Of course, Mondo isn’t just a condensed mass of violence. Early on, his classmates Naegi and Maizono discuss whether or not they should fear him or rely on him, and Naegi suggests both- which is a good idea. As the game goes on, it becomes evident that Mondo is actually fairly nice once you get on his good side. He admits to Naegi during his free time events that he often yells because he’s nervous (which has led him to be rejected by ten girls in a row) and that he has a gigantic soft spot for dogs, due to the close relationship he had with the maltese he had when he was little. He also refuses to fight girls (even Sayaka, the Super High-School Level Wrestler and by far the strongest member of the cast) and sticks up for Chihiro when he’s bullied by Togami and later apologizes to him and promises not to yell when he’s around when he makes him cry. Next, his predisposition for violence has lead to him being socially awkward when it comes down to it- something that comes out by his nervous yelling, and his also shown by his rather extreme reactions to things. When he remembers Chuck, the maltese he had, he gets so upset by the memories he has to leave the room despite the fact that Chuck has been gone for many years. But he’s not thoughtless, and fairly aware of his own problems. He eventually says he’s worried about what he’ll do when he has to leave the gang upon graduating school, acknowledging that he’ll never be accepted to a University and doesn’t have a focus in life beyond the Crazy Diamonds. He ends up deciding he’d like to be a carpenter, and make things rather than break them for a living.
Another thing that Mondo does having going for him is that he’s never one to let go of a promise, no matter how small; “a man’s promise”, he calls it. This was a trait he gained when he started leading the Crazy Diamonds- which was also when his older brother Daiya, the previous leader, died. Mondo promised Daiya upon the latter’s death that he’d keep the gang together no matter what, and not only did that lead him to take promises extremely seriously, but it also makes him eager to escape Hope’s Peak Academy when he and his classmates become trapped.
However, unlike a few of his classmates, Mondo- despite his violent nature- never really ponders the possibility of getting away with murder in order to be freed from the Academy, as they are offered. Instead he objects loudly to the proposition and generally being controlled by the mastermind (as a Gang Leader, he hates having rules and restrictions), and decides to find a way out through any exits- which unfortunately proves impossible. After the first murder- that of Maizono- he is also appropriately horrified and says it’s no time for nonsense. So, despite Mondo’s constant threats to beat someone he doesn’t like up- or even kill them, as he does when he’s especially frustrated- he really would rather not do anything like murder.
That isn’t the only thing that turns out to not be true about Mondo- really, a lot of things about him, as it turns out, are a huge facade.
Most of Mondo’s problems come from the fact that he has a major complex about being “strong”- if he is not strong he is weak, and then the gang he leads will wither and falter. When it came time for Daiya to graduate and Mondo to lead the time, Mondo challenged his brother to a race to prove himself as strong enough to his fellow members. But he was so desperate to win that he lost control and swerved in front of a car- only to be saved by Daiya, who pushed him out of the way and then died of his injuries. When the gang members thought that Daiya had been the scared one and gotten himself killed, Mondo found himself unable to tell them the truth out of the fear that they wouldn’t follow him. And thus, his life suddenly became built on a complicated and awful lie. Before long, much of Mondo’s personality seems to have developed to wrap around this lie- that he was strong, stronger than everyone else.
So when Monobear threatened to expose everyone’s greatest secrets- Mondo’s being the true circumstances surrounding Daiya’s death- Mondo slowly became consumed by stress. At the same time, Chihiro decided to confess his own secret to Mondo- that he identified as a boy, and wanted to become stronger- but hearing the revelation finally made Mondo snap. He blacked out, and came to with Chihiro dead at his feet. And all of that was because hearing Chihiro, the small crybaby and seemingly the “weak” one, face his secrets and strive to change himself, made Mondo finally realize that he was the weak one. When the school trial to figure out the culprit begins, Mondo tries to keep his involvement a secret for the possibility of returning to the gang, but eventually embraces the truth for the first time in his life- that he was a person based around deceit, and nowhere near as powerful as he presented himself. Thus, he faced execution with a surprising amount of dignity, though distraught over not being able to keep his promise to Daiya.
So in the end, Mondo isn’t the exactly best of people. He has let himself be built up as someone he is not, mainly for the sake of feeling better about an awful mistake he had made, one that was completely his fault. However, he does have a lot of good in him, and likely would have been able to come to terms with himself in better circumstances- one that would sadly evade him due to his execution.
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