Rui Komatsuzaki

Komatsuzaki was a sculpture graduate before becoming involved with Spike, and Danganronpa was his first experience as a character designer.^[1] The word Danganronpa originated from Komatsuzaki, which was first written in kanji but was later changed to katakana for the logo.^[2]

For most games, he was in charge of designing characters with outstanding designs while the protagonist were meant to look like common people. As a result, Komatsuzaki designed Makoto Naegi to wear a hoodie to complement his look, thinking the player was going to see his back a lot. After that, he added some character to his hair by adding an "antenna", and highlighted his "herbivore nature" by making him short. His coloring is subdued, but Komatsuzaki used a color palette he enjoyed.^[3] He also redesigned the older cast members from the first Danganronpa for the anime sequel Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School to make them look more mature, and illustrated the characters for the spin-off novel series Zero, Kirigiri, and Togami.^[4]

Besides Danganronpa, Komatsuzaki was one of many artists to design characters for Fate/Grand Order, an RPG mobile game based on the Fate/stay night series. He designed both Edmond Dantès and Cleopatra.^[5] He was also the main artist for the anime series Akudama Drive from 2020. Cindy H. Yamauchi adapted Rui Komatsuzaki's original character designs for animation.^[6] He also created a collaboration illustration between Danganronpa and the anime Akudama Drive in late 2020.^[7]