Hideo Sotomura

Appearance
Hideo is a teenage boy of average height with green eyes and spiky black hair. He also wears glasses. He is a bit chubby according to Kiyotaka Ayanokōji, and is often seen wearing the school uniform, but wore a brown trench coat when supervising Argos Team's operation of spying on the girls' changing room.

Like every other first year, he wore the red tracksuit during the island test.

Personality
Hideo seems to blend in the background quite a bit, as he is neglected from the main events that seem to happen in Class 1-D. However, he does seem to capitalise on the opportunity, seeing the sense in helping out Argos team in their mission.

Hideo is an otaku in nature and is often heard using archaic Japanese to speak to his classmates. He collects and observes information every day, ranging from an interests of to manga and animation.

He was said to have a "ridiculous" dialect by the Zazen instructor in the Mixed Training Camp special exam, leading to him changing it to be acceptable by the society.

Plot
Hideo presumably passed the entrance exams and was present with the other first years during the entrance ceremony speech given by Manabu Horikita. He received 100,000 points like the rest of the class and seemed to be part of the few that still saved quite a bit, as Haruki Yamauchi tried to sell him a game console for 20,000 points after Sae Chabashira provided further information about the points system after the class failed to receive any points after the first month.

In the light novels, when Ken Sudō was facing expulsion, Kiyotaka Ayanokōji had asked Hideo for help about general information of electronic devices provided that he's an "otaku" who knows a lot of particulars about the matter. This help also extended in setting up certain devices, to which Hideo claimed afterwards that he might need Kiyotaka's help in the future. Whereas in the anime, Kiyotaka had worked alone with help from Honami Ichinose.

Hideo was next seen heading the Argos operation where he overlooks the area, provide Intel and he commands to the Argos team members: Ken, Haruki, Kanji Ike, Kiyotaka.

He started issuing orders for Haruki to plant the cameras, but after being signaled by Kanji to abort because of Kikyō Kushida's suspicion, ordered Haruki to abort and evacuate the mission area. He then proceeded to organise Kanji Ike into position to continue off where Haruki left off, but when a situation developed where Kakeru Ryūen, Ken and Manabu started a scene outside the girls' toilets, started comforting a panicked Kanji, telling him to hold on while he sorted something out. Hideo followed on using semaphore flags to signal Kiyotaka to stage a distraction to get Kanji out, in which he delegated the task to Suzune Horikita, who gave a speech on top of the diving boards, which successfully distracted everyone long enough for Kanji to escape the toilets.

Like the other first years, he took part in the special island survival examination. At the end of the survival test, Hideo, like the other members of Class D, was surprised at their victory, scoring the highest amount of points out of all the classes.

In the Volume 4 Cruise Ship Special Test, Sotomura was placed in Rabbit Group along with Kiyotaka Ayanokouji, Kei Karuizawa and Keisei Yukimura from Class-D. Their group ended with Possibility #4 that is, the traitor answered incorrectly, leading to their class receiving 50 Class Points and the V.I.P. (Karuizawa), 1 million Private Points.

In the Volume 8 special exam "Mixed Training Camp" Sotomura was reprimanded by the instructor for his unconventional dialect, which he used intentionally for no apparent reason, as it would not be well received by the society.

In the Volume 11 special exam, Sotomura was chosen by Kiyotaka Ayanokoji for the 1v1 Typing event, in which he defeated his opponent Yoshida Kenta from Class A by 90 points against 83.

Intellectual Abilities
Hideo seems to possess some smarts about himself as he scored 75 points during the mid-term exams within the school. He is also known to be good with computers and technology, as he can type very fast.

Judgement Abilities
Hideo has somewhat demonstrated that he can lead an operation from the shadows, moving things along during the infiltration of the girls' changing rooms by the 3 Idiots of D-Class and can form plans and backup plans to get things done. He has a knack for calming people down in a tight situation, as shown when he comforted Kanji Ike when he was panicking after being trapped in the change rooms after an incident with Kakeru Ryūen.

Name Etymology

 * The name Hideo consists of kanjis that mean "excellent, outstanding" (秀) (hide) and "hero, manly" (雄) (o).
 * Hideo's surname Sotomura consists of kanjis that mean "outside" (外) (soto) and "town, village" (村) (mura).