application; SPOILERS INSIDE.

[luckybreaks]

Applicant Info

◎ Name: Lucy
◎ Journal: fleeting
◎ Contact: lucylovespluto

Character Info

◎ Character's Name: Makoto Naegi
◎ Character's Canon: Dangan Ronpa
◎ Character's Age: Only has memories up to age 17 but is in fact 19. He...supposes he will count himself as 19?
◎ Canon Point: End of Dangan Ronpa 1.
◎ Background/History: Here!
◎ Is the character a hacker and/or do they have a sixth-sense? Not remotely...he can use a computer but that's about it.

◎ Personality:

In a series full of characters with big talents and bigger personalities, Makoto Naegi is pretty much an average high school student. He says as much himself at the very start of the game, and repeats it throughout. Skills? Nothing out of the ordinary. School record? The worst he's ever done, apparently, is fall asleep during boring classes on occasion. His favorite movies and manga and music all tend to be things that come out on top in the popularity rankings - in other words, his favorite things tend to be trendy things that many other people like as well, nothing distinguishing. While he says it does bother him to be ordinary at one point when asked by Chihiro Fujisaki if he has any complexes, Naegi also says that he simply tries to accept it and immerse himself in doing things instead, as it's better to do something and forget such worries. Which is pretty typical of Naegi, really. Still, at another point he tells the same classmate that he'd rather listen to stories about his classmates than tell one about himself, not because he minds talking about himself but because he considers his stories to be pretty boring, as he's so average.

While it is true that Naegi is very ordinary (especially compared to his classmates, who are all...well, they all have their quirks) his claims that his one saving trait is his optimism aren't quite true. There are other good things about him, though he's fairly humble and doesn't seem to really think much of what accomplishments he does have. Whenever he helps his classmates, he's quick to push away praise and downplay his involvement in things. Even despite the fact he does take the lead in every trial (perks of protagonism) Naegi tells Asahina it was nothing when she points out he's done "many awesome things for them", insisting it was luck more than anything else. When Kirigiri suggests he should be called "Super High School Level Hope" rather than "Super High School Level Luck" near the end of the game, Naegi seems uncomfortable and doesn't really think his optimism is worthy of that - though he's been the only one to retain hope of getting out of the school throughout the entire game. While he is fairly bad at recognizing his own achievements and good qualities, Naegi is absolutely excellent at recognizing such things in others. This may be because he is a person who prefers to focus on others rather than himself.

The fact that Naegi tends to think well of others probably helps him to recognize the ways in which they excel, and the things that are good about them. He's very good at listening to his classmates, and in addition to that is very kind-hearted. Naegi usually takes the time to check in with the others to see how they're doing, and is the only one to really actively attempt to befriend everyone else - or the only one who has any luck. He's patient and willing to put up with a fair amount of crap (...even past the point where he starts internally making quietly sarcastic remarks), which tends to make him the only one who can really deal with some of the more abrasive classmates long enough to become friends. It helps that he always treats them seriously and never seems to put his classmates' talents before them. Yes, Togami is the SHSL Heir and Naegi notes it fairly often - but he tends to see Togami as a person first and foremost, as an example. This goes for all his classmates. In terms of kindness, it's almost always there. Even before his memories were lost, Naegi was apparently the first person to smile at Ikusaba, who most people avoided due to fear of the SHSL Soldier. He memorably (to Maizono) rescued a crane who got caught in the school pool in his middle school, taking the time to carry it out alone since even the teachers had been at a loss. ...And, hilariously, he feels a bit bad for such ridiculous things as thinking his bed was an ordinary bed. "I hope I didn't hurt the bed's feelings..." Naegi generally always thinks of other people's thoughts and feelings. And, uh, apparently the feelings of beds, too, when he's being dumb. He's also the kind of person who can bring himself to not do the right thing when given a choice - the conscientious sort of person who will put aside his own errands to chase down an old man who forgot his phone, even onto a bus.

