Does Satoko Work as a Villain?
Kind of was wondering this. On the one hand, I am not opposed to it mostly due to how she always felt like a wild card. Especially when it came to crafting traps. But...IDK. Her motives still feel off to me.
It’s not too hard to buy that she does have abandonment and dependency issues. But at the same time, the anime doesn’t really play it up to a satisfactory way. Like with Satoshi for instance: she allowed herself to be placed into harsh conditions because of her belief that doing so would bring her brother back (like that one time Shion was bludgeoning her and she refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing her cry).
She also actually learns that holding everything inside and not asking her friends for help was not true strength. I just really hate that she is giving her own brother the cold shoulder here because that could have also played into her dependency issues. Instead, she just throws him away like used toilet paper. Hell, she could’ve also said something on the lines of “my big brudder abandoned me, and now you are going to abandon me, Rika?”
For Gou to work, it had to deliberately make Satoko forget this lesson by once again keeping how she felt about St, Lucia to herself whereas Rika flourishes in the academy (that isn’t even getting into Rika also forgetting her lesson to make the anime work). I understand that going to an elite school would be entirely different circumstances, but Satoko basically finds herself back at square one being the more “mentally stunted” of the club: as in, while the others could go on with their lives, Satoko insisted on being the way she was when she was a kid.
With Gou, I honestly didn’t care much for how much the show was hinging itself on the fall out between Rika and Satoko; it is really another one of those “lovers have a toxic breakup” sort of deal. It’s not that I mind that Satoko is super gay for Rika, but the show cannot just rely on that plot line.
I’d have to come out and say that the slow progression into madness Satoko went through was also kind of laughable. It makes sense that Satoko is incapable to adjusting and I expected some bullying, but having Satoko get sent to solitary confinement obliterates willing suspension of disbelief. She was even wearing an orange jumpsuit (though Ryukishi07 did apparently say that it was just an ordinary room).
Then there is how she got the looping powers to begin with. It was literally through Deux ex machina: Eua was only implemented for the sole purpose of scrapping the original ending. Unlike with other antagonists like Takano, I just feel that Satoko doesn’t do anything to really “worthy” to receive the powers. I mean Takano had to pull some strings to achieve her goal, and ultimately was not helped by the power of a god (I know that it is implied that Lady Lambdadelta was the one who granted her wish of becoming a god by kick starting the events of the VN series); Satoko receiving help from a godlike being is unfair. The other difference also being obvious: while Takano strived for godhood, ultimately what she wanted was to have her grandfather’s work realized. Satoko, however, is completely selfish.
That is my one problem with how the show’s treating Satoko: she is truly selfish. I fully understand that she wants things to stay the same and nobody certainly looks forward to growing up. However, she had no qualms about literally screwing everyone over to restart the loop and she even admits to having killed her own friends on occasions where they started to remember their deaths in the other loops. She was always something of a nuisance, but in the original series, she always cared for her friends. And yet, she completely lacks empathy for any of them once they are tormented because of her.
The moment that Satoko spent hundreds of years watching Rika’s suffering and turmoil to achieve a world where there were no losers, she reacts with the most disinterested of responses and decides to use them as inspiration to make Rika’s life such a living hell that she broke.
This all feels like some bad fanfiction written as a way to further milk the series that somehow managed to be produced and distributed onto public television. I know Ryukishi07 said he wanted to focus more on Satoko, but was this really the way to do it?
