
Mikan Tsumiki (罪木 蜜柑 Tsumiki Mikan) is one of the characters featured in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair and a participant in the Killing School Trip.
Mikan has the title of Ultimate Nurse (超高校級の「保健委員」chō kōkō kyū no “hoken iin” lit. Super High School Level Health Committee Member).
In Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy, Mikan is a student of Class 77-B enrolled in Hope's Peak Academy with the other Remnants of Despair. Among the members of the Remnants of Despair, excluding Izuru Kamukura, she is the first to fall into despair after being brainwashed by Junko Enoshima and becoming a part of Ultimate Despair.
Following the fall of Hope's Peak and the beginning of The Tragedy, Mikan joined the rest of Ultimate Despair in spreading chaos across the ruined world. She was eventually apprehended by the Future Foundation and put into the Neo World Program for rehabilitation.
After catching Despair Disease in Chapter 3 and regaining her school memories in Danganronpa 2, Mikan set up a plan to murder Ibuki Mioda, who also contracted Despair Disease, but ended up murdering both Ibuki and Hiyoko Saionji after the latter witnessed her attempt to murder Ibuki. After she confessed that she had murdered for the sake of “her beloved”, Monokuma dragged her to her execution. However, due to this happening in the Neo World Program, her physical body remained in a comatose state following the end of the simulation.
The illusory Mikan appeared in the 30-minutes long OVA titled Super Danganronpa 2.5: Nagito Komaeda and the Destroyer of the World as a part of Nagito Komaeda's world.
Mikan later awakens from her coma and together with her classmates helps the Future Foundation in stopping Ryota Mitarai from brainwashing the world with his Hope Video. With the other awakened Remnants of Despair, Mikan decides to atone for her sins as the former member of Ultimate Despair.
Legends of the Multi-Universe: Weirdmageddon[]
Mikan debuted in this story in Gotham Side Story. She lives with her friends Ibuki Mioda, Mahiru Koizumi, and Hiyoko Saionji at their own house. She is very kind and caring to Ibuki. She speaks to her heart.
Personality[]
Mikan is an extremely meek, paranoid and fragile individual who suffers from hazardously low self-esteem as a result of severe abuse and bullying. This has resulted in many behavioral symptoms such as being easily intimidated, breaking down and crying with little provocation, profusely apologizing and nervously stuttering while speaking. She constantly worries about annoying, boring or offending others, going so far as asking Hajime Hinata if it would be alright for her to remember his name when introducing herself. This delicate persona makes her a natural target for Hiyoko Saionji's instinctively predatory and cruel personality. However, as the Ultimate Nurse, Mikan tends to act much more confident while doing her job, and she is decently knowledgeable and intelligent. Her medical knowledge proves to be useful in murders, as she provides autopsy reports, including information on the corpse's state, details on injuries, cause of death, and time of death. Furthermore, she sometimes gives (often unwanted) health advice to others concerning things like eating and sleeping, and may occasionally start to describe things like bodily functions in way too much detail in her wish to give the other students' information on the subject at hand. Unlike most students, Mikan has even mentioned that she likes being on Jabberwock Island, because her classmates acknowledge her and her talent makes her useful.
Perhaps because of her high understanding of human physiology, Mikan is shown to be very skilled at reading people's faces, but she tends to over-analyze them and is quick to assume that she is disliked by those around her. She generally wants to be liked by and help other people, but her utter lack of confidence and wish to not be a bother causes her to rarely assert herself or state her feelings openly; if she feels the need, she will more than likely ask for permission from her peers to do so. This is exacerbated considerably during Class Trials, where despite her talent being incredibly useful for solving a murder, she will rarely ever speak up by her own accord. Since her social intuition is generally poor, if there is an awkward pause in a conversation, she will immediately begin to panic and apologize, believing it to be her fault. However, despite lacking many basic social skills, Mikan does actively attempt to gel with her surroundings by altering aspects of her conduct to suit what she projects as the thoughts of her peers. Notably, she appears exaggeratedly clumsy and often ends up in embarrassing and revealing poses, leading her to apologize profusely, though it's been heavily implied and even pointed out by Hiyoko that Mikan does these poses on purpose in order to gain attention and pity. Because of her insistently klutzy and cloying personality, even for all the pity and leeway she generally receives from her kinder classmates, many of them do still see her as somewhat off-putting, incompetent or irritating, causing them to distance themselves from her rather than outright mistreat her.
Because of the severe abuse she has incurred in the past, Mikan is very awkward and has a warped perception of both positive and negative social interaction. When treated with any sort of individual respect or sympathy, her first response is most often outright confusion, and sometimes assuming she has done something wrong. When first becoming friends with Hajime, she offers him to beat, strip, draw on or do other bad things to her, and states that she has done so multiple times with previous schoolmates so that they won't hate her and will continue to associate with her. She relates this to a belief that being ignored is even worse than being abused, thinking that the people who don't bully her don't care about her existence at all, a prospect that scares her much more. If someone treats her well and is outwardly kind to her in the long-term, she tends to become obsessive and cling to them, similar to the behavior of a stalker, which is interpreted as being extremely creepy (by Hajime at least), showing that she is unable to compartmentalize and reciprocate those positive feelings in a normal, healthy way. This was taken full advantage of by her supposed beloved, who turned that affection into a pathological, slave-like subservience.
