♔ RECOLLE APP

[optimistical]

PLAYER
YOUR NAME: Ichi
18+?: Yes
CONTACT: northpaws
CHARACTERS IN GAME: Souji Seta (tarotcards)
RESERVATION LINK: Here

CHARACTER: CANON SECTION
NAME: Makoto Naegi
AGE: 18~20 ・ canon is never clear
CANON: Dangan Ronpa

CANON HISTORY: Let’s Play ・ TV Tropes ・ Wiki
CANON PERSONALITY:

If anyone has ever encountered Makoto on the streets, they'll be quick to notice that there's only one thing about him that really sticks out; that he's as average as anyone can get. His grades are average, he has no special skills, his interests are always the most popular thing around, he doesn't exceed in any sports, he doesn't really have any life goals, his personality is Mr. Nice Guy... There really is nothing that stands out, besides maybe how short he is (at 160 cm...). He truly is just another face in the crowd, and even he states himself that there's nothing very special about himself and that his only saving grace and redeeming trait is that he's “little more optimistic than most people”. However, as the game progresses and eventually finishes, it's clear that he doesn't give himself enough credit for all of his other notable characteristics.

As the game starts, it quickly becomes apparent that he's truly a kind person at heart. He attempts to make friends or at least be on friendly terms with others, even with the rudest students. While he does take care and watch his words a little more around students such as the Super High-School Level Wrestler and Super High-School Level Gang Leader, he still offers to lend a hand when needed and treats them with the same kindness he shows to others. Even with students with those kinds of titles, he doesn't stray away or keep his distance from them; he treats them like anyone else. This shows the best with how he was with Mukuro Ikusaba in Dangan Ronpa: If. It's revealed that he was the first one to ever smile at her at school while others were too concerned about their own safety to be around a Super High-School Level Soldier. He spends time with his classmates, and he's willing to listen to whatever might be on their mind, offering advice if asked. He's extremely understanding, and while he does sometimes judge someone, it's nothing enough to insult them. Think more of Phoenix Wright and his snarky remarks- just something funny without any kind of bitterness. Makoto's kindness sticks, and it's not very surprising that he's also a little passive. He's even called a “herbivore”, which is pretty much summed up as a passive man who waits and goes with the flow rather than initiating. Besides that, saying that he's a friend to all living things may not be too far off the mark, because not only does he like other people, but he also likes animals as well. Before the game has started, he once owned a dog as a child, became apart of the animal-rearing club in junior high, and even managing to capture a crane on school grounds to take back to the woods. Heck, when he's asked what his favourite animal is, one of his choices is a bear. Talk about someone who really likes a variety of animals.

Furthermore, as expected from someone as kind as Makoto, he's extremely trusting. Compared to Super Dangan Ronpa 2's main character, Hajime Hinata, their first thoughts after being told of the murder game are completely different. Makoto believes that no one will do such a thing, while Hajime actually wonders if someone really will. Makoto trusts his classmates to spend time with them after this, and even if he does take a self-defence weapon for himself at the insistence of Sayaka, he doesn't want to believe that someone would actually do something like murder another classmate. He also extends his trust enough to allow someone to keep on a lie, instead of exposing it, and to exchange rooms with someone. However, with this amount of trust, there's bound to be a downfall to it. One of the characters, Sayaka Maizono, clearly realizes this and uses him to her advantage. She twists his trust around to make him a good enough candidate to frame him for murder after easily convincing him to switch rooms for the night. While it's up to speculation whether Sayaka actually cared about Makoto or just used his kindness and trust against him, it's clear that Makoto is not a stranger to naïveté by trusting others so easily.

Unsurprisingly, Makoto isn't someone who pushes the blame onto someone or hold grudges, especially in a situation like the one he's put in. He doesn't suddenly start calling Leon a ruthless murderer or blame Kirigiri after his “execution” in chapter four. He never insults Sayaka after the first chapter nor does he angrily think of the murderers. Instead, he feels more sympathetic towards them as he feels that in a normal situation, they would never have done such a thing. He places the blame on Monobear, the one who gave them such strong motives and the push for everything to happen. He gives blame where it's deserved and not onto people who have been pushed into a corner and eventually bite back.

