Akira Takaoka

Takaoka is a broad, heavyset man whose black hair is combed straight back. His eyes are dark, his nose prominent, and years of punishing drills have left him thick with muscle. He first meets the world with a warm, approachable grin, an expression that curdles the instant his brutal instincts surface.

By his second appearance the friendly bulk is gone. He has raked his own face bloody, leaving scars that echo the psychological wounds of his defeat and firing, his frame has slimmed down, and his once-tidy hair hangs wild and disheveled.

The first impression Takaoka gives is of a hearty, good-natured mentor, the sort adults assume children take to easily. Beneath it sits a cruel drill master who governs entirely by force. His pet theory holds that loyalty is built from roughly one part affection to nine parts terror, since a person ground down by relentless abuse will weep with gratitude over the smallest kindness.

He strikes without hesitation, kneeing Hiroto Maehara and slapping Yukiko Kanzaki when they push back, purely to flaunt his power. The students' welfare means nothing to him; he wants only the fame of having trained Korosensei's killer and the satisfaction of lording it over Tadaomi Karasuma. Losing enrages him, and his collapse before Nagisa Shiota tips him into full derangement. For all his bluster he is a coward, reduced to sobbing the moment the boy holds his life in check.

In his army days Takaoka had a gift for forging loyal elite units quickly, binding recruits into a tight family while standing over them as a violent father. No one reported the abuse, likely out of fear of what he might do to any whistleblower.

Impatient for Korosensei's death, the Ministry of Defense planted him as a new PE teacher over Class 3-E, where he handed out snacks, proclaimed himself the students' father, and then imposed a merciless schedule. When Karasuma moved to stop the abuse, Takaoka gambled: let any single pupil Karasuma chose nick him with a real blade and he would leave; fail, and his training went on unopposed. He insisted on a genuine knife, sure none of the children could touch him, and jeered at the choice of the frail-looking Nagisa. The boy simply strolled up and pinned him with the knife at his throat. Refusing the outcome, Takaoka broke down, took an elbow from Karasuma, and was then thrown out by chairman Gakuho Asano.

Ridiculed by his superiors afterward, he embezzled office funds, hired assassins, and poisoned the students during their Okinawa trip to engineer his revenge. Over the PA he claimed to hold the antidote, then unveiled a plan to drown Korosensei in anti-sensei pellets while burying Kayano beside him. He forced Nagisa to grovel, destroyed the antidote anyway to savor the boy's horror, and dragged him into a duel to the death. His size and preparation nearly carried it, until a feinted Stun Clap let Nagisa jolt him senseless, capped by the very smile that haunted his nightmares. His hired killers had quietly swapped in a weaker, self-clearing poison, and Takaoka was hauled off drooling in a straitjacket, his mind shattered.