In keeping with thinking well of others, Naegi is exceedingly trusting. This does not always work out for him and sometimes borders on naivete - there's a reason the person who planned the first murder decided to try to frame him for it, and that would be because he was way too willing to believe everything she said and try to help her however he could. Naegi frequently ends up putting too much faith in his classmates, and he isn't always rewarded for it. During the fifth trial he even chooses not to reveal a key piece of evidence that would have cleared his name and incriminated the other student without an alibi, Kirigiri. Instead of revealing Kirigiri's lie Naegi deliberately remains silent, believing Kirigiri must have her reasons for telling a lie - at which point he is voted for, and sent off to be executed. He manages to escape death at the last second thanks to a save from an artificial intelligence program he'd befriended earlier in the game, but Naegi had no way of knowing he'd be able to escape execution. Yet another example comes from SDR2, where Naegi throws himself into a virtual reality game he knows will be a death trap if 1) his friends don't follow him and 2) the people there don't do something very specific. Despite not being able to know for sure if either of these things would happen, Naegi chose to believe they would and...well, he did the thing. His friends stated they very much thought he was dumb for doing the thing, but they came to back him up anyway, and it all worked out in the end. Naegi is very prone to doing things based entirely on trusting others, or taking actions that require his trust to be validated without really thinking through what might happen if it isn't.

Of course we also have to talk about his "saving grace" by his own words. While Naegi claims he is only "slightly more optimistic" than most people, his optimism and hope are truly two of his strongest traits. In a mutual killing game where his classmates are murdering and being murdered, Naegi doesn't ever fall into Despair like the others do. He is visibly upset and angry about things and frequently doubts himself, but he never actually gives up. Instead, Naegi keeps working throughout his canon to find a way out of Hope's Peak Acaemy that doesn't involve the murder of his classmates - and he wants to bring all his classmates with him. Even when he's thrown into the trash at the bottom of the school (this is how Alter Ego, his AI friend, saved him from execution) and left with no food or water or way out, Naegi doesn't stop believing that it will be okay. As long as he keeps moving, he can have hope. Even despite the knowledge that the world had "ended" and been thrown into Despair, Naegi was the only one who didn't hesitate for a second at the thought of going back out there, and he encouraged his classmates to make the same choice. Naegi tends to look on the bright side, or at least believes in moving forward and believing that things will work out. He does make serious efforts towards making things work out, which helps, but he also sometimes takes a lot of things sheerly on faith - i.e. throwing himself into that virtual reality program and simply hoping and trusting that things would pan out. Believing that the remnants of Despair (terrorists following Enoshima Junko) could be rehabilitated wasn't something that most people could do, either. Naegi in the future disobeys orders to turn them over to be murdered in order to save them, and does everything in his power to make that happen, even if he doesn't have the best plan to do it. He tries.

Though he is generally passively easy-going and optimistic, Naegi does get upset. It happens fairly frequently in canon, actually, partly because, well. Murder game. It's easy to tell that without that he wouldn't really get angry about much at all - it takes extreme circumstances to inspire anger in him. In school mode (a murder-free game mode you can unlock after beating the game, which gives a little more insight into the characters), he pretty much stays at a go-with-the-flow pace for the majority of the time. In canon Naegi is in a high-stress situation for the entire time, and he does not take Monobear taunting them well for the most part. At one point he even tries to punch Monobear...although he misses and falls on his ass. Naegi is honestly not very good at throwing down, don't let him try that. He gets angry at Monobear mentioning or insisting that they hate or be angry with any of their classmates for their actions in the game - even after Asahina tries to get them all to vote incorrectly in a later trial, Naegi insists none of them will hold her actions against her (and they don't), and argues with Monobear over it. Occasionally he'll swear or raise his voice. It's generally all Monobear-related or when he's alone and just letting off steam, though; Naegi never actually really yells at any of his classmates for anything other than YOU'VE GOT THAT WRONG! or YOU CAN'T GIVE UP HOPE! during trials.

