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♛ IC
Name: Hajime Hinata
Canon: Dangan Ronpa 2
Canon Point: Post-Chapter 6
Age: Physically and mentally 16, chronologically 19
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Appearance: Here!
History/Background: Here!
Personality:
Hajime Hinata is a character who can come off as cynical and blunt, but who cares deeply about all of his friends, and under the wrong circumstances can be driven by strong insecurities.
On the surface, one of the first things that one may notice about Hinata is his cynicism. He spends the majority of the prologue of the game being incredibly suspicious about their entire situation while everyone else is content to enjoy their spontaneous island field trip, and later when Hinata's suspicions are confirmed, he also becomes wary of everyone else. He has no doubt that someone among them would kill another in order to escape the island, and he can't even trust himself to not be driven to kill someone. Hinata also tends to be rather blunt and isn't even afraid to express his outright apathy to others, often brushing off the other students. This type of attitude that he displays rather often can make him appear to be cold-hearted; however, Hinata is nowhere near that.
Although he can clearly be snippy at times, especially during stressful situations (aka the vast majority of the game), he does genuinely care for every single one of the students. He often comforts Tsumiki and encourages her to worry less about what other people think of her, and he's happy when he sees her having positive interactions with other students. In Owari's fourth free time event, Hinata discovers that she has a fear of ghosts, which embarrasses her and makes her tell him not to tell anyone. She's still hung up on it during the final free time event and insists that she's not weak, but Hinata helps her see that there's nothing shameful about being weak and that a truly strong person would try to overcome their weaknesses rather than refuse to acknowledge them. The fact that he even goes out of his way to spend time with his classmates and tries to help them with their insecurities rather than just holing himself up in his cottage like he had originally wanted to do shows what a kind-hearted person Hinata really is.
In addition, Hinata also has a less serious side that occasionally surfaces when he spends alone time with his classmates. He does things like participate in a headbanging contest with Ibuki until they both pass out, have an endurance contest with Gundam in which they squeeze each other's hands and see who can last the longest, and jokingly ask Kuzuryuu if they're doing a marriage ritual during his final free time event (this is an option that pisses Kuzuryuu off, however). Also, at the end of Togami's final free time event, they spend the rest of the day joking around and talking about random things. This drastic contrast to his usual demeanor further proves the point that Hinata is not as straightforward of a character as he seems and shows that he truly is a teenager at heart who likes to joke around and do questionable things with people that he really trusts. However, the biggest reason why this side of him is rarely seen throughout the game is likely because he is usually too preoccupied with dealing with the extremely stressful circumstances of his situation such as solving murder cases that determine whether the rest of them live or die and worrying when another murder is going to take place, which causes his more irritable side to be in control most of the time.
Also, despite his initial suspicion of everyone, he gradually opens up to the idea of believing in them. He actually ends up putting a good deal of trust in his classmates, and he's very clearly distressed each time someone reveals themselves to be involved in a murder. This is especially apparent with Komaeda and Tsumiki, who each revealed disturbing sides of themselves after Hinata had been close to them and trusted them. In both cases, he has trouble resolving their actions and words with the ideas of them that he's come to know, and he says that he really doesn't want to believe they could do what they're accused of, asking them to please give him evidence disproving their involvement so that he doesn't have to accept it as the truth. It shakes him to find out these people he thought of as friends weren't what he thought they were, and really shows that despite his jaded facade, he's a trusting person who believes in his friends until it's definitely proven that he can't.
Even when he can't trust them anymore, though, he can't bring himself to fully abandon them either, and still tries to understand them. His relationship with Komaeda is a really striking example of this. If Komaeda's first free time event is completed before the end of Chapter 1, Hinata can still ask Komaeda to hang out with him whenever possible until Chapter 5, and can even still go through the usual ritual of giving a present after spending some time together. Hinata tells him that he spends time with him because he doesn't understand him, and so he's afraid of leaving Komaeda alone, but by spending time with him, he gradually does come to understand him better, even if he still doesn't think that Komaeda's actions can be excused. When he finds about Komaeda's terminal illnesses, he even feels genuine sympathy for him. (At least for a moment, until Komaeda backtracks and says he was lying.)
Naturally, as the protagonist of the game, Hinata is gradually established as the leader of the group. Right after the death of their former leader, Togami, Hinata is pressed with the task of checking under the tablecloth to find the source of the blood that Owari was smelling, and he continues to end up in these kinds of positions throughout the game, willing or not, with the rest of the students coming to trust him as things progress. He ends up having a big influence on the trials, always being the one to point out contradictions and successfully disproving arguments against his own claims, which causes the trials to move in his favor. He is also very logical and always thinks things through before speaking up, never blurting out any baseless accusations that he can't back up, which is what helps them eventually figure out who the culprit is. While he does get stumped at times and sometimes need assistance from others to arrive to the right conclusion, Hinata never fails to have just the evidence he needs to get the job done. He proves to be especially capable in Chapter 3's trial, where everyone's lives literally depend on Hinata's deduction abilities because he was the sole witness to video of "Mioda" preparing to hang herself, therefore he is the only one who can figure out the discrepencies between the video and the actual crime scene, which of course he does.
