Mahiru Koizumi

Mahiru Koizumi is a character from the Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair game.

Mahiru is a student of Hope's Peak Academy's Class 77-B, and a participant of the Killing School Trip. Her title is Ultimate Photographer.

In the Heroes Coalition fics, Mahiru is spared from canon fate. She is a member of the Heroes Coalition as a trainee.

Appearance
Mahiru is a young woman in her early twenties, around 22 at youngest. Her virtual avatar in the Neo World Program appeared as her 17-year-old self.

She has dark red hair in a bob cut, olive green eyes, and a pale face with light freckles across her cheeks.

Mahiru's outfit consists of an olive-green school jumper with a plaid white-and-orange tie, which she knots around the collar of her uniform shirt. She wears dark green knee-high socks, and her shoes are a dark shade of forest green. Directly below the opening of the socks, there is a small orange symbol.

During her time at Hope's Peak Academy, she wore the standard uniform with black knee length socks and the same shoes.

Personality
Mahiru is an optimistic and sensible girl who is generally rather calm and unafraid to speak her mind. She initially comes off as confident but is later revealed to have self-esteem issues. Mahiru compares her photographs to those of her mother, a famous war photographer whose career led her to be absent from home for much of Mahiru's life. Her father was a very poor parent, leaving the responsibility of the housework entirely to her. When Hajime Hinata was being scolded by Mahiru, he likened it to being yelled at by his mom.

Mahiru has high expectations of men and is quick to be abrasive towards them. She is much more tolerant and friendly to girls. In the original Japanese, she refers the girls in her class with their first name and "-chan" honorifics, while she refers the guys casually with their last name only. The subjects of her photos are usually of girls and explains that she easily gets bored of photographing guys. She loves taking photos of people's smiles, and it's revealed in her Free Time Events that she recorded everything in Jabberwock Island so that they won't forget, except for the guys which she only recorded once every three days. Despite her love for photography, Mahiru believes her title is stupid compared to her classmates. She has been shown to dislike selfies.

Mahiru wants to help as many people as she can, but it'd be a mistake to call her a pushover. She doesn't hesitate to scold those who are rude to her and is also really good at taking care of people although never failing to complain about it. Mahiru is introduced as hating people who lack manners, though she later develops a very close friendship with Hiyoko Saionji. Because Mahiru is a reliable person who thinks of her friends and is prone to taking care of people, she has many friends outside of her own class as well.

Abilities
From a young age, Mahiru was inspired to become a photographer just like her mother who was a famous war photographer. Despite being young, she won numerous photographer awards and became famous for her skill at taking pictures of people.

Even though she is specialized in any photography category, Mahiru's most favorite picture object is taking pictures of smiling people. She could take a perfect shot of someone's smiles and according to Hajime, he never saw someone smile so bright and heartwarming until he saw Mahiru's photos. Despite that, she always shows her dislike towards boys as she doesn't take many pictures of them.

She started to like taking shots of people's smiles since she was a kid. Her mother always shows the pictures of smiling people to Mahiru, which she liked so much and made her eager to take pictures the same as her mother's wonderful shot.

Compared to her mother's work theme, Mahiru's theme is too conventional and many people don't really care to judge it and expected her to take different objects, as they believe that she could produce amazing results.

Mahiru's dream is to visit different countries to take many pictures of people smiling from different backgrounds.

In any kind of situation, Mahiru doesn't mind to keep snapping photos. She believes that photos depict everything, whether it's beautiful or horrible and it's the duty of a photographer to keep taking photos.

Trivia

 * Her last name literally translates to “little fountain”, while her first name means “midday”, or “broad daylight”.
 * Mahiru shares the same birthday with Aoi Asahina from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.
 * Mahiru does not enjoy taking selfies because she finds them extremely embarrassing.
 * Similar to the victim in the second chapter of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Mahiru was killed instantly via blunt force trauma to the head.
 * In Danganronpa 3 - Despair Arc it's revealed that Mahiru and Sato had gone to the same middle school prior to attending Hope's Peak Academy, Mahiru appeared to have no memory of her friend while in the Neo World Program. Because of this, it is possible that all of Mahiru's memories of Sato were erased for unknown reasons.
 * Kodaka revealed that Mahiru would be a good protagonist of a Danganronpa 3 spinoff due to her serious personality. She would probably think about how she and the former members of Ultimate Despair have to carry their sin.