Despite all this kindness and trusting nature he has, this doesn't mean that he's incapable of getting angry and, rarely, downright furious. This is most commonly shown with Monobear. After Monobear attempts to shift the blame onto the students, and he just angrily remarks that only the bear is at fault. He also dislikes the idea of his every move being watched all the time, saying that it “sickens” him and if he wasn't bound by the rules, he would have probably tried to either cover up or even take down the cameras in his room. However, he keeps by the rules and tries to move on, despite how much it bothers him.

As the game progresses and the chapter begins its “abnormal days” and trials, it's revealed that Makoto can be quite perceptive at times. This isn't to say that he notices every single clue, as Kirigiri sometimes has to direct his attention to something, but he does find clues on his own at times and proves to have quite a good memory, even if he does need to jog it up a bit. This is best shown when he enters the school's morgue and he points out the number of lights for how many bodies are being stored. While he didn't expect this to be very relevant at the time, it turned out to be an extremely important clue, and he even manages to correctly recall how many lights there were. This makes him very useful during the investigations, and while he can be downright dense at times (for example, he doesn't even considering flipping 11037 upside down to make out the name of the murderer), he has a good enough memory and common sense to contribute and eventually, help him throughout the trials, even if he does need some hand holding from Kirigiri.

Not only does his perceptiveness helps him during these cases, but he also shows that he's one of the few who doesn't actually jump to conclusions, which is one of the reasons why they've managed to find out the murderer at the end of every case. He'd rather not completely decide something when just one coincidental piece of evidence points its finger towards someone. He sorts out his thoughts and brings up counterarguments. He can tell when something doesn't add up, and he points out these contradictions. With Kirigiri backing him up, they normally find the contradictions in a case to help them lead to the right path to find out the truth.

Speaking about the truth, there's a reason why the creators named him Makoto. One of the meanings of his first name can be "truth" and Makoto is the kind of person who rather faces the truth over running away and hiding behind a lie. Near the ending of the game when it's revealed that there's nothing out there in the real world besides chaos, he refuses to stay in the school and ignore the world outside. He's ready to face the truth, no matter how hard it is. He's not ready to run away, and he'll put his feet down firmly to stand for it.

Finally, the last important characteristic about Makoto is the one that he mentioned himself: that he's 'a little more optimistic than most people' and what stems out of it. This shows throughout the whole game, and he's one of the few who manages to stay calm throughout. He believes that there'll be someone coming for them and that they'll manage to find a way out- a way that doesn't end with murdering someone else. He tries his best to think on the positive side and think better of people. With this optimism, this leads to hope, and it's the best thing about him. He never loses hope and makes sure he keeps sight of it. This is how he managed to get through the trials, even if it looked like they were hitting a dead end, and eventually, defeat the mastermind at the end of the game, battling his hope against the mastermind's despair, showing that hope overcomes despair. He even installs hope back into his remaining classmates' hearts, binding them together so they can finally put an end to this murderous game. While he originally thought his optimism and hope weren't such a big deal, it proved to be the most important thing about him. Because of it, he managed to make it throughout the game and lead his friends out. Eventually, this is why Kirigiri has deemed him to be more fitting to be Super High-School Level Hope. This is because he was the one who kept everyone together and helped lead them out of the school, back into their world and finally saying goodbye to the school behind them.

Despite thinking of himself as someone so ordinary and normal, he has proved that he's more than just that. Sure, he is pretty average when he's surrounded by such amazing people, but he's much more than that. He's a kind and understanding, who trusts others a bit too easily for his own good, but most importantly, he's a person of hope.

Super High-School Level Hope, indeed.

SKILLS/ABILITIES:

Good Luck: For someone who was called the Super High School Level Good Luck student, it's not very hard to believe that Makoto possesses greater amounts of good luck than other people. He was originally chosen to attend Hope's Peak because he won a lottery, chosen out of all the other regular high school students in Japan, so it's undeniable that he's quite lucky. He has a tendency for having things working out in the end and being saved by the skin of his teeth, normally by being saved at the last minute by complete random chance (slipping and missing a wrench thrown at his head, narrowly avoiding his execution because of Alter Ego's return, a fire extinguisher going off and hitting Munakata so he can run away).

