Content warning for CSA.

I couldn't figure out how to title this one properly, so allow me to clarify that I will not be defending any character's actions, just the narrative decision to make this character a complete monster.

Who is Danganronpa's most depraved character? Junko Enoshima, who plunged the world into an apocalypse and whose body count is easily above the millions? Ryota Mitarai, her accomplice? Mukuro Ikusaba, a bloodthirsty soldier who (mostly) adhered to Junko's whims? Monaca Towa? Nagito Komaeda? Korekiyo Shinguji? Any of the Ultimate Despairs? Wow it turns out Danganronpa has a lot of these doesn't it.

No, in the eyes of the fandom, the most depraved character in the franchise is Haiji Towa. You know, the grizzled, disabled man who temporarily acts as an ally to Komaru and Toko in Ultra Despair Girls? You either shuddered, or you don't know who I'm talking about. Haiji is far and away the most hated Danganronpa character, for one exchange.

TOKO FUKAWA: A-are you... taking us to a secluded spot to... to do "stuff" with us? If that's you plan, hurry up and get it over with! I won't resist!

HAIJI TOWA: ...Um, no. That's not what I was thinking at all. Especially not with you. I... I like 'em younger. As young as possible.

This exchange killed every ounce of good will that the fandom could have possibly had for Haiji Towa. Sure, he didn't kill millions of people, and he wasn't one of the silhouetted people who raped Kotoko, but the sheer act of admitting that he is attracted to children (let's remember that Komaru is at most 17 by this point, and he likes them younger than that) is enough to make him irredeemable.

I'm sorry for clickbait title, but that's actually not the part I'm defending. I'm with the rest of the fandom - this is fucking depraved. There's really no defending this. It's Haiji admitting that he's a fucked-up individual, in a game full of fucked-up situations and characters. The part I'm going to defend? I think that narratively speaking, this decision serves a purpose. Haiji's confession doesn't ruin his character or come out of nowhere, it telegraphs to us, the audience, that he is a horrific individual. In fact, if we look at the quote again, and look at Haiji Towa in his proper context, we learn what the scene was trying to convey.

Haiji Towa is leading a Resistance against Monaca Towa, the game's established villain. When he's encountered, it is under the pretense that he is going to be an ally to Komaru and Toko. The latter even says he's handsome. He's cold and a bit callous, but for all you know, he's a well-intentioned guy. In most other media, he'd be the helpful anti-hero. The jerk with a heart of gold, who contrasts with the sweetheart Komaru.

And the infamous scene actually leads us to believe that's the direction his character is heading in. Toko says something out of pocket along the lines of, "Don't sexually assault us, please." Haiji essentially says, "I won't do that." Obviously that's the bare minimum, but for the vast majority of characters, that's where it would end. He'd go on to continue being helpful. But Ultra Despair Girls regularly fucks with your expectations (and not always in a good way). Things like Yuta Asahina meeting up with you, then promptly dying not even 5 minutes later. It's all to demonstrate one thing: Komaru's in a fucked-up situation. She is a shining beacon of... here we go, HOPE, in a world full of despair. Rather than let this be the moment where Haiji establishes that he's a good guy at heart, he twists the knife and instead demonstrates that he's just as fucked-up as everybody else.

Did this one line make Haiji too unlikable alone? No! Because the game's climax expands upon how depraved this man is. He physically abused his sister, Monaca, to the point where she was supposedly paralyzed. He is, at least indirectly, responsible for the game's events. He dies at the end and it's clear we're not supposed to mourn him. Ultra Despair Girls wants us to absolutely fucking hate this man, and to that, the game succeeds.

This motif of repeatedly being caught between two equally-fucked sides repeats over and over. Like how Shirokuma is supposedly the meek and soft-spoken ally, the opposite to the abrasive and villainous Kurokuma. Guess what? Both were avatars of Junko Enoshima at the end. The game's antagonists, Monaca and Haiji, are a child and an adult respectively, and Komaru is a teenager, between childhood and adulthood. She's literally caught in the middle of an apocalypse.

That said, there is one critique about this Haiji decision that I do understand. And that's less about this one line, and more so just this game's attitude toward sexual abuse in general. Ultra Despair Girls is one of the most infamous games in a series that already can be quite divisive, largely because its tone is all over the place. It wants to handle dark and serious subject matter as literal child sex abuse, but then gives you serious whiplash by making you strip down a CSA victim, portrayed in a darkly humorous manner. Yeah somebody needs to get their hard drive checked for that one. I think the backlash to that particular Haiji line is more so a product of this game's serious tone problems.

TL;DR: Haiji Towa is clearly supposed to be an unlikable, horrific piece of shit, and that line reinforces it.