Nekomaru Nidai

## Character Backstory

**Warning:** The following contains spoilers for Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair.

Being the tallest and perhaps strongest person in the Killing School Trip has its advantages. He had the experience to train Akane Owari to bring her up to her peak performance. He was strong enough to restrain Nagito Komaeda when he first started behaving strangely, allowing the class to tie up Nagito for their safety. He even survived a blast from Monokuma's bazooka in defense of Akane. Unfortunately, after surviving said blast, he was immediately hospitalized... transforming into Mechamaru!

## Character Card Abilities

### Primary Active: **Heroic Sacrifice**

* Protect a player.
* If your target is going to be eliminated by any means, you die instead of him/her.
* You cannot protect the same target twice in a row.
* If you aren't blackened and you use Heroic Sacrifice when you die, you revive after the trial as Mechamaru.

### Secondary Passive: **Coach**

* Before the night phase, issue a player an order.
	+ He/She must choose to obey or disobey.
	+ If he/she chooses to obey, he/she is forced to do the order.

## Character Card Notes

### Primary Notes:

* You can't target yourself.
* As long as you use Heroic Sacrifice, you can be eliminated by the blackened or die to Heroic Sacrifice and still revive as Mechamaru.
* When using Heroic Sacrifice, Nekomaru's death cannot be prevented by normal direct/indirect protections.

### Secondary Notes:

* Coach is not a talk/trade. Only an order followed by a corresponding acceptance/denial may be conducted.
* Coach can only affect the current night.
* Coach does not count as a mind control for immunity purposes.
* Coach cannot ask a player to eliminate/not eliminate.
* The Coached target must be able to do the order or it automatically fails.

### Protection Aura:

* Any visitors to your protection target will detect that your target has a protection aura on him/her.

## Strategy

Between all of Nekomaru's ability categories, he can fill a number of roles in the game. He can protect other characters from any form of elimination if he's lucky or smart enough, he can learn what a character is going to do- or not going to do- by Coaching whoever he wants to control, he can potentially manipulate players into doing what he wants, and he can technically prevent a character from performing certain actions by using Coach selectively. The most important thing Nekomaru can do is to protect a potential victim from dying using Heroic Sacrifice. Not only does Heroic Sacrifice allow the would-be victim to live to give valuable information on potential blackened suspects during the trial; he can return to the game after the trial concludes to further assist those on the side of hope.

As one on the side of hope, Nekomaru's ways of helping are self-evident. As one on the side of despair, however, Nekomaru has a couple of ways to manipulate the game. Coach can be used to either potentially learn what the target will do that night or make the target perform an action that benefits the blackened. Nekomaru's abilities aren't *specialized* in acting as the blackened, but one could argue that that in itself gives Nekomaru opportunities to kill other characters.