While he does have some snarky commentary, it is by no means comparable to the second game's protagonist. Naegi's snark tends to be much quieter and usually related to "oh, I'm a bomb detector again" or "I really don't think that's right..." and he almost never vocalizes any of it. While he's careful about what he says in order not to upset people, Naegi doesn't often conceal his thoughts and feelings. He doesn't really have a hidden agenda at all, and what you see is what you get. Aside from being apparently very easy to read expression-wise and not a terrific liar, Naegi tends to be very honest. He does word things fairly politely or in a non-combative way when he can, but he doesn't like to conceal things from others. He's almost always willing to speak about any secrets that crop up in game, and usually only fails to discuss them when one of the others stonewalls him about it (as he is genuinely the person most willing to share in-game). The times when Naegi actually tries to conceal something are very rare and he has to have a reason for it. Once he keeps something he witnessed a secret because he wants to speak to the person he saw before anything else, so as not to harm her with unfounded discussions. Another time, it's to protect Kirigiri's lie at the potential expense of his own life (although he managed to escape that, as noted elsewhere). Beyond that, Naegi doesn't really conceal things from others on purpose - though he is willing to keep secrets that have nothing to do with murder trials when his classmates ask him to, easily agreeing not to reveal tiny details about their lives that they share with him in their free time. Even in SDR2, Naegi chooses to be completely up front with the students in the final trial, telling Togami after he objected that they had to be open with them about everything, or else how could they expect them to consent to anything? The lies he does tell tend to be pretty dumb - that is, in response to Ishimaru telling him to take off his hoody because it's not proper school attire, Naegi convinces his classmate it functions as a safety helmet. Which...works, somehow.

Though he tends to take the lead in trials, Naegi is by no means the smartest character in his class - not even counting his claims to having gotten perfectly average grades. He does (eventually) manage to logic through every case, but his true strength in trials tends to be patience and methodically working through every single question that comes up. He has a sort of contractual dumbassery that most mystery game protagonists require - that is, Naegi is pretty good at spotting things that seem important (clues and testimony and what have you) and will occasionally think to himself how they might fit into place, but he can miss incredibly obvious connections for unforgivable amounts of time until the player is finally allowed to use a mini game to piece together obvious things. Or until one of the other characters connects the dots for him. Basically, he almost always succeeds in his spot checks - at one point he even notices a very small label on a tarp and impresses one of his other classmates, while another points out his fussy nature is showing through - but often fails his logic checks at the first go. He's not always dumb, but he does have his moments of it, and by and large Kirigiri and Togami are better able to solve things faster than he is - although Togami has issues with jumping to conclusions and then not thinking about things further as well as discounting the emotional aspects of cases, which means that Naegi can often point out new things to the SHSL Heir. Unlike those two, however, Naegi is actually always willing to share his results with the class and so he tends to be a lot more helpful at trials. Naegi is also a little dumb with choices he'll make sometimes - he doesn't always think things through in the heat of the moment outside of trials. See: getting in the way of an angry Oowada and getting punched and knocked out for his troubles, jumping into virtual reality in order to try to save the SDR2s with no actual backup plan, and so on and so forth.

Another reason he's so helpful in trials is that Naegi isn't a lone wolf by any means. Kirigiri never really works with others save for Naegi on occasions (and a lot of the time she doesn't even fill him in on what she's doing and he's just kind of dragged around in complete and utter bafflement as she neglects or refuses to explain) and Togami is much the same way, only working with Naegi in order to return a favor once or twice, or to keep an eye on him when he thought Naegi was the main suspect. Neither Kirigiri nor Togami seems to really ask much information-wise of the other classmates during investigations or even during a normal day (though Kirigiri is slightly more likely to). Naegi, on the other hand, will canvass pretty much every classmate and take everything they have to say into account. He should go look in x area at y thing? Okay, sure. You think z seems important? He'll keep it in mind. This willingness to listen to and get along with pretty much everyone is pretty much unique to Naegi. While some of the other students are affable, no one else quite manages to actually gel with everyone else. Admittedly Naegi doesn't always like certain things his classmates do, but he's generally able to spend time with and interact with all of them without any serious problems - up to and including that one classmate who happens to be a serial killer. ...And yes, he's pretty much willing to spend time with the serial killer, even if he's a little nervous about it whenever it happens.

