making him promise not to do anything that night. Reluctantly, Zoran agreed, and the group went to sleep. Anzu and Holly slept on the futon together while Zoran slept nearby.

The next morning, the music was too loud for anyone to hear each other. Instead, they were forced to communicate through gestures. As the group gathered around the dining table for breakfast, Zoran urged everyone to follow him. He planned to bring the group to Johnny's dorm and confront him there for what he had done the night before. When the group entered Johnny's dorm, they were horrified to discover that he had been decapitated overnight with a battle axe. With the body discovery, the music stopped.

Zoran was immediately aware that he was a likely suspect. The killer was almost certainly one of the trio who had slept in Holly's dorm the night before, as the killer had used the sleeping bag from Anzu's empty dorm room to avoid the worst of the blood spatter. Only those three knew that Anzu wouldn't be sleeping in her own dorm.

As the investigation progressed, Zoran became convinced that Anzu was the culprit. However, when the trial rolled around and suspicions were generally aimed at Zoran and Anzu, Holly confessed to the crime. She explained that she knew someone would kill soon, and since Johnny had proven himself to be a threat, she decided to kill him in an attempt to save the rest of the group.

Zoran was devastated that Holly was guilty. While he didn't spend as much time with her as he did with Cara, Faust, and Oshiro, he cared deeply for her and felt an urge to protect her. After her execution, Zoran was more shaken than he had been over any prior deaths. In the past, he easily bounced back after the deaths of his classmates, but he ruminated on Holly's demise for the rest of his time in the game.

## Relationships

### Dunja Loncar

Dunja Loncar became Zoran's legal guardian when she adopted him at eight years old. While Zoran expresses a fair amount of affection for Dunja, he is, on some level, aware that she has always exploited him for profit, viewing him more as a commodity than a person. He was devastated when she passed away when he was sixteen.

### Holly Bell

Zoran considered Holly a close friend and cared for her deeply. Though they did not spend as much time together as they did with their own respective social groups, Zoran felt a very strong desire to protect Holly from harm and ensure she survived the killing game.

Zoran's feelings towards Holly were the closest he ever came to developing a crush. While he had no strong romantic feelings for her, he was more fixated on her than he was on most of his other classmates, and he often positioned himself to join her in various situations.

Work in progress.

### Josip and Ana Kachich

Josip and Ana are husband-and-wife trapeze artists who worked in Zoran's circus troupe. They were in their early twenties when Zoran was brought into the fold, and they took on parental roles for him even before Dunja's death. Josip and Ana appeared in Zoran's motive video in Chapter 1.