Monokuma

Monokuma is the main antagonist from the Danganronpa franchise.

Monokuma is a stuffed robotic bear and the self-proclaimed Headmaster of Hope's Peak Academy as it's instigator.

He later takes over the Killing School Trip, kicking out Usami in the process.

Monokuma returns once again in the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles Series, starting a new Killing Game, the Killing School Semester, alongside his children, the Monokubs.

Appearance
Monokuma is a bear that his whole face and body are divided by the center into two parts. It resembles the Yin-Yang symbol, of which there is a balance between two opposites in a way similar to a “flow”. Its right side is white and has the classic expression of teddy bear; While its left side shows a more sinister appearance. It is black, has a red, horizontal, jagged eye that resembles the Hope's Peak Academy logo and an evil smile.

Although it is completely divided into two opposite sides, the only parts of Monokuma that are not affected by the division in its area are the snout and the belly, since both remain white. He also has a large, obvious belly button on the underside of his belly. His protruding navel has an "X" shaped mark on it. Inside him he was a lot of wires due to him being a robot and a bomb.

In Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School and Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, Monokuma maintained his appearance with only a few new things that changed in his game sprites. His body appears to be a little bit chubbier and small, and his black side seems to be a little more black-grayish in this game compared to the previous installments.

In Danganronpa 2, Monokuma briefly wears a light blue suit with a white shirt and a long red tie around his neck. The collectible Monokumas are seen wearing various outfits. In Chapter 1 he is wearing a bikini made out of clams and in his right ear he has a red hibiscus with him. In Chapter 3, he haves what seems to be a red Poncho and a Sombrero. In Chapter 5, he is seem supposedly wearing a COMP from the Megami Tensei series.

In the Wizard of Monomi, Monokuma is seen wearing a golden king crown with three blue diamonds seen. He is also wearing a red king cape around his neck and body.

In cosplay, Monokuma resembles the Yo-Kai, Jibanyan. He becomes a black and white colored cat with cat ears and a chip in his right ear. He also wears a blue and white collar in his neck around him, matching the flames at the end of his two tails being him.

During the Monokuma Theater in Danganronpa V3, he is seen wearing various cosplays from famous American movies that represent each of the characters from the movie.

Personality
Monokuma is often described as easygoing and cheerful at first glance, but with very sinister undertone. However, he always rather quickly reveals his evil nature by describing killing games and his desire for despair, and he is very well known for his habit to say and do whatever he wants to. He loves hysteria, violence and chaos, summarized in one of his catchphrases "thrills, chills, kills!". He also has his own signature laughs, a sadistic "puhuhu" ("upupupu" in the Japanese version) and a mocking "ah-hahahaha".

In many ways, Monokuma represents duality both in design and personality, with his white good side and black evil side. He can sometimes act polite or cute and innocent, even patronizing, and during rare moments he even seems to give genuine positive and wise advice. However, he is mostly known for his malicious and cruel side, possessing a twisted sense of humor and a tendency to torment others and do anything for the sake of despair. He can switch between these traits at the drop of a hat, making him unpredictable for his students to deal with. He usually gets excited about the Class trials and does everything he can in order to make them entertaining for himself.

Monokuma enjoys the suffering of others, which makes him madly excited. And in turn, he gets bored and disappointed if the situation doesn't have as much despair as he hoped. Occasionally, he is so bummed out by the lack of despair that he seems to lose some of his energy and withdraws to make new plans. It's been shown that he can also get hypocritical about his ideology of despair, as he is very much willing to lie and cheat if he gets desperate enough. Still, even he seems to have some standards, as some people are so vile that they disgust even Monokuma.

Monokuma is immature and childish, often acting sarcastic and mocking towards the students, and occasionally dramatically pretending to be offended when rightfully accused. In general, he cracks a lot of jokes (especially bear puns) and breaks the fourth wall often. Monokuma doesn't seem to take the students' situation seriously, though he claims that despair is a very serious matter to him. He seizes every opportunity to belittle the students, dodging the blame and claiming that they are the ones responsible for everything bad that happens in the school. He also tends to ignore the students or act like he doesn't understand what they're talking about whenever they expose him with correct evidence.

