Kotaro Takebayashi

Takebayashi has black hair combed flat across the sides of his head and wears round glasses. His resemblance to the manga artist Shigeru Mizuki is strong enough that even Korosensei is startled by it. His outfit pairs a suit jacket over a dress shirt and black tie with dress pants and shoes.

Reserved by default, Takebayashi still reads as the class oddball thanks to his eccentric streak, and he is notably clumsy in physical activity, catching ping-pong balls on his glasses and nearly toppling over during Karasuma's drills. He first wanted out of Class 3-E, ashamed to be there, but stayed once he grasped how much the class and Korosensei cared for him. He is deeply into anime, at one point declaring that a girl only counts once she loses the third dimension, and he happily frequents maid cafes.

Takebayashi hails from an immensely wealthy family that has turned out doctors for generations. With his older brothers all in the University of Tokyo's medical departments, the pressure to excel is crushing, and his fall to Class E has left him branded the family outcast. His analytical mind leans toward statistics and hard data rather than the emotional read Nagisa favors, giving him an edge at calculating physics and weak points, as when he charts the opposing team during baseball practice. He also proves the most capable demolitions hand in the class, mastering explosives under Karasuma and later using shaped charges, smuggled explosives, and flash bangs during the final confrontation.

Early on he formally quit Class 3-E, only to rediscover his resolve after realizing his old classmates and Korosensei kept looking out for him, and he returned. He shares an easy partnership with Manami Okuda, the two often teaming up and, after Korosensei's death, collaborating to expand medical research built on his legacy, developing revitalizing slime recipes for a universal, any-type blood transfusion. By the second-term finals he ranks fifth overall with a score of 447.