Mikado Ryuugamine

Mikado Ryuugamine (竜ヶ峰帝人 Ryuugamine Mikado) is a childhood friend of Kida Masaomi and the primary male protagonist of the series. He is later revealed to also be the creator of the Dollars.

In the anime he is voiced by Toyonaga Toshiyuki (Japanese) and Darrel Guilbeau for the English Dub.

Characteristics
Mikado is a polite, soft spoken boy, who at times can be quite childish and naive. This is likely a result of his small town upbringing; as he moves to Ikebukuro he is amazed and overwhelmed by the sheer size and energy of the city, and thus himself feels small and insignificant. He was bored of the average life he previously led, and moved to Tokyo in search of adventure.

Despite his personality, he is shown to have a pretty strong will, and he does have moments where he speaks his mind, which is one of the reasons Masaomi admires him.

As he often acts like a child, Masaomi feels he has to stay around Mikado and help him out, since he would not be able to manage on his own. While Mikado envied Masaomi for his exciting life (for most of the series he is unaware of Masaomi's affiliation with the Yellow Scarves), Masaomi ironically envies Mikado's innocence and his ability to lead a quiet, happy life.

As the series progresses, Mikado gradually becomes more and more assertive, and becomes able to accept the chaos that life throws at him without trying to run away.

Background
Mikado grew up in the small town of Saitama, and led an unexciting life that he grew bored with. People often commented that his name sounds like that of a manga character, and he wished that his life was more like a manga, with more unusual and exciting events. When he met his childhood friend, Kida Masaomi online, Masaomi would always tell him stories about the excitement of his life in the big city. Eventually, when Masaomi decided he would be going to Raira Academy in Ikebukuro and invited Mikado to go with him, Mikado happily accepted, hoping to find a more exciting life.

It is also known that he created the online group the Dollars as a middle schooler. He created the group with some of his friends as a joke, but shortly after they created the group, the group began to grow at an alarming rate, with people joining whom none of the creators had sent invitations to. This was the work of Orihara Izaya. The creators, unaware of this, were afraid of the group which was spiralling out of control, and all of the creators except Mikado left the group, leaving him as the only remaining creator and the sole leader.

Mikado then became class representive along with Sonohara Anri, whom he developed a crush on. He also learned about Harima Mika, Sonohara's missing friend.

Mikado regularly joined a chatroom with the handle "Tanaka Taro," where he chatted with "Kanra" and "Setton," who in real life were Orihara Izaya and Celty Sturluson, respectively. It was mostly from Kanra that he learned about the gangs and incidents in Ikebukuro, including about rumours of human experiments carried out by Yagiri pharmacy.

After meeting Harima Mika personally and seeing the scars on her neck, he confirmed Sonohara's previous suspicion that Harima Mika's disappearance had something to do with the human experimentation rumours. After he was attacked by people who worked for Yagiri pharmacy, he revealed that he was the leader of the Dollars, calling a Dollars meeting and using their numbers to confront Yagiri Namie, the director of the pharmacy.

When the Yellow Scarves started hitting members of the Dollars on suspicion that they were in league with the Slasher, instead of fighting back Mikado decided to try and disband the Dollars in order to keep people from getting hurt. However, the Dollars, particularly Kadota Kyohei's group, showed him that the Dollars were more than just the online group he started as a joke a long time ago, adding that as they were already invisible, they could not "disappear" even if their leader asked them to. He eventually decided that it was okay for the Dollars to exist, and brought the group back.

Anime
Anime specific spoilers about this character per episode.

Episode 01:

Episode 02:

Episode 10: Although not directly, Mikado revealed to Izaya and Celty that he's the leader and creator of Dollars.

Manga
Manga specific spoilers about this character per volume/chapter.

Volume 01:

Light Novel
Light Novel specific spoilers about this character per volume/chapter.

Volume 01:

Trivia

 * His mother's name is Hiromi (ひろみ) while his father's name probably read as Ryūgamine Ryūya (竜ヶ峰竜也) as read in usual way since there's no official romanization for his parents' name.


 * His given name's kanji usually read as Teijin instead of simply Mikado.


 * His hometown is in Saitama.


 * He was ranked 1st in Raira Academy's entrance test. Tying with Anri, and thus Anri has developed a small admiration for Mikado. Though it is not noticed much.


 * He's born with 2982 gram weight.
 * His favorite subject is IT when his least favorite subject is P.E. as he states that he's weak at sports.
 * His favorite quote is "Supreme rule of life is to adapt without compromising," the words of a German Philosopher, Georg Simmel.