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[luckedout]

Out-of-Character Information

Name: Reina
Are you over 15?: Yes
Time Zone: PST (GMT-8)
Personal Journal: asterism
Reliable Method of Contact: AIM | logical dive, Plurk | hyperprinny
Other characters in the game: N/A
Link to slot request if 6th, 7th slot: N/A

Tegaki: N/A
Anything Else?: N/A

In-Character Information

Name: Makoto Naegi
Game/Series: Dangan Ronpa
Teacher/Student/Other: Student
Canon Point: Post-School Mode
Age: 18
Grade Level/Class Taught/Job: Third Year High School Student
Dorm or Living Arrangement: Dorm

Personality:
Makoto Naegi, a textbook average Joe, sure doesn’t look like he’d stand out in a crowd. He’s much too ordinary for that, and for the most part, his appearance matches his personality well. Nothing about his life, including hobbies and skills, pops out at the beginning of Dangan Ronpa.

So how do you make a normal (though rather self-depreciating) high school student like him look even more normal? If you answered, "stick him next to his new super-talented classmates at the famous Hope’s Peak Academy," then yes, you are correct! Of course, he’s quite aware of just how typical a guy he is. Kinda hard for him not to, especially since he only entered Hope’s Peak Academy as a student with Super High School Level Good Luck. (How, you ask? Lottery.) But compared to most of said classmates, he’s the picture of sanity. After all, when you’re the regular dude in a group of eccentric gifted kids, you’re pretty much one of the saner ones by default!

Even so, as a run-of-the-mill teenager, Naegi does let his emotions get the better of him at times and cloud his judgment. When he gets agitated, he often needs someone to tell him to calm the hell down so he can cool off and and stop being such an idiot. And when he gets a huge shock? At best, he’ll scream his head off. At worst, he’ll faint straight away. (Goddamnit, Naegi.) But when he doesn't let his emotions rule him, he acts in a well-adjusted and rational manner. Even under pressure and panicking on the inside, he's able to deduce and keep an open mind towards even wild possibilities. With his above-average level of intelligence, he’s not particularly knowledgeable on any subject. Nonetheless, he can keep up conversations with anyone as long as they don’t get too technical.

Anyway, while Naegi can and will attempt to punch someone in the heat of the moment, he’s not prone at all to violence against others. (But in his defense, who wouldn't want to punch that bear at least once?) When people are fighting, he’ll make an effort to mediate and calm people down. When he himself is in a fight, he’s always willing to talk things out and choose the more pacifistic ways of dealing with problems. Which is too bad for him since he’s unknowingly living in a craptastic world at the moment, but hey, it’s the thought that counts?

On top of that, he’s sociable and friendly to anyone and everyone, including animals not named Monobear. He may feel starstruck when he first meets famous or talented people, but he’s quick to treat them normally despite it. Even when it comes to people who are unsociable and obstinate, he’ll smile and do his best to try to befriend them. Heck, being downright scary won’t stop him from spending time with someone to get to know them better. Case in point, Naegi can opt to hang out with a known serial killer who sometimes hints that she’d like to stab him too. Yeah.

And when it comes to friends, Naegi’s one of the most loyal ones you could ever have. He’ll patiently listen to what others have to say, and if they need it, will help them out and/or give advice to the best of his abilities. Plus, he’s rather honest in general, though that might just be a consequence of how unskilled he is at lying. And last but not least, he’s willing to put himself in danger for a friend, even if they’re not particularly close...in theory.

Before we go any further, it’s important to note that this Naegi is completely unaware of the mutual killing school life. Sure, he knows Monobear tried to kill him, but he still hasn’t connected it to the “true school life” hints that Monobear dropped. Yet, without those experiences, he does differs a bit from his original incarnation.

For one, he feels he can trust everyone instead of just Maizono, the sole person he knew of before entering Hope’s Peak. (...Aside from Hagakure when he’s trying to sell his organs for cash, but hey, you’d cry too if it happened to you!) Why? He’s had much more time to make friends with them than his OU counterpart. More importantly, none of them became victims or killers. Naegi never once had to think “okay, yeah, maybe my classmates would kill given a strong enough motive”. Without the existence of the class trials, he has not yet learned the hard way how to maintain a healthy amount of skepticism. Not only that, no one in the class solved the mysteries of Hope's Peak or learned about the current crappy state of the world! (For the former, he plans to act as the Watson to Kirigiri and Togami's Holmes so they can learn what the heck happened to Hope's Peak.) Thanks to all the above, he’s a little more upbeat than his original incarnation, as well as much more naive. Never having his morals tested in such a bleak manner does that, yup.

Needless to say, he'll have a hard time believing anything he hears about the truth behind Hope's Peak at first.

Anyway, moving on backwards in the timeline a bit! On the topic of his admission to Hope’s Peak Academy, the school designated him as Super High School Level Good Luck. Naegi himself doesn’t always see it that way. Thanks to a series of unfortunate events, he sometimes wonders if people should call him Super High School Level Bad Luck instead. But you know what they say, good luck comes after bad luck! (…Or something like that?) At any rate, while he does have his unlucky moments, they do pave the way for his good fortune and continued survival. So his title of Super High School Level Good Luck isn’t as unfitting as it may seem at first glance.

Now we can move on! By his own admission, one of Naegi’s most notable features is being more optimistic than most people. In this sort of story, that means a lot. He’s always willing to believe in the best of people, and this idealism shapes a lot of what he does in-game. Even when faced with a ridiculous amount of despair, he never gives up on finding out the truth behind everything, or on hope itself. His determination to pursue the truth and stay hopeful for the future allows him to encourage people to not fall into despair. He's quick to help remind them what they still want to live for without making their decisions for them. This proves to be key in the endgame, since it allows him to act as a spanner in the works to the Mastermind’s plan to have everyone in despair... Except he never went through this part of his character development. Awkward.

