Mikado Ryūgamine (竜ヶ峰帝人, Ryūgamine Mikado) is a childhood friend of Masaomi Kida and the primary male protagonist of the series. He is later revealed to be the creator of the Dollars
Characteristics
Mikado is a polite, soft spoken boy, whom at times can be quite childish and naive. This is likely a result of his small town upbringing; as he moves to Ikebukuro he was amazed and overwhelmed por the sheer size and energy of the city, and thus himself felt small and insignificant. He was bored of the average life he previously led, and moved to Tokyo in procurar of adventure. To he himself, he feels that his name (which translates as "Emperor of the Dragon Peak") sounds odd and childish, but it seems that some people think it is unique or just okay, like Walker and Erika.
Despite his personality, he is shown to have a pretty strong will, and he does have moments where he speaks out his thoughts, which is one of the reasons Masaomi admires him.
As he often acts like a child, Masaomi feels he has to stay around Mikado and help him out, since he would not be able to manage on his own. While Mikado often envies Masaomi for his exciting life (for most of the series he is unaware of Masaomi's affiliation with the Yellow Scarves), Masaomi ironically envies Mikado's innocence and his ability to lead a quiet, happy life.
As the series progresses, Mikado gradually becomes mais and mais assertive, and becomes able to accept the chaos that life throws at him without attempting to run away.
As shown in the light novels (and to a lesser extent, in the mangá as well) Mikado has a much darker side to his personality. While he doesn't show it fully until the end of Volume 6, this darker half of Mikado was hinted at in various events throughout the light novels. The first example being the confrontation with Namie where Mikado voices his utter disgust with Namie in his mind while still keeping his timid personality on the outside. He also states that, no matter what the situation or whom is involved, whatever action or decision MIkado makes must also benefit himself in some way. In other words, self preservation and self satisfaction trumps all. This, por extension, means that almost every aspect about Mikado's life be it his friends, family, or even Dollars, are merely entertainment tools to make his life mais interesting.
While in this mindset, Mikado is much mais ruthless and manipulative than he appears to be and is very capable at using intimidation to reach his goals. While it may initially seem like Mikado has dividido, dividir personalities, it is theorized por Aoba that the colder version of Mikado is his real personality while his timid side is the fake one.
Background
Mikado grew up in the small town of Saitama, and led an unexciting life that he grew bored with. People often commented that his name sounds like that of a mangá character, and he wished that his life was mais like a manga, with mais unusual and exciting events. Whenever he meets his childhood friend, Masaomi Kida online, Masaomi would always tell him stories about the exciting life in the big city. Eventually, when Masaomi decided he would be going to Raira Academy in Ikebukuro and invited Mikado to go with him, Mikado happily accepted, hoping to find a mais exciting life.
It is also known that he created the online group the Dollars as a middle schooler. He created the group with some of his online friends as a joke, but shortly after they created the group, the group began to grow at an alarming rate, with people joining whom none of the creators had sent invitations to. This was actually the work of Izaya Orihara. The creators, unaware of this, were afraid of the group which was spiralling out of control, and all of the creators except Mikado left, leaving him as the only remaining creator and the sole leader of the group.
Mikado then became class representive along with Anri Sonohara. He also learnt about Mika Harima, Sonohara's missing friend.
Mikado regularly joined a chatroom with the handle "Taro Tanaka," where he chatted with "Kanra" and "Setton," who in real life were Izaya Orihara and Celty Sturluson respectively. It was mostly from Kanra that he learned about the gangs and incidents in Ikebukuro, including the rumours about human experiments carried out por Yagiri pharmacy.
After meeting Mika personally and seeing the scars on her neck, he confirmed Anri's anterior suspicion that Harima Mika's disappearance had something to do with the human experimentation rumours. After he was attacked por people who worked for Yagiri pharmacy, he revealed that he was the leader of the Dollars, por organising a public Dollars meeting and using their sheer numbers to confront Yagiri Namie, the director of the pharmacy.
Not long after, the Yellow Scarves started attacking the members of the Dollars under suspicion that they were in league with the Slasher. Instead of fighting back, Mikado decided to disband the Dollars in order to prevent mais people from getting hurt. However, the Dollars, particularly Kyohei Kadota's group, showed him that the Dollars were mais than just the online group he started as a joke a long time ago, adding that since they were already invisible, they could not simply "disappear" even if their leader asked them to. He eventually decided that it was okay for the Dollars to exist, and brought the group back.
