APPLICATION

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OOC INFORMATION
Name: Lenga
Contact: lengachan; lengachan @ AIM; crabg1rl
Other Characters: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Mahiru Koizumi
Age: 17, both mentally and physically, though not chronologically
Canon: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
Canon Point: Chapter 2 Deadly Life
Character Information: plot summary | character wiki article | concise chronological version--

1. Childhood with physically distant mother and practically distant father
2. Middle school with severe bullying by Miss Kuzuryu
3. High school life where (A) she makes some friends and (B) one friend Miss Sato murders Miss Kuzuryu, whose brother Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu kills Miss Sato
4. Recruitment by Junko Enoshima into Ultimate Despair terrorist organization
5. Removal of memories (3) and (4) as part of the New World Program (a virtual reality; characters killed here are actually merely comatose in real life but are not aware of this)
6. Induction into the Island Life of Mutual Killing; characters are trapped on the island unless they kill someone, after which a class trial is held. Either the culprit is discovered and executed, or they convict the wrong person and all characters except the culprit are executed.
7. Mahiru organizes a pastry party; Byakuya throws a party and is murdered by Teruteru, who is taken to trial and executed
8. Information about (3B) is relayed to her, initially through a threatening letter from Fuyuhiko; eventually they meet, and his childhood friend Peko kills her

Personality: In a group of English-speaking Tumblr users, Mahiru Koizumi would probably be designated the "mom friend". Among teenagers excelling at their hobbies and fighting with each other, she is often the only one focused on domestic tasks. Beyond her more light-hearted group-oriented pastry party and curry dinner, she goes out of her way to feed Nagito, who has been tied up on account of his role in two deaths. She nags Hajime, the protagonist and her closest male friend during the game, about his laundry, offering to do it herself if he can't take responsibility. She extends the same concern to Kazuichi and also drags him to events when he's late. Even her relationship with best friend Hiyoko blossoms by helping the other girl dress and shower.

Her "talent" is similarly down to earth and not ostentatious, though it’s literally flashy: She's a photographer. She approaches her work with great precision, knowing that verbal communication between photographer and subject is generally inadequate. She also recognizes that there is no such thing as a second chance to take a photo because time is always marching forward, and thus she has a policy of neither deleting nor retaking photos. The moments she immortalizes are mundane. Her subjects are people. She seems to make one exception when "I was thinking about taking a picture of the ocean at night" but this is actually a bad lie to cover up her involvement in another activity. Furthermore, she focuses on people smiling, sometimes making them happy to do so - she succeeds most of the time and this is more important to Mahiru than putting herself into a position where she'd experience happiness firsthand. At events like a Christmas party she wonders if her smile deserves to be captured too and decides it’s not.

On a conscious level Mahiru is more bothered that her talent is just less useful. Her self-proclaimed lack of acclimation to violence and low intelligence makes her "useless" for anything other than corpse guard duty. This murder occurs at a party where she was taking pictures, and she synthesizes these to compose a meticulous map of every person's location as well as the furniture. While she is unable to make any inductions at the time, she had done no additional investigation due to remaining on guard duty, and her accurate, detailed work including even the lamp cord is integral to solving the mystery. Now, the investigation also owes a lot to the efforts of characters like Mikan, a nurse with autopsy skills. Still, Mahiru's best friends include Hiyoko the dancer and Ibuki the musician, and she recognizes the importance of their fields by expressing the sincere desire to watch and photograph their performances. So in her judgment her work is even less important than art.

She has a few indulgences, mostly feminine ones like flowers and facial masks and jewelry. This tendency is clearest in her preferred gifts; a few proper events also support this, like the pastry party. However, considering Mahiru does not know how to cook pastries specifically, there is a ceiling on her pursuit of these luxuries. An overall picture of lifelong self-denial develops.

The murder at the party was committed for the sake of the culprit's mother and Mahiru experiences doubt due to this, pointing out that a mother is the "most important family member". Mrs. Koizumi is famous as a photographer, and when she came home from work she would show Mahiru photos of people smiling, inspiring the girl to do similar work. However, Mrs. Koizumi was home very rarely, because she travelled internationally as a war photographer; this serious work was always the shadow of Mahiru's comparatively "light" smiling people portraits.

Meanwhile Mr. Koizumi was a stay-at-home dad in the sense that he lived in the home and he was Mahiru's dad. Omitting speculation about the exact reasons for this because its effects on Mahiru's actions are more important, the end result is that Mahiru became responsible for 100% of the Koizumi household's tasks. Now, Mahiru expresses the desire to travel internationally, which would also be more similar in prestige to her mother's work even if still less "serious" in subject. She would also genuinely enjoy this: "traveling alone" is listed as her top "like" in her profile. But she is completely resigned to continuing to take care of her father, smiling and saying “life isn’t so simple”.

