Sayaka Maizono

Sayaka Maizono is a character from the Danganronpa anime and video game.

Sayaka is a student in Hope's Peak Academy's Class 78th, and a participant of the Killing School Life. Her title is Ultimate Pop Sensation.

In the Heroes Coalition fics, Sayaka is brought back to life. Sayaka now works as an idol at the Brainless Studios.

Appearance
At the beginning of the Killing School Life in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Sayaka appears to be young high school-aged teenager, but due to the memory loss she is two years older than she believed. She is considered very attractive, as she has a large fanbase of both boys and girls. She wears eyeliner and blush, which suggests that she wears makeup to help keep this appearance. She has long, dark blue hair, which she holds in place with several clips. Her eyes are also dark blue.

Her school uniform is a traditional seifuku-style Japanese school uniform comprising of a long sleeved white shirt with a blue sailor collar and a pink ribbon bow tie with tails, a blue tartan skirt, black thigh-high socks and brown, buckled shoes. Her school crest is visible on her undershirt and on her sleeve.

Sayaka's idol clothing is a sleeveless pink and white dress with a pink ribbon and ruffles at the bottom, which ends just above her knees. She also wears an intricate matching ribbon on the right side of her hair and white knee-high boots. Her hair is tied into two pig tails with pink clips on her bangs. In her official illustration art, Sayaka wears her stage outfit, which consists of a ruffled, collared pink and white dress, a pink bow on the front and knee-high white boots. She wears a black see-through armband on her right arm and a thin white arm band and a fluffy white bracelet on her left arm. She also wears a large pink bow over a white headband and she has multiple star hair clips.

Personality
Seeing as she's an idol, Sayaka has a cheerful, sweet, and supporting personality. Despite her idol career, Sayaka actually enjoys cooking.

Sayaka develops a bond with Makoto Naegi, whom she considers her friend, assisting him on every occasion in Chapter 1. However, she tends to hide her feelings when she is under great pressure by putting on her public persona. She also cares greatly for her band members, and would not hesitate to do something if anything were to happen to one of them, including things that could hurt others. When pushed to her limit, Sayaka will do anything even if it's a risk. After she watched Killing Among Loved Ones, she only thinks of how she could escape from the academy, even planning to betray Makoto.

Sayaka mentions that she often finds herself focused on a particular person, but pushes these thoughts out of her mind to commit herself further to her idol career.

Sayaka has an amazing intuition, as she can easily tell what people are thinking. She often joked about being psychic, only to admit that she was kidding later on.

Abilities
As the Ultimate Pop Sensation, Sayaka is said to have a mesmerizing voice and amazing dancing skills. Because of this she is an exceptional performer, and has gained many fans and admirers all over the world. This is actually what led Hope's Peak Academy to approach her.

Extraordinary Intuition
Sayaka has amazing intuition, and often knows what people are thinking, even when it isn't obvious. She claimed this was due to psychic powers she joked about having. During Sayaka's School Mode ending, Makoto has flashes of events from the main story involving him and Sayaka, who also seems to remember said events. This seems to imply that Sayaka really does have a limited amount of psychic ability.

Trivia

 * Sayaka says in her Free Time Events, in response to Makoto's answer 'crane', that she's the crane he rescued at that time during middle school and that she wants to weave clothes for him. This is actually a reference to a popular Japanese folktale, Tsuru no Ongaeshi or "The Crane's Return of Favor". In the story, a crane which was saved by a man disguised itself as a woman and devoted herself to help him make a living by weaving beautiful fabric for him to sell. However once the man realized that it was the crane who sustained him, she was already gone. The story is somewhat similar to chapter 1, where Makoto learns only during the class trial that in her dying moments, Sayaka used whatever power she had left to clear him of suspicion.
 * In The Demo of the game, Yasuhiro Hagakure was killed to avoid spoiling the true first death of the game.
 * In the original game, Sayaka is the one who discovers that the kitchen is restocked every day by Monokuma, however, in the anime adaptation, they changed it to Chihiro.
 * A younger sister of Sayaka's was planned to be introduced as part of the Warriors of Hope's Hit List in Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls. This idea, however, was scrapped once the game's developers realized that Sayaka having siblings would be inconsistent with her back story mentioned in the original game.
 * Sayaka's English voice actress, Dorothy Elias-Fahn, also voices Chihiro Fujisaki and Alter Ego, as well as Tsumugi Shirogane in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony.