, also known as , is a fictional character introduced in the 2012 Spike Chunsoft visual novel action adventure game Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. Nagito is a high school student from Hope's Peak Academy, holding the title of "Ultimate Lucky Student" due to his supernatural luck. He is first seen in the game's beginning when meeting the protagonist Hajime Hinata as they and multiple other students find themselves trapped in a series of tropical islands. Initially presenting a caring personality, Nagito shows his true maniacal and hope-obsessed demeanor when a bear-like robot, Monokuma, orders the students to participate in a killing game if they want to leave the islands, with Nagito violently encouraging the killing game's progress. Under the guise of the Servant, Nagito returns in Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls as the secondary antagonist.
Kazutaka Kodaka created Nagito as a rival to Hajime as well as the successor to the previous Danganronpa protagonist Makoto Naegi with his designs by Rui Komatsuzaki meant to mark him as Hajime's opposite. To reinforce the similarities between Nagito and Makoto, Kodaka had the characters share the same voice actors: Megumi Ogata and Bryce Papenbrook, and their names be anagrams of each other. However, despite the similarities, Nagito and Makoto share no character connections, with Kodaka claiming that the hints were made up to market Goodbye Despair.
Critical response to Nagito's character was positive based on his ambiguous nature in Goodbye Despair where he often changes his personality, as well as his more comical take in the anime prequel Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School. Considered a breakout character, his role as a rival to Hajime and antagonist has also resulted in him being considered one of the best characters in the Danganronpa series.
Creation
Nagito was created to be "an absolute rival" to Hajime Hinata, with Kazutaka Kodaka describing their relationship as similar to that of the Joker to Batman. Komaeda's characterization was aimed to give players a confusing view in regards to Nagito's true self, based on the morally dubious and contradictory actions he committed over the course of the game. In regards to his design, Hajime was the earliest-designed character which generated a major contrast between his white clothing to Nagito's dark clothing. Nagito was written to create a major impact into the game despite not being the lead or antagonist, symbolizing the prominent themes of hope and despair through his actions.
To surprise gamers and suggest the characters are potentially the same person, both Makoto and Nagito share the same voice actress, Ogata. His name, "Nagito Komaeda", was conceived as an anagram for "Naegi Makoto da" ("I am Makoto Naegi") to infer it as a potential pseudonym; Nagito claims the name to be an alias during the third chapter. In 2020, Kodaka revealed the anagram was used to engage fans of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc because of the lack of pre-release promotion materials for the original version of Goodbye Despair during its release year. This surprised Ogata, as the anagram had been kept secret from the other members who developed the game, including Ogata herself. In 2015, it was later confirmed that he had feelings for an ambiguous "him" in his character song "Poison -Gekiyaku-".
In the development of anime prequel Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, Kodaka aimed to write the younger Nagito as an unpredictable character that game fans would still recognize, and make it obvious his good luck often aids him in only a random nature in reality compared to the specific nature of the Neo World Program. His character design was aimed to keep the "resembled flickering flames" present in their Servant design, something Kodaka requested to the designer to adapt properly. Kodaka was pleased with how Nagito was written in the anime, further comparing his school life and luck to the Rube Goldberg segment of the PythagoraSwitch educational television program.
Casting
To surprise gamers, Nagito was given Makoto's voice actor, Megumi Ogata. Ogata found trouble when doing the voice for Nagito as she had no clear grasp on understanding him. Komaeda was introduced with the same Lucky Talent as Makoto Naegi. However, the staff considered them opposites based on their ideals of "hope".