Mitsuo Maekawa (Another Danganronpa)

## Mitsuo Maekawa

Hope!
- This Dude

Mitsuo Maekawa is a student of Hope's Ultimate Academy For The Gifted and a participant of Killing School Graduation, featured in Goodbye Happy Harmony.

At the beginning of the killing game, he doesn't remember his talent so his ultimate title is the Ultimate ??? but, towards the end of the killing game, he remembers that his talent is the Ultimate Detective and Team Despair erased his memory of it to make the killing game more interesting.

## Personality

Mitsuo has a quite polite and supportive personality who always does his best to be friendly with everyone which surprisingly results in him making even the most disliked and antisocial types of characters feel comfortable around him as he genuinely cares about his classmates and is fine with tolerating their eccentric personalities if it means helping others around him. Although, his thoughtfulness does have a limit in enduring rudeness which can cause him to sometimes snap at others but he does regret when he does this as well as when he has any mean-spirited thoughts.

However, with his unusually kind nature comes a slightly naive and somewhat gullible out-look which can cause conflict with his firm belief in hope and optimism with any situation. Another of his flaws is that he is very insecure about himself and lacks self-confidence which makes him come across as quite a weak and unreliable pushover despite him proving to be very smart and logical while taking a big role in any group with his superior level-headedness.

On top of this, Mitsuo's positive attitude doesn't make him immune to despair and whenever he becomes depressed he can almost completely shut down and will become abnormally broken while requiring the support of his friends. Despite his flaws, there is lots of room for him to still grow and he wishes to become stronger which he already shows he can be when a serious situation calls for it while he will never truly give up hope no matter how bad it gets.

## Appearance

Mitsuo appears as a very pale and notably shorter than the average young man who has a surprising amount of muscle despite looking thin. He has shoulder-length dark brown hair that is spiky in a few places, hangs down the right side of his face to cover one eye and comes with a small arching ahoge. His eyes are a warm green in color and are tilted inwards a little while he also has thick feminine eyelashes that are completely natural.

Mitsuo's most common outfit involves him wearing a simple white shirt with the emblem of his previous high school on it along with a gold tie underneath a black jacket which has several gold buttons, has an upturned collar and is left unzipped. His pants match in color but also stripped while the sneakers he wears are blue and red in color. Due to requiring them, Mitsuo also often wears his small square-shaped black glasses.

## Trivia

* The character of Mitsuo Maekawa was mainly inspired by Makoto Naegi, Hajime Hinata and Shuichi Saihara but he also takes some light inspiration from Nagito Komaeda for his appearance.
* Maekawa means "river in front" and Mitsuo means "shine, light" in Japanese which were chosen in reference to Mitsuo being comparable to a light guiding his classmates, essentially as a leader.
* Mitsuo is one of the few characters to appear in every main and spin-off story of the Another Danganronpa series.
* Mitsuo is one of the few characters to survive more than one killing game.
* It is confirmed that Mitsuo can have romantic feelings for a person regardless of gender in reference to how the game protagonists of Danganronpa can go on love events with fellow killing game participants of any gender.