Monokuma can be quite impatient and might attack people with his claws, his self-destruct function, threats of execution, or any other means if he is annoyed or threatened enough. However, most of the time he holds himself back, under the claim that he cannot hurt his "beloved students". His bullying and abusive nature is especially clear in the way he treats Monomi, as he gets physically and verbally abusive towards her even if he is just slightly annoyed or seemingly for no reason at all. Similarly, he is seen acting very violent towards his children if they annoy him, though originally in a very cartoony way that didn't seem to bother them. However, he turns increasingly more cruel towards his children as the game progresses, and they are shown to be quite saddened by this as they mention that Monokuma used to be much more loving towards them in the past. He also likes to make fun of K1-B0 for being a robot, even though he is also a one. In the case of the students, Monokuma generally dislikes those who don't obey him or have such optimism or intelligence that they are harder for him to manipulate, and he tends to describe these people as "annoying".

Monokuma is also very arrogant and tends to treat others in rude manner, with Junko being the only one he refers to respectfully as "Lady Junko". Fitting his arrogance, he has multiple fake stories about his past, many of them nonsensical and with silly, dark or even thoughtful message in the end. Strangely, he seems to take great pride in his supposed role as the headmaster, demanding respect for the rules and getting angry if he is called a teddy bear instead of headmaster.

Notably, he seems to be strongly against any shameful acts that could taint his respectful school, yet he himself often incorrectly accuses the students of having dirty motives and goes into way too much detail about his suspicions. Even though he acts like he is above all that, he can aim perverted comments at his students, boys and girls alike (especially for being teens). His perverseness and love for himself becomes especially clear in V3 as he seems disturbingly attracted to his own children simply because they share his "handsome" looks and only tolerates them for his "cute look". He tends to call the Monokubs "his cute cubs" and at one point he even turned bald because of the Monokubs' cuteness.

As seen in Danganronpa: The Animation, Monokuma, befitting of his role as a bear, seems to like fish and honey. It is also noted in Danganronpa 2 that he dislikes any kind of red food, and he is also seen eating the meat prepared by Teruteru Hanamura. It's unclear how eating works for Monokuma considering that he is a robot, but it seems to be just a part of his comical act, just like his sleeping. In the animated series, Monokuma also seems to be more visually comical than usual. He tends to have different objects with him, like a honeypot or a fish. He also refers to people in the anime as "yer" (you).

Monokuma's personality is originally one of Junko's personalities which she uses in the First Killing Game while she controls him, though the personality stays consistent even when he's an avatar for different people. According to Kodaka, Monokuma is the easiest character to write because he is the type of character that can make him say anything he wants without fear of repercussion.

