Kanon Ota

**Kanon Ota**GallerySprites

* Illustration
* Sprite

**Kanon Ota** is a character featured in the English fangame *Danganronpa: Lapse* created by Mythridate.

She is known as the **Ultimate Photographer**.

## Galleries

📷 For more images of Kanon, see: Danganronpa: Lapse/Image Gallery and Kanon Ota/Sprite Gallery.
## Appearance

Kanon is a 160cm tall (5'3") young woman with a slim build. She has gray eyes and spiky blue hair that starts out darker and becomes more colorful. She wears a white shirt with green buttoned cuffs rolled past her elbows, her previous high school's emblem, and a long green ribbon tied around her collar. She wears a pair of dark blue pinstripe trousers with straps that rest on her shoulders, a pair of beige socks, and a pair of light almond shoes with yellow criss-cross laces. Like the other participants, Kanon wears a bracelet that indicates her living status, among other bracelets on her other arm. Kanon's personal item, a camera, is kept on a wrist strap and carried around with her at all times. She uses braces.

## Personality

Kanon is a blunt and reclusive person who prefers to go at her own pace, usually while avoiding the other participants in the Killing Game to make this possible. She's often shown to be hesitant to help throughout the game, even during situations where her help could be important, and seems to prefer someone else to do so for her, likely to keep herself out of dangerous situations as she doesn't do well in stressful situations, as shown when she'd made Forte responsible for watching over Echo while quickly running away from the scene in unmentioned fear, which Echo sarcastically thought of as "considerate" at the time. After discovering Pandora's corpse, Kanon becomes distressed, which may have been generated by her realization of the killer's identity from the photo she took of them in the foyer. During the class trial, her hesitance is further backed up by her backing away from sharing evidence as "not wanting blood on her hands," then having to bear the weight of her actions by being involved in the culprit being discovered and sent off to their execution.

When prompted about the forced motive question, Kanon states that she "knows who I am", and describes herself as a behind-the-scenes type of person that brings other people's visions to life, though there's not much else she can say in regards to the questions.

## History

### Early Life

Not much is known about Kanon's life prior to the preservation project, except that she attended the Black Mist Girls Institute and got into photography at some point in her life. From what she mentions during the killing game, there were troubles in her past involving her being at the "wrong place at the right time," which led her to see photography as a fragment of her old self.

### Preservation Project

Kanon, among the other participants, was an Ultimate student that was offered a spot in the government-funded preservation project to preserve ultimates against earth-shattering earthquakes that were shattering through the earth, with any that signed up to reside in a luxurious mansion with approximately fifteen or more other ultimates. Unknown at the time was that the preservation project was a front for an experimental seven-day killing game in which everyone would be forced to kill each other to escape. Kanon is one of the first students that Echo Pine and Ashley Westbridge meet, mid-conversation with Art Campopiano and Missy Vesper in the Foyer, though she soon splits off on her own to investigate the mansion.

Echo later comes across Kanon again in the Foyer, after they begin to worry about their newfound amnesia and seeming lack of ultimate talent. Kanon would introduce herself to Echo and unintentionally fuel their inner worries after taking a photo of them and stating she was known as the Ultimate Photographer, causing Echo to make a rush for the front door and get electrocuted by a mechanism in the doorknob. After witnessing Echo being rendered unconscious, she would wait around the area until Forte Solo eventually descended the stairs, asking him to watch over Echo while she ran off to the atrium to calm down. The group would later meet back up after an anonymous announcement, with an unrecognizable voice announcing the start of the killing game.

On their third day of captivity, the students were given the Forced Motive question, "Are your talents a true representation of who you are? Who are you beyond your talent?", and stated that if nobody died by the end of the day, they would all be killed. Later that day, Kanon, Cyrus Suryc, and Echo would discover Pandora Espère's lifeless body laying on one of the lounge chairs, resulting in distress for Kanon. At the end of the class trial, when Missy still had her doubts that Art could've possibly murdered Pandora and that there may have been something else going on behind the scenes, Kanon reveals a photograph she had been keeping to herself, referring to it as "definitive proof" of Art's involvement in the crime and stating that she didn't want to have blood on her hands by revealing the photograph earlier on. During the end of the class trial, Zero reveals that Echo is the Ultimate Memory to the other participants while vaguely stating that "Cyrus isn't who he says he is". While Echo passes out, Cyrus falsely proclaims himself as the Ultimate Thief to the other participants, with his true colors beginning to show.

