Hiroki Watanabe

Hiroki Watanabe is a student at Hope's Peak Academy, and a participant of the killing game of DV2. His title is the Ultimate Phantom Thief.

Background
Hiroki is the only child of two doctors and the heir of his family’s medical clinic. While he does study medicine as per his parents’ requests, it’s apparent that Hiroki’s passions lie in the Fine Arts as the stage manager in Hope Peak Academy’s theater club. His disinterest in medicine only became more emphasized after being questioned by police during his first year of high school after an anonymous tipper informed the police of possible foul play at the Watanabe Medical Clinic.

The anonymous tipper was actually Tsukiya Saitou, the Ultimate Playwright, his ex-boyfriend, and a tormentor of Hiroki’s since his first year of middle school, who threatened to reveal the true nature of his family’s practice as blackmail. Tsukiya, also in the theater club, used his charm and influence to turn the rest of the stagehands against him. Because of that negative influence, along with Hiroki’s capability as a stagehand due to his talent, Hiroki ended up pulling almost all of the weight for the stagehands’ club responsibilities.

Pre-Vacation
After a performance in Hiroki’s first year, he met Wataru Hibiki, who offered to help him clean up after he saw that Hiroki was working alone. While Hiroki had admired Wataru from afar for his phenomenal acting abilities, meeting him personally and being shown even the smallest sign of kindness made him fall hard. Initially, Hiroki’s feelings were harmless. However, as he quickly realized how happy Wataru made him, his innocent crush downspiraled into an obsession. Since Wataru was what made him happy, he slowly and subtly began to adopt some of Wataru’s personality traits into his own. He felt that this way, if he had the traits of the person that he loved, he would begin to love himself too. But Hiroki’s breaking point was when he witnessed Wataru’s execution on live television during Peacock’s killing game. The day following Wataru’s execution, Hiroki vanished from Hope’s Peak, only to return a month later almost unrecognizable. He threw away his Ultimate Title, instead going with a role that Wataru played in one of Hiroki’s favorite performances; a phantom thief. In order to cope with the sudden death of the one that he loved most, Hiroki completely adopted the personality of Wataru Hibiki, along with Goro Akechi (As Goro was Wataru’s boyfriend before the killing game, Hiroki claimed that he did this to “prevent Wataru from feeling alone”), in order to make himself believe that they are living on through him. Hiroki will switch between these two personalities depending on his mood, with Wataru’s being more dominant, and his own personality being nowhere to be found unless he is momentarily caught off guard. He’ll even claim that their souls are a part of his own, now, living on inside of him.

Killing Game
Hiroki was killed by Cuphead, along with Rei Sakuma and Robin Hood in Chapter 4 of Despairing Vacation 2.

Trivia

 * Hiroki has various inspects of Wataru Hibiki and Goro Akechi's designs incorporated into his own.
 * Dominant Hand: Right
 * Favorite Animal: Dove
 * Favorite Food: Pomegranates
 * Favorite Song: You Are My Sunshine
 * Since both of his parents are doctors, he seems to have some knowledge of the human body and some medical procedures.
 * He has no reaction to dead bodies. (The only exceptions to this are Wataru Hibiki and Tsukiya Saitou)