Kazuichi Souda

Kazuichi Souda is a character from the Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair game.

Kazuichi is a student of Hope's Peak Academy's Class 77-B, and a participant of the Killing School Trip.

His title is Ultimate Mechanic.

In the Heroes Coalition fics, Kazuichi is a member of the Heroes Coalition and is an honorary member of the Flaming Honor.

Appearance
Kazuichi is a young man in his early twenties, around 22 at youngest. His virtual avatar in the Neo World Program appeared as his 17-year-old self.

He, being a mechanic, wears a bright green-yellow jumper with a dark brown streak on both sides and several hot pink markings that go down to his ankles. Kazuichi's shoes are bright yellow sneakers. During his high school years, he wore a blue jumper and a cap.

Kazuichi's hair is dyed hot pink and is somewhat badly layered. However, he covers said bad layering up with the gray beanie he wears. In addition to his punk rock appearance, he has thin eyes with hot pink prescription color contacts on them at all times. Above his eyes, his thin, pronounced eyebrows nearly touch his hairline. His teeth are sharp, giving him an intimidating grin. He also has earrings, the right one having a plus sign and the left one having a minus sign.

As the Ultimate Despair, Kazuichi has the same hair and yellow jumper, as well as black gloves. He no longer wears a hat.

Personality
Kazuichi is a highly emotional character, though he tries to play it smooth and acts carefree at first. He is a very jumpy person, easily scared and often screaming in fear. People tend to note his scary appearance does not match his compulsive and cowardly personality. Naturally, he has a great fear of dying on the island, which causes a lot of stress and panic for him.

Kazuichi also has a tendency to neglect his need for a verbal filter and blurts things out without thinking. He also seems to be a very bad liar, leading him to be contradictory at times. While he is a genius with machinery, he appears to be a bit slow-witted otherwise. Like Mikan Tsumiki, he is commonly Monokuma and Hiyoko Saionji's target and often ends up being the butt of their jokes.

Being the Ultimate Mechanic, Kazuichi normally tries to repair any broken items on the island with his ability and familiarity with mechanisms. He tends to carry around a spanner/wrench and he turns anxious if he cannot tinker with something. He has a great love for machinery, especially fast ones like rockets and bikes, which is ironic because he suffers from a bad motion sickness. At times, his love for machinery seems to reach even abnormal levels. In Island Mode, he appears to question his sexuality around Hajime Hinata (for example, he was excited and then confused reaction about taking clothes off with him and he's afraid he'll dream about a date with Hajime after he jokingly suggested a one), only to comically confess to him that he is attracted to tanks. In Chapter 3, it's also revealed that he apparently likes the idea of undressing a girl and checking out her bone structure, since he thinks it's similar to dismantling machines. He seems to think it's normal, though Hajime is weirded out by this and calls it a fetish.

Kazuichi also likes girls a lot, though in a rather perverted and shallow way. He has taken a strong liking to Sonia Nevermind, to an extent of being a pervert, somewhat stalker-like and in constant jealousy of Gundham Tanaka. He claims that he's dreamed of a beautiful blond girlfriend since he was a kid and his affection towards Sonia seems rather shallow, as he actually seems to dislike some of her actual personality traits, like her love for the occult. Sonia dislikes this behavior and calls him a stalker. According to Kazuichi, after he changed his appearance in the past, some girls took interest in him and he was actually a bit frightened by this.

Despite having some weird quirks, Kazuichi is described as the straight man and one of the more ordinary students in the group. In his Free Time Events, it's revealed that he suffers from self-esteem and trust issues. Due to a past friendship, he has a hard time trusting others and he acted especially paranoid during the beginning of the game. He also reveals his appearance was chosen for the sake of his image, not because he actually likes it. His trust issues cause him some conflict with Hajime, but he calms down quite soon and is willing to apologize. Despite some issues, he develops a close friendship with Hajime, and he considers him his "soul friend". However, Hajime can be quite annoyed with him, since he can act rather clingy and turns even whinier and threatens to bug Hajime even more if he refuses to hang out with him.

Along with most of his classmates, Kazuichi sympathizes with the fallen. He doesn't let it get him down, but he neglects to simply let the death of his classmates be shaken off. Kazuichi even makes a small toy out of Nekomaru Nidai's robot remains for everyone in an effort to impress Sonia. Kazuichi even displays being a bit shaken up about Teruteru Hanamura's death. He is stunned but shoved into pushing away his shock because of Hiyoko's comments. Despite this, he seems to still be heavily affected for a while. This pattern repeats itself for nearly every death.

