Kotaro Maeda is a supporting character in the story As the Gods Will. He is a high school student who is caught in the series of deadly children's games that begin suddenly at his school. During the Kagome Kagome game, he is transformed into a Kokeshi wooden doll, becoming one of the four floating dolls that the surviving students must identify while blindfolded. In this state he is helpless and unable to act on his own. Ichika Akimoto, another student, helps him and later restores him to human form, allowing him to continue as a participant in the games. Little else is known about his personality or background; like many of the students, he is an ordinary teenager placed in an extraordinary and lethal situation. His primary motivation is survival, and his role in the story is brief, serving to illustrate the surreal and merciless nature of the games and the small acts of compassion that occur within them. He does not display any special abilities beyond his initial transformation into a doll and subsequent return to his original form. His key relationship is with Ichika, whose intervention saves him from remaining a wooden figure.