Chiaki Nanami

Chiaki Nanami
Danganronpa character
Art of Chiaki Nanami by Rui Komatsuzaki
First appearance	Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2012)
Created by	Kazutaka Kodaka
Designed by	Rui Komatsuzaki
Voiced by	Japanese: Kana Hanazawa English: Christine Marie Cabanos
In-universe information
Species	Human
Significant other	Hajime Hinata

Chiaki Nanami (Japanese: 七海 千秋, Hepburn: Nanami Chiaki) is a fictional character from Spike's 2012 visual novel Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. Titled the Ultimate Gamer (超高校級の「ゲーマー」, Chō-kōkō-kyū no "Gēmā", lit. Super High School Level Gamer), Chiaki appears as a young high school student trapped with other fifteen student in the Jabberwock islands where a robot named Monokuma forces each student to kill each other if they wanna be free. She can bond with the protagonist Hajime Hinata in both social life gameplay and the main storyline when her true persona is revealed. An identical character also appears in the prequel anime Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School as a student from the title school who also bonds with Hajime as well as the other fifteen students.

Chiaki was createad by writer Kazutaka Kodaka as the game's heroine with her traits being her parts of her ideal woman. Meanwhile, her anime persona was meant to give a major impact in the narrative despite not being the same Chiaki from the game. She is voiced by Kana Hanazawa in Japanese and Christine Marie Cabanos in English. Critical response to Chiaki has been highly positive due to her role in the Goodbye Despair narrative as she takes a major impact in the Class Trials and her comfort provided to the main character, to the point of being cited as one of the best characters. The parallels the other Chiaki has in the anime also earned positive response. Addtionally, Chiaki's actress were also praised by the media.

Concept and creation

File:ChiakiNanamidesignearly.png

Early scrapped design of Chiaki by Rui Komatsuzaki.

In contrast to Kyoko Kirigiri from the first Danganronpa video game whose main goal was assisting the player character Makoto Naegi in investigating the killing cases, Kazutaka Kodaka created Chiaki to be more of a heroine who would bond with Hajime Hinata. Kodaka said that Chiaki was her ideal type of woman, claiming "she shy, plays retro games, sweet, and has big boobs." He added "if you know someone like that I'’d like to meet them as well." In regards to her role in the game's finale, Kodaka aimed to give Chiaki a different type of personality from the one that has appeared in the game through a "glitch" despite her death. Kodaka elaborated that the Chiaki appearing in the finale was not the artificial intelligence but instead the original character whom he would write in the anime. Rui Komatsuzaki designed the character; in early development of the game, Chiaki's look differed from the final design with most artworks, making her look more expressive and taller.

In regards to the Chiaki from the anime prequel, Chiaki was envisioned to have a fateful meeting with anger-driven Hajime in order to bring across him aid in the story across his multiple dilemmas such as his transformation into his alterego Izuru and how he deals with the antagonist Junko Enoshima. Chiaki was written to emphasize that she is not the same heroine from Goodbye Despair. In it she is an artificial intelligence based on the real Chiaki who is killed by Junko. Shortly after her death in the anime, the artificial intelligence makes an appeareance reenacting the first scenes of Goodbye Despair. Due to her death, Kodaka was concerned about how people who did not play games would not understand how is that Chiaki was still alive as the anime does not elaborate on that. As a result, the final episode from the anime elaborates on how is it that there were two characters with the same identity interacting with the player.

In Japanese, Chiaki is voiced by Kana Hanazawa whom producer Yoshinori Terasawa felt was a good fit. Hanazawa describes Chiaki as someone who may not stand out among her classmates who ooze uniqueness, but once she begins talking it is clear she has a strong sense of justice and is a girl who is considerate of her friends. Though she can be spacey at times, she is also got the makings of a class leader. Things she has to be careful of when playing Chiaki are to not talk too fast or too much, and to speak slowly, as if she is thinking about what she’s saying as she is saying it. However if the games come up, she varies her performance since the character just cannot stop talking on that subject. The character's inclusion in the anime delighted her as it had been four years since the actress played the character and felt that her inclusion was kept in secret based on the promotion of the anime. In English, Chiaki is voiced by Christine Marie Cabanos. Cabanos was glad that she got to voice the character twice in both the game and anime and asked fans to look forward her work.

Appearances

In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

Chiaki is the main heroine of the video game Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. She is a sleepy, laid-back student who is inexperienced in the ways of the world, but very skilled at video games. Along with Hajime Hinata, she becomes a central figure of the trials, most notably the second one when she assist him in connecting a murder case with the one of the video game Twilight Syndrome which the robot Monokuma offered the students to play to understand how the culprit and victims are related. When the rebellious Nagito Komaeda tries to destroy the islands, Chiaki accidentally kills Nagito when such person reveals his plan was fake. Falling into his trap which was meant to ensure her survival alone, but she thwarts his plans by confessing her identity. Chiaki is then executed by getting crushed by a Tetris block in order to save the remaining students. It is learned during the graduation that she is actually an AI program created by the late Chihiro Fujisaki, a character from the previous Danganronpa game, designed to observe and protect the students during the Future Foundation's experiment. However, some of her consciousness remains, allowing her to help Hajime Hinata during his conflict with the AI of Junko Enoshima who threatens the surviving students with either sealing them forever in the islands or turning them into her replicas.

In Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School

In the anime series Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, it is revealed that the Chiaki computer program was based on an actual student who attended Hope's Peak Academy along with the rest of the 77th class of Hope's Peak. Chiaki befriends Hajime before he becomes Izuru Kamukura as a part of a Hope's Peak Academy human experimentation. Chiaki is unanimously elected class representative after bringing video games to the class to help everyone bond. However, it was because of these traits that she was chosen to be executed by Junko in order to drive the rest of her class into becoming Remnants of Despair, forced to go through a dungeon filled with deadly traps before being skewered to death. Recognizing hope as an equal force to despair upon witnessing her death, Izuru decides to take on a neutral role in the coming war. In the final scene, the AI of Chiaki appears with Nagito and Hajime reenacting the first scene of Goodbye Despair. Chiaki is the only student of Class 77-B who stays dead permanently, as she is physically killed by Junko, compared to the other victims who were brainswashed and died in the game's simulation, fell into comas, and were subsequently revived by Hajime. The ending of Danganronpa 3 shows Izuru finally bidding farewell to the memory of both Chiakis, as he embraces and chases his own future by joining Nagito and his other classmates as they travel to pay for their sins.

Other appearances

Chiaki reprises her role from Goodbye Despair in two manga series. She is also a guest character in a crossover between Identity V and Danganronpa as a alternate skin for the player. A figurine of the character was also created. The character also appears in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony' as part of the game's post story content where the player can interact with the entire cast from the franchise.

Reception

Kana Hanazawa (left) and Christine Marie Cabanos (right) voiced Chiaki in Japanese and English, respectively

Chiaki's role in the original Goodbye Despair game earned praise. Comic Book Resources regarded Chiaki as one of the best characters from Goodbye Despair due to how she shows off her gaming skills and the growing relationship between her and Hajime after they met on the island. The Gamer listed her as the fifth best Danganronpa character based on her calm personality and "selfless" heroic actions in Goodbye Despair due to how she aids Hajime and the rest of her friends to leave the virtual world. In a popularity poll from the franchise for the collected release of Trigger Happy Havoc and Goodbye Despair, Chiaki the fifth spot. To celebrate, Rui Komatsuzaki did an illustration of the top five to be featured in the re-release of the games, Reload. Rice Digital regarded Chiaki as one of their favorite Danganronpa characters alongside Nagito, making her accidental murder of this character shock the writer when playing the game. Her return in the finale of the game to aid Hajime despite being revealed as an AI also attracted the writer. He added "To know that she was always the hope and that she was developed specifically to lead the cast of Danganronpa 2 to fight against Junko makes it even more of a bitter ending for our beloved gamer girl." Koi-Nya referred to Chiaki as one of the best Danganronpa 2 characters based on hear traits and important actions in the narrtive, most notably her assistance in the fight against Junko's AI.

Chiaki's incarnation from the anime earned praised by Manga.Tokyo for standing out in the early Despair Arc episodes where she uses her skills as a gamer to have fun with the rest of the cast to the point of feeling like the main character of the second episode. enjoyed the bond that both Hajime and Chiaki had in the anime. Fandom Post went to say that Hajime's decision to hang with "Chiaki, which is both symbolic of his frustration and sad to me, because Hinata and Chiaki’s relationship in this show has been absolutely adorable to watch." Many felt their relationship became tragic when Hajime nearly lost his humanity, to the point where he could not react to her death. Biggest in Japan regarded the inclusion of the original Chiaki Nanami as one of the biggest twists in the Danganronpa 3 anime in early episodes due to her persona from the video game not being actual Chiaki which leaves a feeling of mystery especially as if her death could bring a major impact in the narrative. The writer said "While it’s great to discover that one of the most memorable Danganronpa 2 characters has been granted a new lease on life for Danganronpa 3, what really excites me about her appearance are the implications she brings to the story." Gaming Trend found the original Chiaki as an entertaining during the Despair Arc but felt that Junko Enoshima often overshadowed her. There was also commentary with regard to the nearly emotionless Izuru reacting to the death of Chiaki, which came across as an important emotional scene, as Izuru starts crying when seeing her in her last moments.

The voice actresses behind Chiaki were also praised. In describing the "dream" Japanese cast of Goodbye Despair, Kotaku remarked on Kana Hanazawa's work, mostly due to her work in Psycho-Pass as Akane Tsunemori which would attract fans from such series. In a poll by AnimeAnime, Chiaki was voted as the 14th best Hanazawa character specifically for her role in the anime series. James Beckett from Anime News Network praised Christine Marie Cabanos's work as Chiaki for providing a good performance especially in the late episodes during a sad scene.

See also

• List of Danganronpa characters