Also, he never wears the pants in a relationship. Ever.

Backstory:
For someone with the title of Super High School Level Good Luck, Makoto Naegi sure makes a habit out of experiencing bouts of bad luck. While he does gain admission to a prestigious school by lottery, it's balanced out by getting kidnapped. Now he's trapped with his fellow fourteen classmates in a school run by their new headmaster, a bear named Monobear. And that bear wants them to shank each other...

...In the far future. Not that the students know that. What they do know is that Monobear won't release them until they form a Build-A-Monobear Workshop. You see, Monobear can't start the bloodbath fun without a healthy reserve of spares. Lots of spares. Cute spares, cool spares, awesome spares—you name it! He wants all the spares.

Surprising absolutely no one, everyone thinks this whole situation is ridiculous and nonsensical. But as they're trapped in the school for at least fifty days, they have little choice but to cooperate.

For all fifty days, the fifteen students band together to slap together Monobear spares and call it a day. And since we're focusing on Naegi in particular, Naegi spends most of his free time hanging out with other students. (If this sounds like a slice-of-life RP to you, then yes, I agree wholeheartedly.) Monobear's totally fine with this, since he's a perverted voyeur who wants entertainment.

Anyway, after fifty days are up, the students have created a grand total of zero workable Monobear spares. Unamused, Monobear decides to be...sterner with them. To show this, he (clearly holding a grudge from the main universe) declares that he will punish Naegi with execution!

But before anyone can process what Monobear just said, the latest spare kicks Monobear's ass to save them. Said spare turned out to be Usami from Super Dangan Ronpa 2, who traveled from the past to help them thanks to their hope. And promptly shuts down afterwards. But hey, at least no one died this time! And after some character-specific ends and underwear collecting, the kids left the school happily ever after. (?)

(Disclaimer: Yes, all that actually happened.)

Oh, and right before Naegi moves to step through the door leading outside, someone knocks him out again. Then they ship him to a place called Smash Academy, courtesy of the Build-A-Monobear Workshop. And that’s how he ended up at Smash.

(As for the events of the original universe, that can be found in this app.)

Anything Else?:
He looks like this! At 160 cm, he’s among the top three shortest of the Dangan Ronpa cast and including the cast of the sequel, he’s only taller than five students. Heck, he’s shorter than his younger sister. So yeah, he's rather shrimpy.

In-Character 1st person sample:
A few recent threads are located at these two links.

In-Character 3rd person sample:
On one ordinary day like any other, Makoto Naegi finally woke up from a long sleep. To shake off the drowsiness, he started to stretch his limbs out, all while trying to remember what he should do today.

A moment later, he let out a small yelp as his limbs hit something hard. Still a little out of it, he languidly reached out a hand...and sure enough, he felt impact. A peculiar sort of impact at that. Whatever he had his hand on, it sure wasn't concrete, brick, or even rock. If he had to explain the texture, he'd reply with "rough yet flimsy material".

Just to be sure of his observation, he did the same with his other arm. Then he tried to stretch out his legs again. But the material refused to change. While the material struck him as flimsy, he just couldn't put a good dent in it. Despite that, if he put enough strength in his push, he felt the room (?) lurch a little towards that direction.

Suddenly awake thanks to his growing confusion, he mentally told himself to calm down and take in his surroundings. Doing so proved to be easier said than done though, thanks to the lack of good lighting. Even when his eyes started to adjust to the dark surroundings, he still couldn't make out anything of importance.

Naegi closed his eyes, racking his brain for a solution to his current predicament. Trapped on all sides...lurching after pressure...rough, yet flimsy material... Putting all that together led him to reluctantly guess someone packed him into a small box. And then transported him somewhere, maybe? He couldn't tell because of the lack of movement.

He sighed once upon coming to that hypothesis. Whether his guess was correct or not, waking up in a dark, cramped place never boded well for anyone. In a horror story, he knew he'd be prime pickings for the nearest pursuer.

...He decided against continuing that line of thought for now. Surely he couldn't be that unlucky, right?

...Right?

(Please, please don't answer that. It's rhetorical!)

Putting that aside, his biggest priority was to find a way out of the box. He could think of a few possible methods offhand: 1.) call for help, 2.) try moving about in a stealthy manner, or 3.) break through by force.

All had their pros and cons. Calling for help could be the quickest way out of the box, but only if Naegi managed to not alert the kidnapper (Monobear, perhaps? Or maybe that person? Naaaah. ...Or could it?) in the process.

Moving around in a stealthy manner is only possible if he could, well, move around in the first place. Considering his little experiment earlier, he'd have to crash repeatedly into the sides to keep the box moving. Not exactly the stealthiest mode of transportation around.

As for breaking through by force? Yeah, he thought he'd be able to pull that off. In fact, it'd likely prove easier than trying to sneak around without drawing attention to himself. But if the kidnapper saw the box lurching about like it had seasickness, he'd be in a lot of trouble... At the same time, if no said something to him after his experiments in boxed movement, maybe they left him alone?

Choices sure are hard, aren't they?

After some more observation and deliberation, Naegi decided to take a risk and go with option 3. Taking a breath to steady himself, he placed both hands on one side of the box and then, as hard as possible, punched.

Much to his surprise, the world lurched forward.

Unfortunately, he had but a few seconds to go "oh crap" before hell unleashed itself in the form of a spin cycle. The world kept spinning round and round, and he didn't know how to stop it. Or even what to say.

But in his heart of hearts, Naegi knew what to scream.

"Hagakure-kun, what did you do?!"