Kyoko Kirigiri

is a fictional character from the Spike Chunsoft visual novel action-adventure game series Danganronpa. She was introduced in the 2010 game Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc as a high school student and "Ultimate ???" of Hope's Peak Academy sealed within the building, who upon being told by a robot named Monokuma that one of the other students present must become "the blackened" and kill another without being found out by the other students if they wish to leave; by the end of the game, Kyoko is found to be the "Ultimate Detective". Despite being initially distant to the cast, Kyoko befriends Makoto Naegi as both join forces to solve class trials to find the identity of the killers. Kyoko reappears in other Danganronpa titles and sequels facing new cases involving Monokuma, most notably the 2016 anime series Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School and the spin-off video game Kirigiri Sou as a supporting character, as well in the series of prequel light novels Danganronpa: Kirigiri (2013–2020), which center on her childhood and rise through the Detective Shelf Collection (DSC), as she deals with new cases with her assistant Yui Samidare.