Bad Luck: ... Now, Makoto's good luck is often followed by an unbelievable string of bad luck. His bad luck has been described as so terrible that it affects the people around him (accidentally exposing the identity of a jewel thief, setting a mailman's bag on fire, knocking out a bus driver) and it's also unpredictable enough that Junko, the Super High School Level Analyst, can't anticipate what's going to happen with him (in fact, this is one of the main reasons why her entire plans come apart. Although this bad luck doesn't seem to have any real rhyme or reason, they sometimes translate into good luck for Makoto. He might have slipped onto a sheet of paper on the floor and fell pretty hard but he narrowly managed to avoid a flying wrench to the head instead. He might have also set that postman's bag of mail on fire but that fire destroyed the original Super High School Level Good Luck's acceptance letter and caused the school to do another draw, which resulted in his acceptance. His good luck and bad luck are pretty interchangeable and always accompany one another.

CHARACTER: AU SECTION
AU NAME: Makoto Naegi
AU AGE: 21
PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES: Instead of brown hair and green eyes, he'll have black hair and brown eyes. Asides from that, he's still 160cm and scrawny as hell...

AU HISTORY:

• Makoto was born in Japan as the eldest son of the Naegi family with one younger sister. The two only stayed in Japan for a few years of their lives before the family decided to move to Recolle permanently. It was here in Recolle where Makoto was raised for a majority of his life (forgetting a lot of his Japanese as a result).
  
  
• Makoto lived in relative peace with his family without any major problems. He got average grades, went to an average school, lived an average American life, it was a… pretty normal life. Since he moved to America at such a young age, it didn’t take him long to adapt and he was able to easily pick up English without much of an accent so he didn’t have any problems adjusting to his new home.
  
  
• As a child, Makoto grew an interest in art pretty quickly, particularly in painting and illustrations. Of course, as a kid, this mostly came out in throwing paint on a canvas and drawing terrifying stick figures with overly detailed eyes (think of something like this but also with eyelashes and eye veins like why naegi). His parents were quite supportive of this interest and enrolled him in a lot of art classes after school so he could enjoy himself and also improve (moving on from really disturbing stick figures to normal stick figures and beyond).
  
  
• Makoto spent the next many years continuing to pursue his interests in the arts but he also came to realize that he really enjoyed also helping out his fellow students. He's not super smart so he doesn't mean that he was helping anyone with their studies or anything like that but when his classmates and friends came to him in art class, he had fun giving pointers and essentially teaching them how to complete whatever art project they wanted to do. It's through this that Makoto decided that he wanted to combine both his interests in art and helping others by becoming an art teacher. He has...... kind of accepted that he might not have a job for a really long time..........
  
  
• Despite a lot of his friends either warning or joking around that he's not going to get a career anytime soon, Makoto completed his art portfolio in his senior year of high school, submitted it, and… got accepted into Recolle U! Phew, that's great!
  
  
• ... and then his parents kicked him out of the house so he could learn how to be independent and to live on his own (ʘ ʖ̯ ʘ)
  
  
• Makoto didn't protest too much since he knew that his parents had good intentions so he packed up and moved out to a small two-bedroom apartment near school. He didn't live alone in this apartment but rather, he had Daisuke Nina as his flatmate, three years younger than Makoto and the son of a family friend. Daisuke and Makoto knew each other before through their parents so it wasn't that awkward to move in together and definitely made the sudden transition easier but also... sticking a 14-year-old and 17-year-old together and thinking that they could live on their own was nothing short of a disaster. Cue lots of “hey, where did my keys go”, “what's the difference between washing your clothes in hot or cold water”, and “want to just eat these noodles raw instead of cooking them?” This lasted for three whole years... how they are not dead yet, it is a mystery...
  
