Nagito Komaeda Character Analysis

12. Endgame relationship (Komahina rant)

            BTW you don't need to ship Komahina to read this part. It's basically canon stuff so it is necessary to understand his character.

           Ok so I want to explain this ship in more detail, as it is confusing for a lot of people!

Komahina is basically the endgame relationship and one of the main ones in Danganronpa. Hinanami is more like a one time thing, a high school crush and relationship which is cute and beautiful but it doesn't go further than a FINE relationship. As we know Hinata is very insecure about himself and wants to be talented to be accepted. Nanami is there to try to encourage Hinata that he is good the way he is, but that is not enough. She would make an effort to try to understand him but she could never know how it's like to be in his place, since she is an Ultimate. She would listen to him and say "You don't need talent, you should just be confident in yourself!" but it doesn't matter. It's like you would meet someone with monetary problems and you would just "You don't need money to be happy" your way out of it. You couldn't possibly understand how it's like, even if you try. That's exactly the way it is with Hinata and Nanami. Even if the ship is sweet and cute on the exterior, it couldn't work out the same in the interior. Nanami could never reach Hinata's soul and feelings like he needs a person to. At one point he would realize how it couldn't work. You sometimes don't realize you're empty until you are fulfilled.

But who else struggled immensely with the entanglement between talent and worth throughout their life? Who else once resolved to obliterate their own precious being in pursuit of an almost delusional ideal of hope as Hinata did, so that they could potentially speak to Hinata on the deepest, hidden stratum of his soul?

Komaeda.

Hinata wouldn't feel afraid to show Komaeda how he feels and Komaeda would be able to understand how he feels since he is in the exact same situation. Hinata brings joy and peace to Komaeda because in his first FTE he calls him "Ultimate Serenity" since he feels like he can bring joy in a room just by being there. That's how he feels about him. And it's rare for something to bring happiness to Komaeda due to his past, but Hinata fulfills that role for him. Komaeda's feelings for Hinata is one of the healthiest things about him.

Hinata wouldn't camouflage himself in front of Komaeda. Komaeda saw through him even if he was having a hard time deciding on how he should have felt himself. He voiced, various times throughout DR2, that "we have similar scents", "I thought you would understand me", " we're both miserable bystanders" or "I couldn't see you as completely separate from me" . On the surface it seemed like Komaeda was being cryptic and dragging Hinata to his level, but given how we knew Hinata took even more drastic measures as escapism, were they even that different?

It was why exactly Komahina dynamic was so embittered and resentful in the canon timeline. It was not hatred, but involuntary intimacy. Hinata was emotionally stripped naked when it's not even Komaeda's intention, and Komaeda's always emotionally naked. It didn't turn out well not because it was a fundamentally dysfunctional dynamic, but they simply met each other in the worst, most despairful and unluckiest timeline possible. With continuous manslaughters ongoing, it's only palpable that baring your soul to someone as dangerous as Komaeda would be intimidating, but it still had that mesmerizingly entrancing aura, especially in Komaeda's last FTE.

They had no choice of not knowing each other well. It's like they were destined to be together, like they are soulmates. Think about it, even if they were apart, something brought them to each other. They met in every timeline they were. They met in Despair Arc, in SDR2 and in Hope Arc. If that isn't soulmate behavior, then I don't know what is.

After Hope Arc, Komahina was not only somewhat contextually implied as Hinata's endgame, but it was deliberately set up as a generally hopeful relationship as well. Kodaka once suggested in an interview that post-HPA(Hope's Peak Academy) Hajizuru inherited Hinata's emotions, so that he was able to sort out his considerably complex feelings for Komaeda as it left off; meanwhile with Izuru's analytical skills and insights into human psychology, it would likely become not as cumbersome. With Hinata's determination and persistence it would hopefully not only cure Komaeda's terminal illnesses, but also "heal" Komaeda from his hope fetish and other cruddy coping mechanisms, with all the support and dedication Hinata could provide. Hinata, being emotionally identical to his past self, would likely occasionally experience insecurity and low self-esteem as well, and it could require Komaeda's weird little method of presenting challenges/creating minor inconveniences for Hinata in order to help him build up self-agency and develop infallible self-assurance.

It's kind of the Ultimate Love that survived all the trials and tribulations, and to think that the Ultimate Tragedy gave birth to the Ultimate Love, well, seems about right for our two Ultimate Lucks.

Not to mention that in Danganronpa 1, Naegiri, which was teased fairly strongly in the first game, is between the "Good luck" and "???" students, as is Komahina. Both sets of characters have several plot-important scenes where it's just the two of them together, while the rest of the cast doesn't get any one-on-one time with the protagonists as much (excluding FTE). You could argue that Nanami got some too but they were only when it was needed, like the investigations and that little bit in Chapter 6.

So that concludes my argument about this topic. I hope I made things clear and even if you don't ship it, you can't deny that there is a special bond between them. I think Kodaka made it specifically like that so it would be harder to figure out. He is a tricky guy after all. And it makes sense since Komaeda's character is confusing to begin with!