Ultimate Mechanic
Back on his home, Kazuichi and his parents run a bike shop together. He is the genius mechanic of his family and always the one who's helping out at the shop since his father isn't very dependable. He has tinkered with and studied machines since he was a child and is capable of fixing anything from kids toys to household appliances. He has been surrounded by junk and tools and has grown a habit of taking things apart and putting them back together. That's the environment where the Ultimate Mechanic was raised in.

Kazuichi is known for making inventions of his own and is very passionate about his works. In his home, he makes a bike, and according to his calculations, it has a top speed of 585 mph. Even though he knows that kind of bike is street illegal and he can't even ride that bike due to his motion sickness, he is very eager to continue his incomplete project.

Kazuichi often got yelled at for modifying various things at school or at home. His greatest invention was attaching an engine to the machine that draws the chalk lines on the soccer field, but it escaped through the school entrance at full speed, without curving or stopping.

The things that Kazuichi fix always end up being some kind of vehicle. During the Killing School Trip, Kazuichi disassembled his alarm clock and when he put the gear back, he ends up making some kind of car machine. Messing with machines makes him inspired and energized. He likes all kinds of machines, especially vehicles.

With his talent, Kazuichi tries to think of every possible way to escape from Jabberwock Island. The first thing that he checked is planes that located at the airport. When he found that the planes are engineless, he didn’t stop until there. In one of his Free Time Events, he revealed that he planned to put pedals on the ship and pedal boat off the island.

Kazuichi has a dream to create a rocket ship, the biggest, fastest, and the very top of the vehicle food chain.

Skilled Inventor
When reviewing Kazuichi's background, despite him being skilled in repairing machinery and various other mechanical objects and appliances he has always used his skills for his own pleasure and has an eye for creativity. This is seen by the many countless inventions that he is often seen creating, throughout his life he has created many successful inventions by using his skills as a mechanic, often these are useful tools related to his specialty field.

The many inventions which he has created include making a bike that could go at a top speed of 585 mph, adding an engine to the soccer chalk line machine. These were minor inventions that he created when learning to become a talented mechanic in his father's workshop and he inputted his innovative ideas into these various technologies, despite these inventions not being successful Kazuichi's inspired work clearly has success when it comes to motorization.

His most notable inventions include during the Killing School Trip where he disassembled Mechamaru's mechanical parts and used the undamaged components to create Minimaru, a small, lifelike representation of Nekomaru equipped with unique catchphrases, alarm clock and the ability to give the user a professional massage and relax sore muscles and pressure points. Akane is very pleased with this invention and Kazuichi stated spending all night working on the project, showing not only his dedication to inventing but his creativity, speed and success when it comes to inventing in a short amount of time.

Another invention which Kazuichi was working on during his first school year at Hope's Peak Academy is unidentifiable but it is very large and Kazuichi is very invested in this project, skipping class in order to complete his invention in a short amount of time. His passion for inventing is what allows him to build on his creativity.

When Kazuichi turned to despair he was also responsible for an enormous model of Monokuma, which was able to rampage through cities and buildings with ease. This creation, despite being for nefarious purposes, was another one of Kazuichi's successful works as an inventor and would have taken a considerable amount of work to complete, showing his skill in this field.

Trivia

 * The kanji for "Kazuichi" simply means "Peaceful One", while his surname translates as "Rice Field of Dominance" (sō being an expression literally meaning "Left & Right").
 * It could be that Kazuichi's name and surname are meant to have a bit of irony to them, considering that while he originally seemed to be very self-confident and carefree, he quickly turned hysterical following the appearance of Monokuma.
 * Kazuichi originally had black hair and wore glasses.
 * Despite becoming a mechanic who is an expert in vehicle machines, Kazuichi has motion sickness. This is most likely the reason why Kazuichi would rather take apart machines than ride them.
 * Kazuichi appears to know how to read English, telling Hajime what a sign written in English meant.
 * Kazuichi likes comic books and action movies and dislikes novels and horror movies.
 * It's revealed in one of Mahiru's Free Time Events that Kazuichi never washed his jumpsuit.
 * Even on Mean difficulty, Kazuichi's Rebuttal Showdown arguments only take a single strike to dispel in Chapter 4.
 * It was confirmed in Kazuichi's official spin-off manga titled "Super Danganronpa 2: Zetsubōteki Ingaritsu no Naka no Sōda Kazuichi" that he can indeed sew. He learned from watching his parents.
 * Kazuichi's English voice actor Kyle Hebert also voices Danganronpa V3's Kaito Momota.