Just in case anyone stumbles upon this and wonders what the fuck I think I'm doing, please just let me make this clear: this is entirely Paliko's fault. I had originally planned on just keeping this...er...essay(?) for myself, but then Paliko read it over and said she really liked it and then she possessed me to post it and I don't even know anymore.
I am a person who often gets overly attached to fictional characters. It’s just something I do...I can’t help it, but then, I have no reason to try. Sometimes I’ll even get so attached to a fictional character that an entire shipwreck of an anime becomes worth it, such as in the case of Yuno Gasai from Mirai Nikki. That show was filled to the brim with gaping plotholes and unnecessary fanservice, but I loved Yuno way too much to care, and even watched the OVA just to watch Yuno do cool stuff.
Yuno often gets criticized for being a total yandere sociopath, and I can see where they’re coming from. Among other things, Yuno contemplates murdering the protagonist’s mother in the event that she doesn’t approve of her, locks all of his friends in a gas chamber, attempts to kill a 3-year-old, sets off several bombs in a school, cages her own parents and starves them to death…
Yeah, I can see why they’d see her that way. But I adore the fuck out of her anyway, and I can see why she behaves like that, given her situation. Maybe it’s because I’d probably react the same way if I was in her shoes, being the total nutjob I am.
But my love for Yuno Gasai pales in comparison to my love for a certain adorable green-haired monster girl with a name beginning with ‘’S’’ and ending with ‘’A’’. It appears that I just have a soft spot for psychotic little girls who kill lots of people and are fine with it, but have undeniably compelling reasons to do so...or, at the very least, undeniably compelling reasons not to not do so. Not that I have a problem with that, of course. Maybe it’s because I love cute girls (I’m not even going to try and deny that now), and because mental disorders interest me? Maybe it’s because I just can’t help but feel sympathetic for them? I dunno, really. A little out of column A, a little out of column B, I suppose. But whatever my reasons, I love Saya too much for my own good. And I love her too much to care.
When we first meet Saya, we meet a child. A child who actively engages in sexual activities with the protagonist. A child that acts as the protagonist’s wife...in many more ways than one. To some, this is more than a little disturbing. I didn’t mind it because I’d already been told she wasn’t human, and Paliko probably didn’t mind because she doesn’t seem the type to take those ideas into consideration while playing a game.
The Saya we meet, when we see her for the first time, is incredibly sweet, and we don’t suspect her of anything bad. She takes time out of her life to cook Fuminori’s food, and we see her as being very kind and gentle with him. At one point, she tells him that she is so good to him because he is alone...and so is she. Saya appears a vulnerable young girl, one who reaches out to Fuminori as if he were a stray puppy. She is giving and taking from him, and he from her, in a way that two people who deeply care about each other would. Saya is the only thing keeping Fuminori sane, and Fuminori is the only one keeping Saya company, showing her love. It’s not difficult to see how much they mean to each other.
Saya is shown later on just how intelligent she is, during a flashback. Before she met Fuminori, Saya had been living alone in a hospital, feeding herself (she stole organs, it seems, and, at one point, a human baby) for who knows how long (Ougai has been gone for six months when the game actually takes place, so it depends on how long it’s been since Saya and Fuminori first met) and carefully making sure that her existence was only made known to the mental patients, as nobody would take their claims seriously.
Saya is a combination of brilliance and childishness that I am extremely weak to (see: Lisa Simpson) and I simply adore her for that.
And yet, even though she could easily have stayed in the hospital, terrorizing patients and stealing organs (and the occasional newborn human baby…), she didn’t because she was offered a place to stay. I mean, look at the expression on her face when she gets there!
So Saya, completely and utterly lost and alone, with her father gone and nowhere to go, is finally offered a home and companionship, no less. She’s hesitant to believe that it’s even real. And, not only that, but she’s finally found someone who treats her like something more than a monster, something Saya has been waiting for for a very, very long time.