But in spite of his leadership qualities and the good relationships he's able to establish with pretty much everyone on the island, Hinata has a lot of serious insecurities that become more and more apparent as the game progresses. He's not only afraid of what the other students might do to him when they first find out about the game they're being forced into, he's afraid of what he might do to them, revealing a level of weakness (or at least honesty about his potential weakness, which could actually possibly be considered a strength) that isn't so common in protagonists. When Monokuma tells the students that one of them is a traitor, Hinata even doubts himself a little, as he's the only student who can't remember what their talent is, and he acknowledges how suspicious that makes him look. This makes it especially difficult for him when Souda starts to suspect him for a time in Chapter 4, even when all of the other students stand behind him and insist that he can't be the traitor. As much as he wants to be trusted and as upset as his friend's doubt makes him, he has a sliver of doubt himself (until his innocence is proven).
But where his insecurities really become an issue is with his feelings about Hope's Peak and his talent, or as it turns out, his lack thereof -- it turns out part of the reason he can't remember his talent is because he never had one. He's always idolized the school and going there has been his lifelong dream, but without a SHSL talent, the only way he could go was by paying extremely high tuition fees to join the reserve course, where students get in based on money rather than merit. But this just ended up making him feel worse about himself, as he was bullied relentlessly at the school for his lack of talent, and ended up on the verge of failing out of the school. These feelings of inadequacy led him to accept the school's proposal that he serve as the experimental subject for the Hope Cultivation Project. It's very likely that Hinata was told the risks of the experiment, including the fact that he would lose his old self entirely, but that didn't stop him from going through with it. Hinata desperately wants to be a special, talented person and not to live the life of a boring, ordinary person, and he can't stand the thought of failing out of the school he cared so much about, especially after his parents paid so much for him to go there, and so he sees accepting the role as the only option he has. Being remade into someone with many talents who would be the ultimate symbol of hope seems like a blessing to him, and with how bleak his future was otherwise looking, there was no way he could turn it down.
What this project ends up doing is repressing his memories and personality and essentially eliminating his identity as Hajime Hinata and giving him a new one as Izuru Kamukura, named for the founder of Hope's Peak and intended to carry on his will as the symbol of the hope the school has always tried to create. As Kamukura, he is an entirely different person. While Hinata had a low sense of self worth, Kamukura holds himself in extremely regard, referring to himself as being "someone loved by talent," and either belittles or outright ignores everyone around him in favor of hearing himself talk. The talents he's given give him exceptional intelligence, critical thinking, and analytical skills, among many other things, but this ability to understand and predict so much about the world leaves him very bored with it. Kamukura is excited by unpredictability and irregularity, but they never last long because he can so quickly and easily figure out every pattern. Even things as complicated as Komaeda's way of thinking are considered easily understandable and therefore uninteresting by Kamukura.
When Hinata finds out about all of this, he's understandably distressed, but this time, with everything he knows and with the memories of all his friends in mind, he chooses to fight against despair as himself, showing great strength and personal growth. He understands that it doesn't really matter in the end if he has any special talent. What's important is keeping hope and moving forward despite all the obstacles he'll have to face, and by accepting this, he's finally able to take some pride in himself as Hajime Hinata and to lead his friends in working to undo the terrible things they did as SHSL Despair and create a better world.
Skills/Abilities:
Hinata has no supernatural powers or fighting abilities whatsoever. His incredible mental strength, critical thinking skills, and his ability to form positive relationships with even the quirkiest people are his most significant abilities. However, despite not being a warrior or an athlete, he tells Peko in one of her free time events that he does have good reflexes and Nidai thinks that he would make a really good rugby player, suggesting that he may have some physical potential as well. It's also worth noting that he has extremely strong intuition when it comes to danger -- literally every time he's had a bad feeling in the game, a murder or a despair-inducing plot twist follows shortly after.
Magic Weapon:
Rebuttal Blade - A totally average-looking sword that is capable of producing thin mana shockwaves when swung in a wide arc. The strength and distance of the shockwaves is dependent on the power of the user's swing, with the maximum distance being 30 feet away. They are capable of slicing through enemies, most objects, and magical projectiles, thus being able to "rebut" enemy attacks very effectively. However, it will take a lot of beefing up and practice to reach the full potential of this weapon.
Carrier: Randomize, please!
