Nekomaru Nidai

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Nekomaru Nidai, is a student of Hope's Peak Academy's Class 77-B, and a participant of the School Trip. His title is the Ultimate Team Manager. Nekomaru was born with a heart defect that left him bedridden and confined to a hospital. The doctor who treated him told him he would only live to be 20. Because of his illness, he never got to play sports or participate in P.E. at school. He was also frequently teased, unable to make friends, and had to make regular trips to the hospital. While hospitalized, Nekomaru was coincidentally placed in the same room as a young team manager of a baseball team who suffered from the same condition and also made frequent hospital visits. Unlike Nekomaru, however, the boy often had his athletes visiting him, who he would have both fun and serious conversations. From him, Nekomaru learned that it was possible to share in a team's victories and defeats even without participating directly in the game. Unfortunately, he passed away without seeing the team he had trained reach the championship, which Nekomaru speculated was either because he overworked himself gathering stats for that important game, or perhaps he already knew his time was limited. His passing — and especially his motivation to become a team manager — deeply inspired Nekomaru to follow in his footsteps and fulfill the boy's dream by becoming a team manager himself. Nekomaru's first job was to take all the stats the boy had risked his life gathering for his team and use them to lead the team to victory. Nekomaru quickly gained a reputation as a skilled team manager, traveling to numerous towns and playing an active role in various sports clubs by managing their teams. He led poorly managed teams to national recognition, including a high school rugby team full of delinquents and a baseball club on the verge of being shut down.