### The Revolver

The next day Kanon is found alone in the Foyer with a "soulless demeanor," but snaps out of it once hearing Missy's voice, her demeanor softening from the "icy" one she had ever since day one, and opens up to Echo about why she'd left them in Forte's care when they collapsed, stating fear as the main reason. On the fourth day, Missy would request that the participants meet her in the Foyer for a personal announcement, with all participants but Sei Konno, Cyrus, and Lyle in attendance. Once the group were ready, Missy would pull a sheet of cloth off of a revolver, a personal item that Missy had found left inside her room for reasons she couldn't remember, with the tag on it read by Kanon: "As a student interested in working with the Preservation Project, one must attempt their hand in a single round of reverse Russian Roulette.' 'We believe every Ultimate student, should they be destined to live and change the world, will surpass the incredible game of chance no matter the odds.'. Sometime after an agreement between the group is made, they come across Lyle destroying the kitchen equipment with a rolling pin as a means of "Testing the rules", Loud enough to cover the intercoms, he announces the second Forced Motive question: "Do you believe your talent can benefit the world?". While this goes unheard by everyone but Echo, only a few hours later the shot corpse of Cyrus is found inside a trashed smokehouse, and Ashley's bloodied unconscious body is found laying on the casino floor. Once the students realize that Ashley is still alive, a panicking Echo runs to the elevator in efforts to access the infirmary, though their efforts are futile as their investigation wasn't finished at the time. After a quick investigative period, the students entered the elevator and managed to get Ashley to the infirmary in time with the help of Eve, one of the voices the participants were able to hear over the trial room intercoms.

During the class trial, it's slowly realized by all the students, excluding Echo, who would go into denial once the students tried to bring the revelation to light. They began to realize that Cyrus's killer was Ashley based on evidence such as the blood patterns on the gun on her hands and cooperated together to try to help Echo come to terms with this fact. By the end of the voting period, Ashley exits the infirmary in stable condition and reveals what actually happened in the smokehouse and that she was more so doing it to protect Echo and the other participants, though she's executed soon thereafter. After the end of the class trial, Echo is helped back to their dorm room by Missy, but both are stopped by Kanon as she tries to offer them a photograph of the class after the killing game announcement, though Echo is quick to remark their hatred over it, with Kanon saying, "I'm sorry. I was just trying to help." before ripping it in half and huffing away.

## Talent

Kanon is the Ultimate Photographer and a specialist in Rückenfigur which translates to 'back figure' in German. During her time in the Preservation Project, Kanon would sometimes visit the open areas when she wasn't investigating or locked away in her room, and she is spotted taking photographs of the scenery by Art and Echo when they searched for her regarding her answer to the forced motive question, although she opens up to Echo and the others and describes her camera as an old fragment of herself that made her unnerved when she woke up and found it. In the foyer, Kanon manages to quickly take a picture of Art running away from the Spa, which would later come up as definitive proof during the Class Trial despite her hesitance to show it in likely similar situations.

## Creation and Development

In creating the Danganronpa: Lapse cast, creator Mythridate tried to think of talents that had not appeared in the official Danganronpa titles, with the exception being Kanon, as she wanted to include an Ultimate Photographer because she both loved Mahiru Koizumi and had always wanted to name a character Kanon. Mythridate opted to create a contrasting character to Mahiru, who specialized in portrait photography, by making Kanon's specialty, Rückenfigur, or portraits of people from behind.

## Trivia

* Kanon's given name is very likely a reference to the Canon brand of camera.
* Kanon's given name is comprised of 2 kanji. The first is 花 (ka), meaning "flower", and the second is 音 (non), meaning "sound".
* Kanon's surname is comprised of 2 kanji. The first is 大 (o), meaning "large, big", and the second is 田 (ta), meaning "rice field".
* Creator Mythridate has stated that Kanon's imagined voice is the same as Claudia from The Dragon Prince.
* Creator Mythridate has assigned a Pokémon type to each of the Lapse characters, and Kanon's type is the ice type.
	+ Kanon's school, Black Mist Girls Institute, is a reference to the ice type move Haze, which translates to 'Black Mist' in Japanese, and was chosen to be a vague contrast to Mahiru Koizumi's high school; Light Forest Institute.
* Each member of the Danganronpa: Lapse cast has an associated flower, Kanon's being the marigold, which is said to represent pain and grief.
* Kanon is transgender and a gray-asexual.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 **Mythridate's Website**: Post-Chapter 1, Pre-Chapter 2 Q&A (December 22, 2019)
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 **Mythridate's Website**: Extra Character Info (October 18, 2019)