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Nagito Komaeda (Japanese: 狛枝 凪斗, Hepburn: Komaeda Nagito), also known as The Servant (召使い, Meshitsukai), 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 who gave him the title of "Ultimate Lucky Student" for his supernatural luck, who is first seen in the game's beginning when meeting the protagonist Hajime Hinata as both 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.