Sample: tdm thread 1 | tdm thread 2
Name: Hajime Hinata
Canon: Dangan Ronpa 2
Canon Point: Post-Chapter 6
Age: Physically and mentally 16, chronologically 19
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Appearance: Here!
History/Background: Here!
Personality:
Hajime Hinata is a character who can come off as cynical and blunt, but who cares deeply about all of his friends, and under the wrong circumstances can be driven by strong insecurities.
On the surface, one of the first things that one may notice about Hinata is his cynicism. He spends the majority of the prologue of the game being incredibly suspicious about their entire situation while everyone else is content to enjoy their spontaneous island field trip, and later when Hinata's suspicions are confirmed, he also becomes wary of everyone else. He has no doubt that someone among them would kill another in order to escape the island, and he can't even trust himself to not be driven to kill someone. Hinata also tends to be rather blunt and isn't even afraid to express his outright apathy to others, often brushing off the other students. This type of attitude that he displays rather often can make him appear to be cold-hearted; however, Hinata is nowhere near that.
Although he can clearly be snippy at times, especially during stressful situations (aka the vast majority of the game), he does genuinely care for every single one of the students. He often comforts Tsumiki and encourages her to worry less about what other people think of her, and he's happy when he sees her having positive interactions with other students. In Owari's fourth free time event, Hinata discovers that she has a fear of ghosts, which embarrasses her and makes her tell him not to tell anyone. She's still hung up on it during the final free time event and insists that she's not weak, but Hinata helps her see that there's nothing shameful about being weak and that a truly strong person would try to overcome their weaknesses rather than refuse to acknowledge them. The fact that he even goes out of his way to spend time with his classmates and tries to help them with their insecurities rather than just holing himself up in his cottage like he had originally wanted to do shows what a kind-hearted person Hinata really is.
In addition, Hinata also has a less serious side that occasionally surfaces when he spends alone time with his classmates. He does things like participate in a headbanging contest with Ibuki until they both pass out, have an endurance contest with Gundam in which they squeeze each other's hands and see who can last the longest, and jokingly ask Kuzuryuu if they're doing a marriage ritual during his final free time event (this is an option that pisses Kuzuryuu off, however). Also, at the end of Togami's final free time event, they spend the rest of the day joking around and talking about random things. This drastic contrast to his usual demeanor further proves the point that Hinata is not as straightforward of a character as he seems and shows that he truly is a teenager at heart who likes to joke around and do questionable things with people that he really trusts. However, the biggest reason why this side of him is rarely seen throughout the game is likely because he is usually too preoccupied with dealing with the extremely stressful circumstances of his situation such as solving murder cases that determine whether the rest of them live or die and worrying when another murder is going to take place, which causes his more irritable side to be in control most of the time.
Also, despite his initial suspicion of everyone, he gradually opens up to the idea of believing in them. He actually ends up putting a good deal of trust in his classmates, and he's very clearly distressed each time someone reveals themselves to be involved in a murder. This is especially apparent with Komaeda and Tsumiki, who each revealed disturbing sides of themselves after Hinata had been close to them and trusted them. In both cases, he has trouble resolving their actions and words with the ideas of them that he's come to know, and he says that he really doesn't want to believe they could do what they're accused of, asking them to please give him evidence disproving their involvement so that he doesn't have to accept it as the truth. It shakes him to find out these people he thought of as friends weren't what he thought they were, and really shows that despite his jaded facade, he's a trusting person who believes in his friends until it's definitely proven that he can't.
Even when he can't trust them anymore, though, he can't bring himself to fully abandon them either, and still tries to understand them. His relationship with Komaeda is a really striking example of this. If Komaeda's first free time event is completed before the end of Chapter 1, Hinata can still ask Komaeda to hang out with him whenever possible until Chapter 5, and can even still go through the usual ritual of giving a present after spending some time together. Hinata tells him that he spends time with him because he doesn't understand him, and so he's afraid of leaving Komaeda alone, but by spending time with him, he gradually does come to understand him better, even if he still doesn't think that Komaeda's actions can be excused. When he finds about Komaeda's terminal illnesses, he even feels genuine sympathy for him. (At least for a moment, until Komaeda backtracks and says he was lying.)
Naturally, as the protagonist of the game, Hinata is gradually established as the leader of the group. Right after the death of their former leader, Togami, Hinata is pressed with the task of checking under the tablecloth to find the source of the blood that Owari was smelling, and he continues to end up in these kinds of positions throughout the game, willing or not, with the rest of the students coming to trust him as things progress. He ends up having a big influence on the trials, always being the one to point out contradictions and successfully disproving arguments against his own claims, which causes the trials to move in his favor. He is also very logical and always thinks things through before speaking up, never blurting out any baseless accusations that he can't back up, which is what helps them eventually figure out who the culprit is. While he does get stumped at times and sometimes need assistance from others to arrive to the right conclusion, Hinata never fails to have just the evidence he needs to get the job done. He proves to be especially capable in Chapter 3's trial, where everyone's lives literally depend on Hinata's deduction abilities because he was the sole witness to video of "Mioda" preparing to hang herself, therefore he is the only one who can figure out the discrepencies between the video and the actual crime scene, which of course he does.