Trivia

 * His original Japanese voice actress Nobuyo Ōyama is popular from her voice acting of Doraemon, which Spike Chunsoft purposely made Monokuma sound like. Due to her battle with dementia, she retired from voice acting, with her last in-game role being Cyber Danganronpa VR.
 * His name in DISTRUST was originally Phantom.
 * Monokuma also shares some similarities with Zero lll from Zero Escape including that they are highly advanced technologies structured after animals that are intermediaries behind the mastermind and the players.
 * Another thing that should be noted is that both of them have highly erratic and ecstatic personalities, though occasionally lower their voices in threatening remarks. They are also voiced by TARAKO, which was likely cast in reference to Zero III since both Kotaro Uchikoshi, and Kazutaka Kodaka are known friends.
 * Another similar character to Monokuma is Billy the Puppet from the Saw series. Both act as avatars to the masterminds behind their violent games, both have a black, white, and red color scheme, both revel in giving their victims a tiny chance of survival (although Billy tends to be more genuine about it than Monokuma), and both make use of elaborate traps meant to inflict grisly, ironic deaths on their victims.
 * It should also be noted that Danganronpa was originally going to have a more horror look.
 * In Chapter 4 of the second game, it is revealed that Monokuma and Usami both hate and are afraid of mice.
 * This is another reference to his resemblance to Doraemon, who is terrified of mice ever since a robotic mouse gnawed off his iconically-absent cat ears.
 * This trait is later revealed to have an important role in the story; it's a trait given to the Observer which makes sure they can't enter the Nezumi Castle, which would act as a hiding place for the students if the Observer went rogue and contains the password to escape the program. After Monokuma stole Usami's role as the Observer, he inherited her fear of mice, meaning it's a trait he doesn't normally possess.
 * In one of the instances of "Monokuma Theater" in Chapter 4, Monokuma speaks in morse code. Translated, the message reads "BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR KUMATINE", a reference to A Christmas Story.
 * It appears that Monokuma's “evil” left eye is meant to be similar to the symbol located on the front of Hope's Peak Academy's insignia. It is later shown in Danganronpa 3: Despair Arc that, upon arriving at the school's gates, Junko took a glance at the Hope's Peak insignia and incorporated part of it while designing Monokuma.
 * As seen in various promotional beta art, Monokuma was likely going to appear in Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls and have a major role in the game as he is seen running away from Komaru Naegi and Toko Fukawa.
 * In the beginning of the second game's second Class Trial, after the students discuss the murders which took place in Hope's Peak Academy and inspired the Twilight Syndrome Murder Case, Monokuma and Monomi (who is tied up next to his seat) get caught up in a small discussion over how violent high school students have become nowadays. The humor behind this little exchange stems for the fact that Monokuma and Monomi's voice actresses, Nobuyo Ōyama and Takako Sasuga, respectively, are both senior voice actresses who are best known for the roles they have portrayed in some of Japan's most famous, long-running animated shows since the 1970's.
 * Monokuma's English voice actor, Brian Beacock, also voiced Monosuke.
 * In the end of the fifth chapter of the second game, Monokuma decides, apparently on a whim, to execute his “adoptive little sister” Monomi along with Chiaki Nanami - after the latter's words motivate Monomi to “finish off” Monokuma by grabbing onto him and self-destructing repeatedly (a plan that was, however, prone to fail as Monomi had around 10 spare copies at the time while Monokuma had novemdecillion (10^60) - claiming that he “suddenly remembered that he's an only child” and that he has no reason to keep someone who does nothing but constantly interfere with his plans around. This is very reminiscent of how Junko killed her twin sister Mukuro for the sake of her personal devices - a decision Junko later admits to have made on a whim as well.
 * Monokuma is Kazutaka Kodaka's favorite Danganronpa character because he is the easiest to write and because he can say whatever he wants to say.
 * Monokuma appears as a guest character in Chain Chronicle: Brave New Continent. His Max ATK and Max HP are 8600. His weapon is Monokuma sword and his weapon's ability is doubled attack power. His deathblow is called "Blade of Monochrome", a dash attack which causes medium damage to the enemy.
 * Monokuma appears in Mystery Chronicle: One Way Heroics as one of three designs available for the Ultimate Student class, alongside Makoto and Komaru.
 * In a poll hosted by MyNavi, fans voted Monokuma the most popular Danganronpa V3 Monokuma Unit.
 * Monokuma is a guest character in Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars, featuring as a DLC boss.
 * In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, Monokuma is revealed to hate Sonic the Hedgehog with passion, seemingly jealous of his fame. On November 3, 2017, Sonic the Hedgehog's official Twitter page answered to Spike Chunsoft about Monokuma's outburst using comments by Sonic, Doctor Eggman, and Shadow the Hedgehog. Doctor Eggman, of course, agrees with Monokuma's opinion while Sonic quotes Danganronpa's famous "you've got that wrong" catchphrase.
 * Monokuma returns in the new game Zanki Zero: Last Beginning through a special requirement.