She’s been all alone, all this time. The one person who cared for her suddenly vanished from her life, and she has no idea where to go, so she just keeps on aimlessly searching for him. And then she meets this one guy, this one guy who isn’t scared of her, and this guy actually asks her to keep him company. And, as if that wasn’t good enough, he actually offered her a home. And she doesn’t believe it. ‘’Can I really stay?’’ she says. Because nobody has showed her this sort of kindness, except for, you know, maybe her disappeared father, whom she isn’t sure that she’s ever going to find.
In fact, later on, when she figures out how to modify people’s brains, she, driven by her selfish desire to be loved and understood, breaks in to the neigbour’s house and makes his life a living Hell. But that’s not the important part! The important part is that following these selfish actions, Saya gives Fuminori the option of returning to his old self, despite the fact that she’ll no longer be seen as a human by him.
Saya is just like a child...she does something irrational or selfish, realizes the consequences of her actions (getting raped by Yousuke), breaks down and tearfully apologizes, and then goes on to do better.
Saya has been struggling to be understood, all this time. She knows that she will be all alone in this world without Fuminori...in fact, she even says so herself. ‘’There’ll never be anyone else like you,’’ she says. And yet, she’s ready to sacrifice all that for his happiness. Because she loves him.
Just try putting yourself in her shoes. Everyone you have ever known has always seen you as a monster. The sight of your true form is enough to drive a person mad. And then you find someone...someone with a strange disorder that allows him to see you as something more--a human being, a human being that he actually allows himself to fall in love with. And now that Saya has experienced love, now that Saya is finally understood by somebody, she craves more. She strips an old man of his sanity, causing him to kill his own family. The man assaults her, degrades her, threatens to destroy her. And Saya is so scared, and she’s just wondering how it turned out like this, and she goes back to relying on that one person she’s been relying on this entire time. And she just breaks, and cries and cries and then she knows just how much she needs Fuminori. And, unbeknownst to her, Fuminori is having a moment of realization himself, at how much he needs her, how much it’d suck if she got hurt. And even though she needs him so, so very much, Saya does what she knows is best for him: gives him the choice of becoming as he was before. She is being incredibly selfless here, so much that I just can’t break it into words. Right here, in front of her, is her dream. Saya has finally found what she’s wanted in all her years as living. But even so, she is willing to give that up just so that Fuminori can find his own happiness. She loves him to the point that she’s absolutely ready to let him go.
And then, when he says that he wants to stay the way he is now, and gives her that big speech about how he loves Saya and wants to stay beside her, and how he didn’t fall in love with her just because of his mental illness...Saya has yet another moment of realization: she doesn’t want to go after her father, after all. Because her father had never shown her this amount of care. Her father disappeared on her and didn’t even attempt to make contact. She’s been searching for him all this time because he was the only one that felt like home to her, as she’d been living with him since forever. But Fuminori isn’t just Saya’s home, she realizes. He’s an individual that she has grown to care for, on a personal level. She doesn’t want to continue on this wild goose chase for Ougai anymore. She wants to live a happy life with Fuminori, undisturbed by anything or anybody.
Because Ougai saw Saya as a monster, just as everyone else did. He saw a monster, but he interpreted said monster differently than others...responding with curiosity and fascination rather than fear. He wanted to study her, get to the bottom of who she was. And while he probably did care about her, he never really saw her as a creature that he could relate to. Fuminori, however, sees a human girl, and interprets her as such. Saya is precious to Ougai because she is so otherworldly, and that excites him. Saya is precious to Fuminori because she is something that he is used to, and that makes him feel so much more at home.
And, of course, Saya feels so much more at home with him than she does with Ougai because his gestures are so much different, because he has not been utilizing her for research purposes this entire time, but because he loves her. And, dude, the word Fuminori uses is ‘’Aishiteru’’. That word never fails to reduce me to a mess of a screaming fangirl, because it just has this unnecessary amount of depth to me (which it probably doesn’t to Japanese people, tbh, I’m just overreacting due to my limited knowledge of my language. ‘’Aishiteru’’ is a big deal, but not that big a deal). Saya has been searching for love all this time, don’t you remember? A gentle human emotion that intrigued her so much that she couldn’t fulfill her mission until she finally gave in to the feeling herself.