  
• Asides from being a full-time art student, Makoto has a part-time job as a mentor at Recolle U. Every year, a few willing (or unwilling) freshmen are assigned to Makoto as his mentees and, as a mentor, Makoto has to help these students adjust to their new university life and to provide general guidance for them. He exchanges his email and phone number with them and keeps an eye on them to make sure that they’re succeeding in school (or if they need some extra help). He’s also expected to hold the occasional study group and exam prep sessions so that happens as well. Overall though, this job doesn’t take up a lot of his time so he also has another part-time at a local cafe that actually pays the bills of his rent, food, and 19281819 art supplies. He also does online art commissions on the side when he’s free so he’s definitely the guy you want to go to if you want fanart of your OC. Look, something’s gotta pay the bills.
  
  
• Also, he draws his mentees and friends things like this and that because he’s a nerd like that.
  
  

  ---

  
  ♔ Daisuke Niwa (sketchythief): Makoto's housemate for the past three years and despite all the odds, the two boys managed to survive living on their own during this time. In those three years, Daisuke became something like a surrogate younger brother to Makoto. As Makoto already had a younger sister, he knew the ropes of how to act like an older brother so it was pretty easy to be a good role model for Daisuke and to help him throughout high school. Furthermore, they went through many hardships together as housemates, struggling to afford food or dealing with living in an empty apartment for a week or two. Their pain only brought them closer together and they will quite literally die for each other. At least Makoto would.
  
  ♔ Tatsuma Hiyuu (strawberrypunch): Makoto's childhood friend. After his interest in art took off, Makoto met with Tatsuma Hiyuu who was spending the summer vacation with his grandparents. With Tatsuma being only a few years younger than him and their shared interests in art, they got along quite easily and became fast friends. They spent a majority of the summer break with each other and promised to keep in contact even after Tatsuma had to leave. However, they eventually lost touch with each other due to Tatsuma’s many transfers. They only got reunited again in Recolle two years ago when Tatsuma moved back to the city. They've resumed their very cheery and happy friendship, spending a majority of their time together. Plus, both Tatsuma and his grandparents invite Makoto over as often as possible so he doesn't starve to death so that means something.
  
  ♔ Kyouko Kirigiri (evidentiary): Makoto's friend from high school and also his next door neighbour. They've met in their sophomore year in high school during a biology class when every was supposed to partner up to handle the dissection portion of their class. She handled all the gross dissecting part while he just took notes and that's how it went for the all of their biology classes all the way up until their graduation. Now that they're in university and in different fields, she mostly just helps him in any general education classes he's taking with her. She also helps him break into his own place sometimes because he tends to... forget his keys a lot. He tries to pay her back by bringing over some food or coffee.
  
  ♔ Byakuya Kirigiri (falsepretentious): A classmate turned friend of Makoto's. They were classmates who were paired up together for an assignment and when Makoto invited Byakuya to his apartment to finish their work, Byakuya was horrified to see the barren state of his fridge. Byakuya now makes sure that Makoto is eating properly and isn't just having something like a single grape for lunch.
  
  ♔ Kaguya Pekoyama (saburai): Kyouko's housemate and Makoto's next door neighbour. He knows her through association with Kyouko and probably annoys her by setting off the fire alarm in the apartment every other week or so.
  
  ♔ Yusuke Kitagawa (fabrefactions): Makoto's childhood friend and current mentee. They grew up in the same neighbourhood and spent time together whenever Yusuke was free. Because Yusuke was often not at school, Makoto was sometimes tasked with bringing him his homework or class notes of the day. Makoto also helped him with trying to get into university and is now his mentor for the upcoming school year. They've drawn a few doujins together and they most likely have done a blood pact to never whisper each other's online pen names to the world...
  
  ♔ Ryoji Mochizuki (appraiser): One of Makoto's current mentees. Apparently, he's going to die or something and Makoto will be very distressed? But he'll get a cute drawing afterwards... Why is this happening to him...
  
  ♔ John Egbert (windeity): One of Makoto's current mentees. Probably also commissioned Makoto once before? Bless him for letting Makoto afford lunch one day.
  
  ♔ Dave Strider (parodeity): One of Makoto's current mentees but they've known each other through the wonders of the Internet first. Mostly through Dave's shitty webcomic that Makoto reads and sometimes draws fanart for (how do you draw fanart for this? It is a mystery...). Will most likely interview Dave about his webcomic for a class so things will be Great.
  