When her desires come dead last even within her immediate family, Mahiru has learned to focus on the task at hand and tell herself "There's always tomorrow" to have her needs met, this exact line being uttered when she decides that receiving a threatening letter is less important than letting the other teenage girls have a beach party. In the face of the unfairness that led her to this point, especially the failure of the mother-father system in her life, she can get a little resentful and cranky when other people don't do their part. This stern quality artificially resembles misandry because she will describe male targets of criticism as needing to "man up" or such. She’s usually reacting to reasonably objectionable behavior (an extended conversation about another girl’s private bodily functions, self-protecting cowardliness in a class trial, sunscreen application as an excuse for groping), but her scolding is sometimes as disruptive as the original infraction.

Girls receive some tongue-lashings from her too, albeit shorter ones with gentler expressions. In this visual novel, Mahiru literally never uses certain sprites like "objection" towards women. Much of these friendly reminders are directed towards the misunderstandings and uncouth behavior of Akane, a brains-over-brawn type character, on the order of "were you even listening". On the other hand, Mahiru never has the chance to speak with a female murderer. The worst thing she ever witnesses is the verbal abuse spewed by her best friend Hiyoko, especially towards Mikan with some help from Ibuki. Mahiru makes attempts at interfering: "Hey, stop it... Mikan's getting really scared." or, in response to Hiyoko's plan to set traps on Mikan's birthday, "How about we celebrate normally?" Furthermore, Hiyoko's abuse is virtually exclusively verbal; she does share some of Mahiru's very serious morals that murder (and tying people up) is wrong under all circumstances, especially revenge, tying into Mahiru's forward-facing nature.

Hiyoko's underlying decency is not as good an explanation for their relationship as Mahiru's desperation. With her home life already pitiful (when she's crying over the murder victim at the party and Hajime reassures her there's nothing she could do, Mahiru practically slaps him away saying it's uncharacteristic of her to be comforted by a man) Mahiru could have used some other source of companionship like the photography club at her middle school. Unfortunately, one member of this club was Miss Kuzuryu, the younger daughter of the biggest yakuza clan in the Danganronpa universe. She had complete social control and did not appreciate the competition of Mahiru's genuine skill at photography. "She was seriously making your [Mahiru’s] life a living hell", we are told. This amplifies Mahiru's lack of self-esteem and her vulnerability towards displays of affection. Mahiru befriends the sharp-tongued Miss Sato, who discovers the situation with Miss Kuzuryu and kills her. Mahiru covers up the crime, hiding it from Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu who would kill Miss Sato in revenge (which does actually occur once he discovers the truth), but also from any authorities who would render more measured justice.

When her optimism is threatened, Mahiru's stern tendencies can easily veer into hysteria. She specifically scolds Hiyoko and Mikan multiple times for crying (in response to the possibility or reality of deaths) because she worries she herself will experience these emotional extremes also. "If you keep mumbling like that, I'm gonna get depressed too" best summarizes this tendency. In the face of a public death threat she threatens to become "seriously angry", and when a character reveals a cavalier attitude towards death but also hints he's not the culprit Mahiru snaps "We'll be the judge of that", suggesting a willingness to lynch him without evidence.

Her loyal and hysterical tendencies combined in the worst possible way when she was recruited by the charismatic Junko Enoshima into the terrorist organization Ultimate Despair. Mahiru's case is not directly depicted; she is one of many members who reached the point where they would kill their own families, burn everything, and mutilate their bodies to incorporate Junko Enoshima's organs. It's more important to observe that this is the logical culmination of her loyal and hysterical tendencies, which she could reach again given enough hopelessness of both overarching and interpersonal circumstances.

At this canon point, Mahiru's alignment is in a very different place, as she has no memory that Ultimate Despair ever existed. Trying to diminish the importance of the death threats she has received, at length she is tricked into meeting with Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, where she sticks to her guns about her own actions and his being morally wrong. At this time he reaches for a metal baseball bat, though it is then taken from him by Peko Pekoyama who carries out the coup de grace. Mahiru dies without resenting either of them, only wishing she could have taken more pictures of her friends and properly made amends.

Throughout the Island Life of Mutual Killing, Mahiru reacts skeptically to the more speculative elements of the Danganronpa storyline, such as the overseers resembling stuffed animals and the laser guided amnesia. She repeatedly describes the other classmates' antics as "insane". She thinks she already knows how things work in reality: her entire life she’s resigned herself to the world being a cruel, complicated, and mundane place where people are neglected or bullied for no good reason and have to be nice without taking revenge. Enough resentment built up that she took the opportunity to engage in terrorism. Lacking that memory, Mahiru lives as an ordinary person without valuable accomplishments or emotional needs, when she’s aware deep down that she wants recognition and affection.


5-10 Key Character Traits: Down to earth, loyal to a fault, focused, stern, optimistic, helpful, self-denying, insecure, vulnerable to affection, resentful
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, or EITHER? FITS
Opt-Outs: Werewolf; nymph; naga; mer; gargoyle

Roleplay Sample: Here are pre-changes fourth wall threads and here is a post-changes network thread