Maiko Yuzuki

**Maiko Yuzuki**GallerySprites

* Illustration
* Sprite

**Maiko Yuzuki** is a character featured in the English fangame *Danganronpa: Antebellum* created by **Rippilie**.

She is known as the **Ultimate Voice Actor.**

## Gallery

📷 For more images of Maiko, see: Danganronpa: Antebellum/Image Gallery and Maiko Yuzuki/Sprite Gallery.
## Appearance

Maiko is a 26-year-old Japanese-German woman with slightly tanned skin, light brown elbow-length hair with bangs curled into a heart shape, blue eyes with ribbon-shaped pupils, and a beauty mark near her mouth.

Maiko wears a white shirt with puffy sleeves and gold hems, a teal vest with gold accents fastened with three pink bows, a pale blue sailor collar with a pink bow and a golden bell, and a layered blue and pink skirt with a white petticoat and two large pink bows and a printed microphone design. Maiko's shoes are teal with gold and pale blue platform heels, pale blue laces, and pink bows adorned with golden bells. She wears white thigh-high lace stockings with gold trim and matching elbow-length fingerless gloves, the left glove having a pink ribbon extending upwards. Maiko wears a pink choker on her neck and in her hair, a pale pink bow with white lace, and a golden crown on the left side of her head, along with pink lipstick, blush, and blue eyeshadow.

## Personality

Maiko's fame from voicing a magical girl anime character named Melody Pretty since childhood went to her head, causing Maiko to convince herself that she is Melody Pretty in the flesh. She acts like Melody Pretty, she dresses like Melody Pretty, and she only eats foods Melody Pretty ate in the anime, seemingly losing sight of who she really is. Thus, Maiko acts sweet, bubbly, and brave, promising to promote peace and defeat evil with her love. She takes care to incorporate Melody Pretty's traits into her behavior, such as her clumsiness, in spite of these characteristics not necessarily being true of Maiko herself.

## History

### Early Life

As a child, Maiko had always been eccentric, never really got along with her peers, and always felt isolated. She started voice acting very early in her life, with her mother thrusting her into the world of voiceover to achieve her dreams rather than Maiko's own. At the age of 7, Maiko was cast in her biggest role, Melody Pretty.

Maiko always really looked up to Melody Pretty because the anime had many fans. Within the anime itself, the character of Melody Pretty also had many friends, leading Maiko to believe that if she acted more and more like Melody Pretty, she could make just as many. This unhealthy mindset was instilled in Maiko from a young age, and she stuck by it—not helped by the fact her mother would make her take tanning pills to make her look more 'trendy', which had an effect on Maiko's physical health.

Maiko's mother would frequently hook up with shady and abusive men, marrying them out of impulse, only for them to steal all of Maiko's earnings, give her mother a hard time, and eventually leave. Maiko grew sick of this endless loop, especially when her mother started to get involved with criminals for the thrill. Maiko grew to resent her mother, as she saw her mother constantly putting herself back into the cycle of misery. She saw the character of Melody Pretty's mother and believed she could 'fix' her own mother, causing her to act more like the character.

It was after her mother started going out with legitimately dangerous men and Maiko grew older and started to feel more detached from the 'Melody Pretty' character that she began tracking down and murdering those she perceived as criminals, calling herself a vigilante and never seeing herself as unjust in doing so. Maiko considered herself an ally of the police, while they referred to her as a serial killer.

During her time at Hopes Peak Academy, Maiko never got along with the other Ultimates as she would put up her Melody Pretty facade, causing them to distance themselves from her, making Maiko assume everyone hated her the way other children did when she was younger.

### Killing Game

Maiko is first encountered by Shinku, Ismene, and Dracul, when she notices the three and excitedly runs towards them, promising to defeat the evil presence surrounding them with her love and claiming to promote peace and sparkles. Dracul remarks that Maiko seems like a wonderful magician and extends an offer to her to join their guild, which Maiko declines, already belonging to a team of magical girls that she claims to need her magical tracker to locate. Maiko introduces herself to the three as Melody Pretty, telling them that Maiko Yuzuki is merely her civilian form. Maiko tells Dracul she intends on standing guard where she is in order to gather more information, to which she is interrupted by the sound of Emilia pestering Mint, and she urges the guild to sort out the conflict.

In the lecture hall, when Mononeko announces that all but one of the students have committed a crime in the past. Maiko denies doing so, as she claims she fights for justice. She tells the others that she will restore light and rid the laboratory of evil, to which Ismene argues with her, telling her to stop playing pretend.

It is revealed in Chapter 1 that after the students, aside from Shinku, Ismene, and Dracul, dispersed from the lecture hall, Maiko stayed within earshot and overheard Dracul confess to his past as a shoplifter.

The second morning of the killing game, all the students except Ismene gather in the dining hall for breakfast. They engage in conversation regarding the recently revealed crimes of Ismene, Kotaro and Mint, quickly turning nasty.

The next day, Maiko is found in Asuga's dorm room, comforting Taka about the hostage in his motive video, his pet fish, Man. When Yui announces a tea party later that day, Maiko plans to attend, putting a plan to murder Dracul in motion shortly after.