  ♔ Kotone Sonozaki (penalizing): One of Makoto's current mentees. She is a special case, however, as Makoto was privately hired by her parents to try and motivate her to do better in school. She... makes his life a living hell though. He constantly wonders if the money is worth it (it's not but he wants to legitimately help her so he's in it for the long run).
  
  ♔ Shin Asuka (impulsives): One of Makoto's former mentees and one of the more... saner ones. They bond together sometimes over anime and other nerdy things.
  
  ♔ Lelouch Lamperouge (chessking): One of Makoto's former mentees. Lelouch was (unfortunately) assigned to Makoto last year and he is the one responsible for cutting off a few years of his life. Makoto often sat at his desk at home with his face in his hands, just whispering "why is Lelouch like this" after getting a text about how Lelouch used a smoke bomb to get out of class... the pity lunches sometimes help.
  
  ♔ Chiyo Matsuoka (admiringly): A member of the high school art club that Makoto used to be a part of and a friend. He is somewhat of an art senpai to her and they text now and then to keep in touch. She probably commissioned him once to draw her Mary Sue OC. It was an Experience.
  
  ♔ Hikari Kamiki (cherrymochi): Makoto's Asian Art History professor in the upcoming Fall semester. Classes are at 8AM so what's probably going to happen is that he's going to mix a can of Blue Bull with his cup of coffee and then pass out on her lecture hall floor. Ding dong a body has been found.
  
  ♔ Penelope Raban (mincingminuet): Pity commissioned Makoto. This is his life. He wants to Die.
  
  ♔ Mable Pines (meowbel): A really hyperactive child that Makoto met at the local art store. Mabel had way too many bottles of glitter paint in her basket and it somehow exploded all over her and him. No matter how many times he washes his clothes, he still finds glitter falling from them...
  
  ♔ Orihime Inoue (lastcomfort): Friend and potential co-worker with Makoto. They sometimes draw in chalk on the sidewalk.
  
  Note: Permission to include the above characters in this AU have been given by their respective players.

AU PERSONALITY:

• A lot of Makoto's core personality traits are still with him in this AU as not much changes. He still lived in a very stable home with supportive parents so he's just as optimistic, forgettable, and friendly as he is in canon. The main difference between his OU and AU versions would be his newfound artistic talent in Recolle and what results from that. Because he didn't have any special talents or was notable in any major way in his OU, Makoto lacked some self-confidence and self-esteem when it came to himself. He was quick to admit that he's no one special and that his only redeeming feature was his optimism. By actually having something that he's good at will raise this self-esteem in Recolle and not have him jump straight to putting himself down. It's not going to make him extremely confident in himself or anything like that but it'd at least stop him from saying that there's nothing really redeeming about himself.
  
  
• By having an interest in art and teaching also gives Makoto some guidance on what he wants to do. He was originally unsure of what he wanted to do with his life in the OU and admired those who had a vision for themselves, so by having something that he wants to pursue in life definitely makes him feel better about himself and his future (even if he's going to struggle to find a job..........)
  
  
• Also, Makoto being an art student in this AU makes him... susceptible to typical artist woes that weren't in his OU and that includes: sometimes buying art supplies over food, paint and pencil smudges on his clothes, drinking paint water and growing an immunity to it, screaming when Photoshop freezes and he didn't save his work for the past two hours, things like that. By also being a university student, the same typical university student woes as well all-nighters, running on Blue Bull, one day mixing Blue Bull with a cup of coffee for an 8AM class and nearly dying from a heart attack, you know, the good stuff.
  
  
• Finally, Makoto is a lot more independent in this AU as a result of having to live on his own for the past three years and because of both his mentorship and cafe jobs. It's presumed that before the end of the world, even when he was living in a dorm with his friends, he had things pretty comfortably. Here, he has to learn how to juggle his jobs with school while also learning how to take care of himself. He has a lot more responsibilities here and he handles them... decently well. If you don't count that he's always losing his house key and all that.

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