But in spite of his leadership qualities and the good relationships he's able to establish with pretty much everyone on the island, Hinata has a lot of serious insecurities that become more and more apparent as the game progresses. He's not only afraid of what the other students might do to him when they first find out about the game they're being forced into, he's afraid of what he might do to them, revealing a level of weakness (or at least honesty about his potential weakness, which could actually possibly be considered a strength) that isn't so common in protagonists. When Monokuma tells the students that one of them is a traitor, Hinata even doubts himself a little, as he's the only student who can't remember what their talent is, and he acknowledges how suspicious that makes him look. This makes it especially difficult for him when Souda starts to suspect him for a time in Chapter 4, even when all of the other students stand behind him and insist that he can't be the traitor. As much as he wants to be trusted and as upset as his friend's doubt makes him, he has a sliver of doubt himself (until his innocence is proven).
But where his insecurities really become an issue is with his feelings about Hope's Peak and his talent, or as it turns out, his lack thereof -- it turns out part of the reason he can't remember his talent is because he never had one. He's always idolized the school and going there has been his lifelong dream, but without a SHSL talent, the only way he could go was by paying extremely high tuition fees to join the reserve course, where students get in based on money rather than merit. But this just ended up making him feel worse about himself, as he was bullied relentlessly at the school for his lack of talent, and ended up on the verge of failing out of the school. These feelings of inadequacy led him to accept the school's proposal that he serve as the experimental subject for the Hope Cultivation Project. It's very likely that Hinata was told the risks of the experiment, including the fact that he would lose his old self entirely, but that didn't stop him from going through with it. Hinata desperately wants to be a special, talented person and not to live the life of a boring, ordinary person, and he can't stand the thought of failing out of the school he cared so much about, especially after his parents paid so much for him to go there, and so he sees accepting the role as the only option he has. Being remade into someone with many talents who would be the ultimate symbol of hope seems like a blessing to him, and with how bleak his future was otherwise looking, there was no way he could turn it down.
What this project ends up doing is repressing his memories and personality and essentially eliminating his identity as Hajime Hinata and giving him a new one as Izuru Kamukura, named for the founder of Hope's Peak and intended to carry on his will as the symbol of the hope the school has always tried to create. As Kamukura, he is an entirely different person. While Hinata had a low sense of self worth, Kamukura holds himself in extremely regard, referring to himself as being "someone loved by talent," and either belittles or outright ignores everyone around him in favor of hearing himself talk. The talents he's given give him exceptional intelligence, critical thinking, and analytical skills, among many other things, but this ability to understand and predict so much about the world leaves him very bored with it. Kamukura is excited by unpredictability and irregularity, but they never last long because he can so quickly and easily figure out every pattern. Even things as complicated as Komaeda's way of thinking are considered easily understandable and therefore uninteresting by Kamukura.
When Hinata finds out about all of this, he's understandably distressed, but this time, with everything he knows and with the memories of all his friends in mind, he chooses to fight against despair as himself, showing great strength and personal growth. He understands that it doesn't really matter in the end if he has any special talent. What's important is keeping hope and moving forward despite all the obstacles he'll have to face, and by accepting this, he's finally able to take some pride in himself as Hajime Hinata and to lead his friends in working to undo the terrible things they did as SHSL Despair and create a better world.
Skills/Abilities:
Hinata has no supernatural powers or fighting abilities whatsoever. His incredible mental strength, critical thinking skills, and his ability to form positive relationships with even the quirkiest people are his most significant abilities. However, despite not being a warrior or an athlete, he tells Peko in one of her free time events that he does have good reflexes and Nidai thinks that he would make a really good rugby player, suggesting that he may have some physical potential as well. It's also worth noting that he has extremely strong intuition when it comes to danger -- literally every time he's had a bad feeling in the game, a murder or a despair-inducing plot twist follows shortly after.
Magic Weapon:
Rebuttal Blade - A totally average-looking sword that is capable of producing thin mana shockwaves when swung in a wide arc. The strength and distance of the shockwaves is dependent on the power of the user's swing, with the maximum distance being 30 feet away. They are capable of slicing through enemies, most objects, and magical projectiles, thus being able to "rebut" enemy attacks very effectively. However, it will take a lot of beefing up and practice to reach the full potential of this weapon.
Carrier: Randomize, please!
Sample: tdm thread 1 | tdm thread 2
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