### Maiko's Plan

When fetching supplies for the party, Maiko grabbed a recording device and tampered with the vanilla flavoring, replacing it with chloroform. Before the party started, Maiko would record herself screaming in Ismene’s voice on the recording device, allowing her to cast suspicion on Ismene in the eventual trial. Maiko then went to the trash disposal and planted a baseball bat, a scalpel, a rope, and the recording device in order to lure and kill Dracul. Once the tea party began, Maiko refrained from eating the tampered pastries, claiming to have a gluten allergy, so when the recording of the scream played aloud and Dracul left the party alone to investigate, the other guests fell unconscious besides her. Maiko then rushed to the trash disposal, knocking Dracul out and smashing the recording device using the baseball bag. After dragging Dracul's unconscious body to the cake Kotaro and Eiichi had prepared, she gouged out his eyes and cut out his intestines, decorating the cake with them before placing his body on top of it. Maiko wheeled the cake out to the party and ingested aconitum, a poisonous flower, to render herself unconscious. Maiko woke up alongside the others, feeling ill from the effects of the flower and running to the waterfall within the garden to vomit, which Shinku initially attributed to Maiko's reaction to viewing Dracul's corpse.

### Fate

Maiko's murder plan is discovered in the class trial after Shinku realized that the person who murdered Dracul must not have eaten the tampered pastries, overheard Dracul telling Ismene and Shinku his crime of shoplifting, and be able to scream in Ismene's voice pitch. Shortly after the trial's conclusion, Maiko's crime is exposed by Mononeko alongside Taka's and Kiyoshi's, revealing that Maiko had worked as a self-proclaimed vigilante who killed people she perceived to be criminals. Maiko's motive video was also played, revealing that because Maiko had no people in her life that she cared for, her prized role as Melody Pretty would be replaced if she did not manage to kill. Mononeko suggests that, ironically, because of Maiko's impending death by execution, Maiko's beloved anime series would likely have to be cancelled altogether.

Maiko is executed in "Un-Magical Girl", where she is forced to read lines such as "I killed a man" in a recording studio. After correctly reading her lines, Mononeko presses a green button, and a spear is shot through her legs. The third line she must read is "I am not Melody Pretty". Unable to read the line aloud, Mononeko presses a red button, engulfing the recording studio in flames and burning Maiko to death. The only thing to survive is Maiko's tiara.

### Legacy

In Chapter 2, Maiko appears in Shinku's dream, having baked a cake for Shinku and Dracul as they play Dungeons and Dragons. She cuts a slice for Dracul and for Shinku, the latter beginning to feel uneasy. The dream eventually becomes a nightmare and Maiko is then pictured as a bright white angelic being with a twisted grin.

Maiko is later seen smiling in a photograph pinned to the bulletin board in the hallway, alongside a photograph of Dracul with his sisters. The remaining students comment on how happy and content Maiko looks in the picture, wondering where the photographs could have come from.

In Chapter 3, Maiko appears in another of Shinku's drems, standing outside of Eiichi's house with Shinku, Dracul, Yui, and Akari, wondering if Eiichi is okay, having not seen him for weeks. After Shinku returns to the group in front of Eiichi's house after buying snacks from a food stall, Maiko repeatedly rings the doorbell of Eiichi's house. The door creaks open, and the dream turns into a nightmare once more.

## Talent

### Voice Actor

Maiko is the Ultimate Voice Actor, a well-known voice actress who has been accredited in over 150 shows, movies, games, and advertisements in only the last 3 years. Maiko started voice acting because of her mother, and at a young age, Maiko was cast in her biggest role, Melody Pretty. She voiced this magical girl anime from ages 7–26, and while other voice actors dropped out, Maiko stuck around throughout the show's entire run and multiple seasons.

Maiko is able to use her skills as a voice actor not only to portray characters but also to mimic the voices of others, as demonstrated in Chapter 1 when she mimics Ismene's scream in order to lure Dracul away from the tea party.

## Creation and Development

Maiko's beta design and final design are the most drastically different out of the characters, with her original design having blonde curly hair, pink eyes, a more saturated color scheme, a sleeveless button-up dress, and a pink ribbon extending the length of her right leg rather than stockings.

Rippilie wanted to make a first killer that was interesting to some degree, not wanting the first killer to be forgettable or for it to seem like the least interesting characters died first. Which is why Maiko's original personality concept was completely scrapped. Beta Maiko was originally the Ultimate Actress and would alter her behavior based on what she thought the person she was interacting with would like most, using her acting skills to become the ideal person for each person she interacted with, but she did it so much that she'd lost sight of who she is. Which, while interesting in concept, would not be able to be used to its full potential for a character that dies so early on, being scrapped it in favor of the magical girl personality.

## Trivia

* Maiko's favorite foods are konpeito and parfaits.
* Maiko's favorite music is idol anime music.
* Maiko is heterosexual and biromantic

## References

1. ↑ **@danganronpa\_antebellum on Instagram**: Maiko's sexual orientation (June 12, 2021)