Hero of the Week: Keiichi Maebara

This week's hero is the charismatic teenager from Hinamizawa. I could only be talking about the baseball bat wielding "magician of words", Keiichi Maebara.





















Keiichi is different from all those other heroes. Despite being the protagonist of a series plagued with supernatural occurences, the young Maebara is nothing more than a normal teenager that cherishes his friends. While his descent into madness during the question arcs is apparent, his belief in his friendship and desire to prevent more deaths leads him to actually seeing the mistakes he made in a previous universe.

Keiichi's sheer power of will lead to a surprisingly badass battle on top of the school between him and Rena. Check it out (sorry, only found the dub).



While the focus shifts off of Keiichi during the last few answer arcs, his importance is still made apparent numerous times. Without Keiichi, Rika most likely would have never found the courage to actually fight against her fate and the endless rewinds. Even if there was a lot of trial and error, Keiichi helped bring the "cursed" Hinamizawa out of the supposed eternity of 1983. He truly is a hero, albeit an unconventional one.