□ Name: Mahiru Koizumi
□ Journal: coyzoomy
□ Series: Dangan Ronpa
□ Canon point: End of Chapter 1

□ History: The daughter of a famous war photographer, Mahiru spent little time in her youth around her mother, due to the latter needing to spend large amounts of time outside the home working. As such, she was forced to take care of herself growing up, thanks to a father that paid little attention to her or to their home. This soured her outlook on men in general, but she managed to grow up more or less normally aside from that. She followed in her mother's footsteps and took up photography, both as a hobby and what she intended to be a future profession, and she was eventually admitted to Hope's Peak Academy for her skills.

During her stay at Hope's Peak, she was friends with several girls, but one a girl named Kuzuryuu bullied and teased her ruthlessly. A friend of hers named Satou attempted to intercede and persuade Kuzuryuu to stop, but their argument escalated into a fight, and Kuzuryuu was killed. Mahiru and her friends arrived on the scene afterward, and Mahiru inadvertently took pictures that incriminated Satou, who had attempted to conceal her involvement, but for her friend's sake, she decided to throw them away, and Kuzuryuu's murder was initially written off as the doing of a mystery culprit. Unfortunately, Kuzuryuu had a brother, one who found the evidence that Mahiru had attempted to dispose of. He realized what had happened, confronted Satou, and killed her to avenge his sister.

The details of what happened afterward are sketchy at best, but this incident undoubtedly deeply affected Mahiru, and it was likely a key part of her falling in line with Junko Enoshima after graduating from Hope's Peak. Junko was the leader of a group calling itself Super High School Level Despair, a nihilist organization that wanted to bring despair to everyone in the world. Junko put her plans into action with a game of mutual killing where the Hope's Peak student council members were made to murder each other, several Hope's Peak students were forced to watch, and the aftermath was rioting and chaos that spiraled out of control and somehow engulfed the entire world. Civilization was almost completely destroyed, but a select few students at Hope's Peak managed to escape the mayhem, hiding inside the sealed-off school along with Junko. They had their memories erased and had no idea what had happened outside, and Junko forced them to participate in a game of mutual killing, a game only a handful of them survived after defeating Junko and forcing her to execute herself.

Afterward, most members of Super High School Level Despair committed suicide. Mahiru was not among them, but she instead chose to graft an unknown piece of Junko's body to herself and carry on her leader's will. The Future Foundation, an anti-despair group attempting to restore civilization, captured her and the rest of the group's survivors, and in an attempt to rehabilitate them and bring them into their ranks, erased the last several years' of her memory. Mahiru and the rest were placed into a virtual reality simulation, in bodies like the ones they'd had when they first started at Hope's Peak, and left to make friends and embrace hope in a simulated world before being released to help rebuild.

Unfortunately, one member of their group managed to sneak in a virtual version of Junko Enoshima into the VR world, and her program overrode the rest of the world to bring about a new game of mutual killing. Thinking themselves simple, normal high school kids on some kind of horrible island, Mahiru and the others tried to simply survive, but one of their number, Komaeda, instigated Teruteru Hanamura to murder Byakuya Togami. Hanamura was found out and executed, much to everyone's horror. Life went on for the survivors, but Monobear, Junko's avatar in the VR world, stirred things up by placing a video game depicting the events of the incident that saw Satou and Kuzuryuu killed on the island. Persuaded by Komaeda to give it a try, Mahiru played the game and realized the events taking place in it were her and several other girls on the island. She wanted to bring it up to the rest of the girls, and to Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu, the girl's brother, to clear the air, but was tricked into coming to a meeting with Fuyuhiko before she had the chance. There, she was clubbed in the back of the head by Peko Pekoyama, Fuyuhiko's bodyguard, and her virtual self died. Being a simulated murder, Mahiru's actual body was unharmed, but her mind was destroyed. Left comatose, it's left unsure whether or not she will ever recover.

□ Personality: In a canon full of larger than life figures, Mahiru stands out in that she doesn't really stand out at all. She's a normal girl, normal in appearance and mannerisms both. Like all the other students at Hope's Peak, she has an extraordinary talent, but hers is much more subdued than the princess, the master chef, or the hampster breeder: Mahiru is simply a top-notch photographer, a trait she inherited from her mother and worked very hard to become an ace at. Compared to her classmates, she almost looks like she doesn't belong.