Naegi is probably one of the most forgiving people in the entire series. Fujisaki and Nanami are definitely up there, too, but Naegi was the one who decided against turning the remnants of SHSL Despair over to the Future Foundation. Despite the fact that SHSL Despair was responsible for the killing game he went through, Naegi would rather they be redeemed than see them killed. He basically took the remnants of Despair and went AWOL with the other survivors as they put together an honestly pretty slipshod plan to rehabilitate the members of SHSL Despair while ignoring increasingly irate memos from the Foundation. And his classmates went along with this, despite knowing who the remnants were and what they had done, because Naegi argued for it. Even clearer an example is at the end of his own game. When the mastermind who put them through everything is about to execute herself, Naegi asks her to wait and says he doesn't really want her dead or anything - even though she'd just gotten through a trial detailing everything she did to them - and the world - and why. She ends up killing herself anyway, but it's certainly worth noting that Naegi tried to stop her, despite everything. The most frequent example of his forgiveness, however, is how he never once blames the murder culprits for their actions. In general Naegi places the entirety of the responsibility for the killings in the mutual killing game on Monobear - and later, Enoshima. Without their memories having been erased, without the motives, without the school rules...he truly believes that Enoshima was at fault for each of the murders, and considers both the murderers and the victims to be victims in the game. He later states similar things about the SDR2 kids, saying that they had been brainwashed by Enoshima and that rather than condemning them for their pasts, he wants to believe in their futures. It's a very typically Naegi thing to say.

While it's probably become clear that Naegi is somewhat proactive - that is, he's always done his best to reveal the truth in trials, and actively spent time investigating both murders and getting out of hope's peak, and also tried to befriend the others - he's actually a rather passive person. One of his classmates calls him a "herbivore man", meaning to point out that he's generally passive in his relationships, and she isn't wrong. While Naegi will raise his voice and shout others down in trial when he finds holes in their arguments, he himself is easily shouted down outside of the trials. While he often doesn't even offer objections to whatever tasks his classmates come up with for him, Naegi does try once or twice to pass things and is promptly ignored. Instead of continuing to object, he tends to just give way once he's overridden, and that's if he even managed to work up an objection to start with. While some of the passivity is a willingness to get along with others and go with the flow mixed with kindness, some of it is just that he isn't that good at objecting to things. He's even used as a bomb-detector multiple times in his canon - that is to say that his classmates have him open things/go first when they think things will explode - and despite eventually starting to snark about it, he doesn't ever actually strongly say "no" but instead puts up with it. It is really not very hard to get Naegi to go along with something you want, assuming that something isn't going to hurt anyone else to his knowledge (although apparently possibly hurting him is okay).

In terms of significant canon relationships, Naegi is the protagonist of Dangan Ronpa. He's able to form friendships in-game with every single classmate (save the actual Enoshima Junko), and so his relationships with others have a lot more focus than other characters would have. He himself would consider each classmate a significant relationship, but the ones that probably left the most impact are fewer in number. The first is of course Sayaka Maizono, who kickstarted the game by attempting to murder someone else. She and Naegi went to the same middle school, and the two were fairly close in the first chapter up to Maizono's death - which is why she was planning to frame him for murder. That betrayal was the first personally aimed at Naegi in the game, but even so, he spends the rest of the game mourning Maizono - just as he mourns every other classmate who died. Still, her death in particular hit him very hard. Next in terms of impact would be Kyouko Kirigiri, who took over Maizono's role of female lead after her death. While Kirigiri was usually cold to Naegi for a lot of the game (it's her personality rather than anything personal), Naegi clearly relied on her a lot and trusted her words and opinions and actions pretty much without fail or second thoughts by the end of the game. He still doesn't know a lot about her, but he admires and trusts her without question. Really, though, it's every classmate who has left an impact on him, albeit many in smaller ways than those two; Oogami sacrificed herself for them. Fujisaki was brave enough to want to tell his secret. Oowada had been afraid of his own secret, but had tried to keep Fujisaki's. And so on and so forth. Naegi believes that he needs to carry his friends' memories with him always, and intends to do so forever more. Aside from his classmates, he apparently got along very well with his family, and adores his younger sister, so there's that.