The way I interpret it, is that Saya had always thought that there was no problem at all with her relationship with Ougai...he was her gentle, loving father. He was the one who cared for her, despite what she was.
But then Saya met Fuminori and realized just how little love she had received, and decided that she really didn’t need Ougai, after all.
And for that person that she loves, Saya not only offers to sacrifice her happiness, but actually sacrifices the happiness of others. I guess you could say that what Saya did to Yoh was horrible and should not ever be treated as otherwise ever...I mean, turning someone into an eldritch abomination and then making her a sex slave for yourself and your lover is never ever justifiable, but I just can’t see any reason why Saya wouldn’t.
You may argue that Saya has morals, and she does seem to grasp them...to a certain extent. For example, she doesn’t openly admit to Fuminori that her diet consists of humans and nothing but humans, because she knows that Fuminori is, himself, a human, and she’s worried that he’ll find it gross and immoral and leave her.
But where do Saya’s morals end, and how much does she understand of them? Ougai doesn’t seem the type who would teach them to her, so maybe she’s just thinking that she’d offend Fuminori? Even if it’s true that humans have morals that they are simply born with and don’t need to be taught, Saya is NOT human, and, therefore, wouldn’t have them. Maybe she knows that what she does to Yoh is wrong, but she doesn’t understand it? Something like that is absolutely possible. I mean, in the case of the human meat, Saya was actively trying to conceal it from Fuminori, because she knew it was a bad thing, but in this case, she does something bad...that is, make one of Fuminori’s friends a sex slave...just for his sake, and obviously doesn’t hide it. She isn’t even worried that this’ll cause him to leave her, as she was earlier. I can only think of two reasons for this…
A) She’s come to trust in Fuminori, after hearing the word ‘’Aishiteru’’ come out of his mouth, and after that reassuring speech and all the time they’ve spent together and just everything, or,
B) she doesn’t have a full understanding of the wrongness of what she’s doing, as she is not a human herself, and does not naturally see Yoh as ‘’one of her kind’’, but, rather, instinctively sees her, a human, as her prey. It’s entirely possible that Saya’s instincts make it more difficult for her to view people as equals, as she, you know, is built to EAT THEM. I mean, isn’t that how things naturally work? I mean, it takes her a while even to emotionally connect with Fuminori. Their initial relationship is Saya being intrigued by Fuminori’s lack of fear towards her, and Fuminori pleading with her to stay by his side because she’s the only sane thing in an insane world. Following that, it’s all about Saya desperately wanting a home, having lost anything that even resembled a sense of belonging months ago. Even before we see the flashbacks, in those scenes before Saya’s rape, we see that Saya is reaching out to Fuminori because he’s lonely, and wants him to do the same for her because she’s lonely. While it’s obvious that their relationship has developed remarkably since their first meeting in the hospital, Saya has some ulterior motives...that is, she’s demanding love and attention. Yes, she also wants Fuminori to be happy...but she’s mostly doing it out of pity, it seems, for the guy who lives in constant agony because the world around him is a living Hell.
I stand firm in my belief that Saya truly comes to realize her love for Fuminori when she is raped by Yousuke...she’s utterly helpless and she knows that, in the end, when she can’t get out of a situation on her own, Fuminori is the one that she turns to. He is necessary to her, and that’s why he becomes such an exception.
Ougai is also an exception...more because he’s what she’s used to, than anything. If you’re 40 years old and have lived in a cave all your life, and then suddenly decided you wanted to see something else, I’m pretty sure you’d want to return to the cave eventually, even if you found something interesting, because it’s your home for 40 years and it’s all you’ve known. That was a weird analogy, but I’m Emma, weird is my thing, I make it work.