But that doesn't mean she's some shy wallflower that falls into the background. Mahiru is a very confident, at least on the outside, and never hesitates to speak her mind and deliver any message she thinks needs delivering. Whether it's scolding, praising, or just delivering a situation report, she is a very blunt person and always tells it how it is. Threats and bullying do not work on her, they'll only raise her ire, unless it's a situation where she knows she's completely outclassed, of course. She wears her heart on her sleeve, showing her emotions without much concern for how others may think of her, and it's always important to her to do the right thing, help anyone that needs help, and make the world a better place around her.

Growing up with her mother frequently out of her life and with a negligent father, Mahiru has gained a distrusting and cynical outlook on men. It's important to note that this does *not* translate into hatred - Mahiru is more than willing to associate, befriend, and even follow the leadership of men - but she has a very specific idea of the way men should act. They should be protective, comforting, and respectful, and any man who fails to do any of those things will earn her ire. Nevertheless, once she warms up to a boy, she's happy to be friends with them, and ones she may dislike, or even outright despise, are treated humanely: she volunteers to sorrowfully stand watch over Togami's corpse, she feels empathy for the perverted Hanamura after learning his tragic motivation, and even after he set up the deaths of two of their classmates, she was willing to bring food to Komaeda so he wouldn't starve.

More than anything else, rudeness irritates Mahiru to no end. Being blunt is one thing, but saying mean things for the sake of being mean, or throwing one's weight around, or being a jerk in general are fast ways to get her irked at someone, regardless of their gender. It seems curious, then, that she becomes fast friends with Hiyoko Saionji, a rude and sometimes sadistic little imp of a girl. True as it is that she's a little softer on the girls than she is with the boys, that doesn't excuse the way Hiyoko goes out of her way to disturb and antagonize everyone around her. The answer to their friendship lies in Mahiru's insecurities: she defended Hiyoko when the latter had a moment of weakness, and she received overwhelming praise and affection in return. This pretty obviously catches her off guard, and it reveals that, while Mahiru acts very confident in dealing with the world around her, dealing with things that intimately involve her are another matter. Having Hiyoko gush admiration at her leaves Mahiru almost submissively passive, going right along with all of the mischievous girl's plans for their friendship.

When it comes down to it, Mahiru has deep self-esteem issues, a trait that explains why she decided to keep her mouth shut about Kuzuryuu's murder rather than lose a valuable companion. She wants friends, and she wants people to believe she has value as a photographer and as a person. As revealed during her free time events, she's a very gentle person deep down, wanting only to take pictures of happy things like her classmates smiling and looking happy, but photo critics look down on her for that. Pictures of happy people aren't "striking," and with her mother being a famous photographer, Mahiru is caught between being worried she isn't living up to her mother's legacy and wanting to be true to herself, leaving her in an embarrassing position. On top of that, looking at the dynamic and sometimes very loud abilities her classmates possess, she feels like she barely belongs among them, and Mahiru despises being ignored. She wants to be acknowledged, she wants people to be attentive to her wants and needs and to desire her to be around them. This is why she befriends Hiyoko so quickly: in addition to having admiration heaped on her, she sees a kindred soul who is ignored and shunned that needs a friend. Hinata, too, quickly earns her admiration and friendship, just for wanting to spend time with her out of his own free will, once she starts to believe he really trusts her.

It bears mentioning that Mahiru has had the last several years of her memory erased, and a very key fact about her personality is revealed toward the end of the game: along with most of the rest of her classmates, she was a member of Super High School Level Despair after high school. The exact how and why she met and fell in line with Junko are not revealed and can only be guessed at, but it can be assumed that she was consumed with despair, possibly from a combination of jealousy over her mother's talent, her "super" ability being so mundane, and the guilt and trauma associated with the double murder she was intwined with during her stay at Hope's Peak. Given that she has had her memory erased, the reasons for being so full of despair have been destroyed along with everything else she's forgotten, and every indication suggests that the current Mahiru would never believe it to be possible, but the seeds still exist inside her to fall into some very dark places if she isn't given the hope she needs to avoid it.

□ Age: 17 physically/mentally, 20s chronologically
□ Gender: Female
□ Appearance: Mahiru is a normal-looking girl. She's of average height at 5'5", has short red hair and freckles, and is grey-eyed. She tends to dress conservatively, mostly seen in canon wearing a dress shirt, a tie, a school jumper with an average-length skirt, and long socks. She almost always has her camera on her, just in case something she wants to capture comes up.
□ Abilities/Powers: Mahiru is a highly-skilled photographer, one of the best in the world, but is otherwise not in any way more exceptional than any average teenager.
□ Personal Items: Her trusty digital camera, its data card, and its lens cap.