By defaulting to a state of unnaturally intense submissiveness and self-deprecation as a defense mechanism, Mikan is somewhat prone to bizarre outbursts, where the repressed elements of her personality rapidly surface for brief moments before burying themselves again, usually followed by an apology for her erratic behavior. These traits include deep-seated resentment for her abusers, general frustration over how she is treated, various sadistic or otherwise disturbing obsessions, an intense yearning for control, attention and sympathy, as well as her sexual urges. During Chapter 2, she has a fleeting moment of lashing out angrily and shouting "you are done for" and "you're not gonna get away now that I've caught you" at no one in particular and seemingly completely out of nowhere, and then tries to write it off by claiming that she says nonsensical things when she's nervous. During one of the Class Trials, she also mentions that she finds a sudden urge to kill quite understandable (implying she has had such fantasies of enacting revenge on her abusers), and in Island Mode she mentions that she enjoys horror movies because of all the blood and helpless victims, especially appearing to enjoy bully characters getting what's coming for them. She also has a disturbing liking for syringes and shots, repeatedly offering them to Hajime when she gains access to the Pharmacy, and she even chases him around attempting to inject him with one during a Free-Time Event. She is also mentioned to creepily stare at Hajime after their free time together and he sometimes had a feeling that she is forever watching him from somewhere, indicating that she may have stalked Hajime. In spite of her often tightly pent-up demeanor, Mikan also shows by far the most sexual desire among all of Class 77-B's female students, particularly for Hajime. When either extremely tired or inflicted with the Despair Disease, respectively, she ends up cradling his head and falling asleep on top of him on two occasions, as well as unsubtly implying she would like to have sex with him through some brief, coy remarks. Out of the whole class, the blatancy of her sexual innuendos is only rivaled by Teruteru Hanamura.
The dichotomy of Mikan's two-faced psyche is best represented by her mixed motivations for becoming the Ultimate Nurse. Directly contrasting her abusers, Mikan sincerely wants to help those who have endured physical harm, and generally wants to assist and participate in the group. However, she has also admitted that she occasionally relishes the power she holds over the sickly, helpless people who have no choice but to rely on her and listen to her to survive. While acting as a nurse allows her to feel useful, something she doesn't normally feel, it also indulges her selfish urge to assert absolute dominance over something, a sensation she essentially never feels otherwise given her general docility. In her Island Mode ending, she openly contemplates rendering Hajime an invalid so he can stay with her forever, but he convinces her that he'll stay regardless, and thus doing so would be unnecessary. This shows Hajime's deft understanding of how Mikan manically depends on having other people around despite seeing herself as undesirable company, as well as his empathy toward her.
Due to a specific strand of the Despair Disease known as the Remembrance Disease, Mikan recovers her lost memories during Chapter 3, reverting her back to a Remnant of Despair, accompanied by a drastic personality shift which gradually reveals itself as she begins to be suspected as the blackened during the Class Trial. All of her repressed, negative and selfish traits take dominance within her, causing her to become angry, manipulative and dangerous, and in a private moment with Hajime, somewhat seductive. She is highly embittered and clearly aware of her maltreatment, and in distinct opposition to before, boldly calls the others out on it, even those who defended her in the trial but otherwise ignored her day-to-day. She angrily questions why everyone hates and bullies her, and blames her classmates exclusively for her evil deeds and transition into Despair, taking advantage of their pity in an attempt to escape her accusations all the while. Before her remembrance, Mikan was primarily self-effacing and would adapt to her environment for the benefit of others and to reduce conflict; but once the Despair Disease sets in, she is cunning and deceptive purely to preserve herself, even at the cost of the others' lives. As she turns increasingly violent and unstable, her apologizing habit still persists, repeatedly asking to be forgiven in a way that seems to be reflexive or like a mantra, but while also staunchly denying her charges to the point of angrily pulling her hair when accused. When finally backed into a corner and revealed as the culprit, Mikan ultimately finds solace in her beloved, and says that her motive for murder was simply her affection for them. She claims to no longer care about anything except that person, believing they were the only one who ever loved and accepted her. In Danganronpa 3, Mikan's brainwashed Ultimate Despair form has a resemblance to a sadistic horror nurse, and it's indicated that she tortures her victims with her medical equipment and knowledge, as well as sexually harasses them.
After awakening from her coma, Mikan reverts to her original temperament, and Junko's brainwashing is undone. She is shown to feel guilty for her actions as an Ultimate Despair and decides to atone along with her other classmates. Notably, she is seen capable of fighting, as she rescued Hiyoko wielding a massive syringe. She also independently took care of Kyoko and saved her life. While obviously still very insecure, she now appears happier and closer with her classmates, and even has a friendlier relationship with Hiyoko.