Characteristics
Mikado is a polite, soft spoken boy, whom at times can be quite childish and naive. This is likely a result of his small town upbringing; as he moves to Ikebukuro he was amazed and overwhelmed por the sheer size and energy of the city, and thus himself felt small and insignificant. He was bored of the average life he previously led, and moved to Tokyo in procurar of adventure. To he himself, he feels that his name (which translates as "Emperor of the Dragon Peak") sounds odd and childish, but it seems that some people think it is unique or just okay, like Walker and Erika.
Despite his personality, he is shown to have a pretty strong will, and he does have moments where he speaks out his thoughts, which is one of the reasons Masaomi admires him.
As he often acts like a child, Masaomi feels he has to stay around Mikado and help him out, since he would not be able to manage on his own. While Mikado often envies Masaomi for his exciting life (for most of the series he is unaware of Masaomi's affiliation with the Yellow Scarves), Masaomi ironically envies Mikado's innocence and his ability to lead a quiet, happy life.
As the series progresses, Mikado gradually becomes mais and mais assertive, and becomes able to accept the chaos that life throws at him without attempting to run away.
As shown in the light novels (and to a lesser extent, in the mangá as well) Mikado has a much darker side to his personality. While he doesn't show it fully until the end of Volume 6, this darker half of Mikado was hinted at in various events throughout the light novels. The first example being the confrontation with Namie where Mikado voices his utter disgust with Namie in his mind while still keeping his timid personality on the outside. He also states that, no matter what the situation or whom is involved, whatever action or decision MIkado makes must also benefit himself in some way. In other words, self preservation and self satisfaction trumps all. This, por extension, means that almost every aspect about Mikado's life be it his friends, family, or even Dollars, are merely entertainment tools to make his life mais interesting.
While in this mindset, Mikado is much mais ruthless and manipulative than he appears to be and is very capable at using intimidation to reach his goals. While it may initially seem like Mikado has dividido, dividir personalities, it is theorized por Aoba that the colder version of Mikado is his real personality while his timid side is the fake one.
Background
Mikado grew up in the small town of Saitama, and led an unexciting life that he grew bored with. People often commented that his name sounds like that of a mangá character, and he wished that his life was mais like a manga, with mais unusual and exciting events. Whenever he meets his childhood friend, Masaomi Kida online, Masaomi would always tell him stories about the exciting life in the big city. Eventually, when Masaomi decided he would be going to Raira Academy in Ikebukuro and invited Mikado to go with him, Mikado happily accepted, hoping to find a mais exciting life.
It is also known that he created the online group the Dollars as a middle schooler. He created the group with some of his online friends as a joke, but shortly after they created the group, the group began to grow at an alarming rate, with people joining whom none of the creators had sent invitations to. This was actually the work of Izaya Orihara. The creators, unaware of this, were afraid of the group which was spiralling out of control, and all of the creators except Mikado left, leaving him as the only remaining creator and the sole leader of the group.
Mikado then became class representive along with Anri Sonohara. He also learnt about Mika Harima, Sonohara's missing friend.
Mikado regularly joined a chatroom with the handle "Taro Tanaka," where he chatted with "Kanra" and "Setton," who in real life were Izaya Orihara and Celty Sturluson respectively. It was mostly from Kanra that he learned about the gangs and incidents in Ikebukuro, including the rumours about human experiments carried out por Yagiri pharmacy.
After meeting Mika personally and seeing the scars on her neck, he confirmed Anri's anterior suspicion that Harima Mika's disappearance had something to do with the human experimentation rumours. After he was attacked por people who worked for Yagiri pharmacy, he revealed that he was the leader of the Dollars, por organising a public Dollars meeting and using their sheer numbers to confront Yagiri Namie, the director of the pharmacy.
Not long after, the Yellow Scarves started attacking the members of the Dollars under suspicion that they were in league with the Slasher. Instead of fighting back, Mikado decided to disband the Dollars in order to prevent mais people from getting hurt. However, the Dollars, particularly Kyohei Kadota's group, showed him that the Dollars were mais than just the online group he started as a joke a long time ago, adding that since they were already invisible, they could not simply "disappear" even if their leader asked them to. He eventually decided that it was okay for the Dollars to exist, and brought the group back.
