Gundham Tanaka

Gundham Tanaka is one of the characters featured in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair as well as a supporting protagonist. He has the title Ultimate Breeder. (Super High School Level Breeding Club Member).

Why He Rocks

 * 1) He's relentlessly bombastic and not once does he drop his over-the-top acting. When he's not talking like a super villain, he's yelling out his words. Heck, he's called Gundham in the dub for a good reason.
 * 2) Incredible character design. He dresses just like an evil overlord like how he claims himself to be.
 * 3) He has some of the best voice acting in the entire Danganronpa series (and given how much great voice acting there is in the franchise, that's saying a lot). Tomokazu Sugita (Japanese)/Chris Tergliafera (English) both did a great job voicing him.
 * 4) He loves all animals deeply and vice versa. During his first Free Time event, Hajime Hinata learns that Gundham even runs his own blog advising others how to properly care for animals (well, according to him it's a blog dedicated to his magical research, and the Glamour spell he applied to it causes regular people to merely perceive it as a blog about raising animals, but still). In the Ultimate Talent Development Plan from mh:awesomegames:Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, he even bonds with Gonta Gokuhara over they're shared love of animals (in spite the fact that this may be the only thing they have in common, as they probably couldn't be more different otherwise).
 * 5) He has one of the strongest and most sympathetic motives for murder in the entire series. Both him and his victim, Nekomaru Nidai, agreed to fight each other to death in order to save the rest of the students from starving to death in the funhouse that Monokuma had locked them in (and while he denies that this was his motive, he simply tells blatantly false lies in order to push his evil overlord persona, but no one buys it), and the one who lost would be killed by the winner. Proving that despite him always bragging about how powerful he is and him often not letting people (aside from Sonia Nevermind) close to him, he really does care about the other students to the point where he's willing to sacrifice himself for their safety.
 * 6) * On the subject of how much he cares about the others deep down, he really treasures the relationships that he has with those around him, even if he doesn't show it. For example, he cared so much about the Dark Devas of Destruction's safety, that he cast a spell during his execution not to protect himself, but to protect the hamsters (after all, as he puts it, he was just a temporary visitor). He even outright admits that despite his mother being a terrible chef, he ate her cooking anyway because of how much he loved her.
 * 7) When Hajime notices him sulking due to his not being invited to go on the beach trip, as well as that he has a much easier time dealing and communicating with animals than other people, he realizes that underneath his boisterous "evil overlord" persona, Gundham's actually just very lonely.

Bad Qualities

 * He, along with the rest of Class 77-B were brainwashed by Junko Enoshima into becoming the Ultimate Despair, a terrorist organization the brought upon the Tragedy.
 * 1) He spends a majority of the 4th class trial lying about his murder of Nekomaru, even though the entire reason he killed him in the first place was because of a deal they made to challenge each other to a battle that would result in the one who lost being killed by the winner in order to save the other students from starving to death in the funhouse.

Trivia

 * The kanji in his surname Tanaka means "rice field" and "center". Together this may mean "central rice field". As for the kanji of his first name, Gundham, it uses irregular readings, though can roughly mean "snake eye dreams".
 * His name is an obvious homage to the popular Japanese mecha anime franchise, Mobile Suit Gundam. His execution, Gundham Tanaka Stampede, is a reference to a particular scene from the original anime series as well.
 * His nickname in w:c:besttvshows:Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, "Tanaka the Forbidden One", is a reference to the Yu-Gi-Oh! card, "Exodia the Forbidden One".