◎ Powers/Abilities:

Honestly, Naegi is a pretty ordinary guy. By his own reckoning, the only really extraordinary thing about him is that he's a little more optimistic than most people; he's a pretty humble dude. He is pretty good at befriending people (up to and including a serial killer) and while he gets help from Kirigiri and the others, he's usually the one who pushed through the trials detective-wise (being the protagonist and all).

However, he does have the title and talent of "Super High School Level Luck", and his luck does seem to trend to the good - eventually (and this is a keyword). Even though sometimes Naegi himself considers it "bad luck" at the time, things tend to fall out in his favor at the last minute - he has a lot of lucky breaks. Pre-canon, there's a short story dedicated to how Naegi got picked as SHSL good luck. Taking a different route home from school, he met some friends and lost paper-rock-scissors on round 1 (everyone else picked rock to his scissors). Not lucky, right? And then he went to go buy snacks as the loser had to do and the bags with the snacks split. And then an old man left his phone and he picked it up and chased him onto a bus...where he tripped and ripped open the bag of a jewel thief, who then tried to escape on a mailman's bike which then went over one of the cans Naegi had dropped and went up in flames as a result. That mailman had the original SHSL Luck's letter, and since this was unlucky, a new one went out - to Naegi. Though his day was supremely unlucky, it was what caused him to get picked as SHSL Luck. And while it's said this is bad luck, it's actually ultimately some of the best luck he could have had.

Without Naegi, the mutual killing game would have ended in tragedy. He's the one who makes his classmates have hope, and that's ultimately why they end the game as they do. If he hadn't been there, things would have gone more badly. And considering "badly" would have meant Despair winning on a national broadcast...it was a lucky break for everyone he was there. Even in the game itself, Naegi's luck tended to win out in the end. Yes, he got picked as a mark to be framed for the first murder - but then the victim had just enough time to write the killer's name, and it wasn't noticed. Furthermore, his bathroom door sticks, and that was considered "unlucky" by Monobear - yet that's some of the evidence in the murder that helps to clear Naegi, as well. He gets selected for execution at one point (unlucky) but at the last second is saved by Alter Ego jacking the execution (lucky). His luck isn't anywhere near as ridiculous as Komaeda's and Naegi never weaponizes it as Komaeda does, even though it's clear that while he's haphazard and has bouts of bad luck things tend to (eventually) go his way. It's worth mentioning, however, since it's kind of an ability. Not that Naegi even really considers it to be one, claiming his only winning trait is his optimism fairly frequently.

◎ Weapons & Other Special Inventory:

1. Electronic student ID.
2. A collection of photographs of his class from their time at Hope's Peak.
3. A motive dvd featuring his family. It simply shows them wishing him well from the family living room, a sentence each, and then a shot of their living room basically torn up and looking bad.
4. A family photo featuring himself, his sister, and both his parents, all smiling.
5. A plastic-wrap covered completely unused toolkit.
6. A notebook.
7. Several monocoins in his pockets.

CEREALIA-Specific

◎ Element: Earth.
◎ Sense: Sound. Naegi spends his entire canon listening to others and using his words to uncover the truth as well to support his friends; while he definitely isn't always very firm about the things he says (day-to-day, he falls more on the passive side) when it comes down to a life or death situation or helping a friend, he's more than capable of speaking up and doing so in a somewhat firm manner.
◎ Seven Character Traits: ( Patient, Kind, Optimistic ) | ( Passive, Honest, Forgiving ) + Trusting.

Samples

◎ First-Person Sample: Here!

◎ Third-Person Sample: Exempt! I play Trucy & AndrAIa.

◎ Is your character retaining any previous game memories? Nope.