Daiki Takashita

Daiki Takashita was a student at Hope's Peak Academy, and a participant of Peacock's killing game on the Island featured in Despairing Vacation 1. His Ultimate Title was the Ultimate Superstitious.

Background
TW: ABUSIVE PARENTING, (MENTIONS OF) PREGNANCY

Daiki is the only child of two well-renowned Shinto priests located in rural Japan. After being born on September 4th (with both 9 and 4 being unlucky numbers in the Japanese culture) and living a life full of various minor misfortunes, Daiki was considered to be cursed. His sheer bad luck is made apparent every New Year’s when he pulls his O-mikuji at several local shrines, only to get “Great Curse” every single time.

Unfortunately, Daiki's bad luck caused his family to scorn him. Considered to be a curse upon the Takashita family, Daiki's parents forbade him from inheriting the family shrine upon their passing. Their hatred only grew stronger once they realized that no matter how much they tried, they were unable to conceive a second child. There was a rumor that there were once talks of trying to "get rid" of Daiki, in order to try and lift the curse from their family and birth a rightful heir to the shrine and pass on the family tradition.

In an attempt to earn back the love and respect of his family, Daiki taught himself various skills -- particularly in the arts. Not only is Daiki skilled in performing Shinto rituals, he can sing, dance, play various instruments, and is surprisingly good at sports. Additionally, Daiki strove to be one of the top students in his class. However, this still wasn't enough for his family's respect. Despite this and his pessimistic attitude, he continued to try his hardest.

In order to combat his unluckiness and prevent inevitable tragedy, Daiki became obsessed with luck and its factors. He started dressing up as a maneki-neko to bring himself good luck, carrying various good luck and warding charms on his person, and even sewing them into the inside and the hems of his kimono. He also began to pay very close attention to both local and international superstitions, making sure not to do anything that would jeopardize himself.

Daiki only became known to the world after a group of journalists stopped by his parents’ shrine in order to get an interview for an article, but found the eccentricity of their son to be more interesting. After speaking to Daiki and making an article about him instead online, it blew up with both interest and ridicule. Apparently, however, it was enough to turn the heads of those at Hope’s Peak Academy.

When he got the letter, he believed this luck was finally beginning to change for the better….

Pre-Vacation
wip

Personality
A diligent individual who is often overcome by his skittishness, Daiki’s most notable trait is his anxiousness. He’s wary and often self conscious about the smallest things. He’s an obvious pessimist, always worrying about things that could go wrong. However, he does work hard to combat his terrible luck and try to get situations to turn out in his favor. He’s drawn to people who seem to be lucky and is repelled by those who give off intimidating or malicious auras. He’s frightened easily, especially by the unknown and paranormal, and is a firm believer in karma. He is also a pacifist due to his preaching from his parents while growing up.

Trivia

 * 1) Various aspects of Daiki's general information include unlucky numbers:
 * 2) His birthday, September 4th (9/4) is made up of two of the unluckiest numbers in Japanese superstition, as 9 (ku) sounds like the Japanese word for "torture" or "suffering", and 4 (shi) is pronounced the same as the word for "death".
 * 3) His height, 5'4", also includes the unlucky number 4.
 * 4) Daiki's weight, 130lb, includes the unlucky number 13.
 * 5) During the investigation in Chapter 1, Daiki handed Tohru a good luck charm. While pulling RNG for Chapter 2, Tohru was pulled as victim, but was skipped. It's fun to hypothesize that Daiki used the last of his luck to prevent him (along with the other students who were skipped during Chapter 2) from being hurt.
 * 6) Despite his intelligence in academic subjects, his sheltered lifestyle prevented him from learning about other subjects -- particularly women. In one case, he asked Wataru what a boob was. In a panic, this question was quickly relayed to Rei, who burst into hysterics. Whether Daiki actually got an answer to his question is unknown.
 * 7) Daiki can play various instruments, including the shamisen, koto, biwa, shakuhachi, and various types of taiko drums.
 * 8) Surprisingly, underneath his kimono, he is fairly muscular from being athletic.
 * 9) Daiki coincidentally has a character parallel with Wataru, as they both felt compelled to push themselves to improve in order to combat against a stigma against them. Wataru was an adopted child, and thus felt the need to continue to do more and more to prove the stigma of being an adopted child wrong. Daiki was scorned by his parents for his unnatural bad luck and supposed curse, teaching himself more and more in an attempt to make his family see himself as more than a cursed child.
 * 10) His voiceclaim is Yuki Kaji.