Thank you for weighing in on the matter.  

There will certainly need to be a disconnect between player and character for the idea to work as intended.  Since camaraderie, trickery and attempting to endear oneself to others are big parts of the idea, characters would need to be as separated from their creators as possible.  Otherwise it might facilitate players just playing favorites with one another rather than doing in IC.  One idea I've been mulling over that might aid that would be to have a two-part character screening process.  

The first part would be for a player to publicly post the more obvious attributes of their character, namely what one would notice about them at first glance, or how they would be viewed by someone who didn't know them.  For the second part, the player would PM me the more in-depth facets of the character's personality and backstory.  I was thinking that keeping the nuances and more complex components of the characters hidden from the OOC thread would force the players to organically reveal and discover them as the RP progresses.  This would hopefully help the characters come into their own and keep them divorced from their creators, make them feel more like real people that you learn more and more about rather than a pre-made mannequin that the player is acting through.  Ultimately though, some good faith and good sportsmanship will probably be required.  As GM I'd be as impartial as I can, but I can't guarantee the same for anyone else involved. 

Honestly I'm reluctant to allow players to create more than one character if they'd be running at the same time.  The reason I got interested in the idea to begin with was figuring out a way to maximize the consequences of character death, and I think allowing a player only one character, emphasizing interaction and growth, and stacking the odds against their survival would cultivate a sense of loss if they fail.  Making a character's death feel like a punch in the gut is what I'm going for, frankly.  I'm not completely unreceptive to your suggestion, though.  Allowing multiple characters might keep people engaged and help protect against any one player being ganged up on just for the hell of it.  It might be necessary if the support for my current idea isn't there.  

EDIT: Forgot to explain why I picked the 'only one survivor' rule: I was afraid that if more than one character is given the chance to live to the end that it'd compel people to buddy up for the whole length of the RP without fear of betrayal, or at least there'd be much less of a chance that alliances could change.  If two people pair up when there'll only be one survivor, they both know that one of them won't make it, keeping some tension between even the strongest friendships that might've been able to go unchallenged in a different format.  

I'm aware of Dangan Ronpa though I've only seen parts of it, and kinda forgot it existed until you brought it up.  I'll give it another whirl when I get the chance.