I suspect that most of Yui Appreciation Week is going to focus on the big moments where Yui is brave or compassionate, so… I’ve decided to use introduction day to share this list of smaller Yui traits! (*/ω＼*)
I tried to source it heavily because I thought it might be useful, and because I think it helps make it clear that most of these aren’t one-time things. Yui is not a vacant doll with no personality or interests–she’s just a (very feminine) human girl.
If you see I’ve missed something, please let me know! ♥
Yui’s biggest strengths are primarily “soft” or emotion-based ones like patience, kindness, and empathy - but despite what some vampires say, she’s not useless.
Yui is a good cook. It’s something she’s fairly confident about, too: in Ayato’s Maniac 06, she calls cooking one of her strong points. In More Blood, there’s a scene where Kou finds Yui reading a cookbook, and she tells him she likes to cook and finds it fun. She also says that she learned to cook because she grew up in a single-parent household during Laito’s original route (Dark 03).
It seems like she cooks for Kanato quite often - pancakes or french toast (Dark 01), an apple pie (Maniac Prologue), etc. She also cooks for Kou (PASTA HELL), Ayato, Yuma… Basically everyone gets to eat her meals at some point, since Ayato’s MB Afterstory mentions she’s taken over cooking for all the Sakamaki brothers, and she helps out in the Present from the Mukami scenario, too. (She really shines in the latter, what with giving advice to Ruki and Yuma, and baking a cake and a turkey…) Yui’s kindness is shown in her cooking - she remembers to add spicy ingredients for Azusa, for example.
The only ones who really criticize her skills are Reiji and Ruki, since they both have quite high standards (Reiji’s Heaven, Ruki’s Dark Fate). Reiji does say her tea has become “not undrinkable” to him eventually (Heaven 01).
Yui on food:
“Nothing beats hot ginger tea when you’re cold.” - Yui, Kanato’s Dark Prologue
“Well, french toast is my specialty. My father used to make it for me all the time.” - Yui, Kanato’s Dark 01
Yui can sing, but it seems most of the songs she knows are hymns. One such hymn was used as a lullaby, as she sings for Subaru (Maniac 03). She also sings for Azusa, who says her song gives him hope ;w; (Azusa’s MB Maniac Epilogue).
Yui can sew. She carries a sewing kit in her bag and sews Kou’s button in his MB Maniac 02. She also sews up Teddy during Kanato’s first game route (Ecstasy 01), and, in More Blood, she sews a replacement for Teddy, as well as many, many other teddy bears for Kanato in two of his endings.
Yui is a fairly serious student, even though her circumstances constantly undermine her and Ayato in particular mocks her for it. It also comes up that she takes good notes, but Yui still has lots of doodles in her notebook, too. (Kou’s MB Maniac 02)
Yui cannot swim. In the first game, she almost drowns in Ayato’s Ecstasy 03 and Reiji’s Ecstasy 09.
Yui cannot dance (Reiji Maniac 06, Ayato Heaven 03, Subaru Maniac 09, all first game).
Because she grew up in a fairly sheltered environment, she doesn’t know much about popular idols like Kou (In his Dark Prologue, she asks him if he sings and dances on TV, and he asks what century she lives in). In spite of this, she does enjoy reading magazines during Laito’s MB route because it makes her feel more normal. (Also, I’m not sure about the source, but I heard she didn’t watch TV growing up?)
Yui is afraid of thunder (Ayato MB Dark 06). She doesn’t appear to like the dark much, either.
Yui loves to read. There are many, many, many scenes of her reading or borrowing books for fun. Some examples: she’s borrowed a novel from Shu (Ayato’s Heaven Epilogue) and went looking into the Sakamaki library (Shu’s Dark 04). In Kou’s MB Maniac 10, Yui is reading: “A sad love story where the fatal love of two people are torn apart by war.” She even cries at the end of a book in Azusa’s DF Heaven 01, because it was so touching.
“There’s lots more books than there were at my old school!! I’m getting excited just looking at them. I wonder what I should read?” - Yui, Ayato’s Maniac 07
“I read it in a book some time ago… When vampires don’t have access to blood, they eat roses in order to endure the hunger.” - Yui, Kanato’s Ecstasy 01 (Yui used to read vampire stories before she got sacrificed = confirmed? ;D)
Yui’s a sweetheart, so it’s not a surprise that Yui likes animals. She gets excited about seeing a dog on Ayato’s route (Maniac 03), takes home a kitten on Ruki’s MB route (…yeah), and adopts a cat with Shu in Dark Fate. And she seems rather impressed during Subaru and Reiji’s Disney Princess scenes, too.
Yui likes roses. Since one of the motifs of the series is roses, she comes in contact with them a lot because they’re in the game a lot, so it’s not clear if they’re her favorite flower. However, it’d be a reasonable headcanon to have: she admires the garden at the Sakamaki’s mansion and the roses in the demon world; she’s pleased when Kou brings her some as a gift in MB; she likes Yuma’s vegetable garden, and she notices the roses growing in there; on Kou’s MB route, she thinks they’d be nice to decorate a room with, and he picks a bloom for her later, too. It may also be worth noting that with every wedding dress she wears, Yui also wears roses in her hair - and often elsewhere on the dress, too.
Since the anime covered this, it’s probably one of the most well known, but… Yui loves her father dearly. Since he raised her as a single parent, it’s quite understandable that she grew up to be kind of a daddy’s girl. Ruki’s MB Dark Epilogue has a rare flashback scene to Yui’s childhood, where we see Yui and her father find a four-leaf clover. Tiny Yui decides not to pick it and tells Seiji that she doesn’t need good luck; she’s already happy since she has her father. Her dream, too, was to either be a bride or follow her father and become a nun. (There are some little things that show a less idyllic picture, though: in the Present from the Mukami, Yui mentions her father was often busy, so she always had to decorate the Christmas tree alone. Gives the impression that Yui tried her best to be a good girl to make her father happy, doesn’t it?)
