kaname date identity issues in AINS
Some of my fav hints at Date's identity issues in No Sleep for Kaname Date. Putting it under a read more since it'll get long.
First off the dream at the start of the game. The main purpose of this scene is to serve as the spoiler toggle test, but the scene itself is a nightmare of Date's based on a real memory from right after the body swap. Seemingly as he was running away from the chemical plant with So's bodyguards chasing after him he made his way through the abandoned train station before he ended up at Golden Yokocho.
All that to say, the start of the game is not a flashback but Date having a nightmare about that flashback. And here's where his identity issues play a part! Date's name is listed as "???" because this nightmare is from a time when he didn't know himself, but he also still doesn't know himself and is stuck between identities.
His nightmare mostly features him not recognizing himself in the mirror because it's based on those memories from 6 years ago. When you interact with the mirror you get this dialogue:
It's more than that though, even after he remembers the events of the first game (yay you passed the spoiler toggle!) there's a scene later when Aiba breaks through his dream to call out to him. When she calls him Date, "???" reacts like this:
Doesn't even recognize his name. So, yay Date probably has reoccurring nightmares about not knowing who he is!
When Date wakes up later in the car, Aiba says Date was "fast asleep with a stupid look on your face" Date reacts by replying "My stupid face...." in an unhappy voice. This is for sure more of Date struggling with his mask and identity problems. In fact! If you have spoilers off he replies like this instead of mentioning his face.
The stupid face line is also a mistranslation, in Japanese he says, "This isn't my face, it's that guy that looks stupid" [source x].
Those are the most blatant identity issue scenes we get, the rest is just me being delusional. During escape room 2 Hina and Date mention the yellow bath looking like Hina's hair color, Date out of nowhere asks Hina if she bleaches her hair.
I know this isn't much, but in my mind he's asking it because he's thinking about his own naturally dark hair and ways he could bleach it to look like Saito's (if he's wearing a wig right now) or needs tips on maintaining it (if it's actually his hair being bleached). Date never cared about asking if people's hair color was real before, and the fact it's blond, it feels like it's hinting at something. Even if the writers didn't mean for it to lol.
There's also ALL THIS but I'm not going to get into it.
Date also acts weirdly like Saito in parts of this game, I don't know if he's doing this on purpose or if there's a 1% of Saito left in his personality from when he was in his body so long. He wants to smash boxes and gets obsessed with fireworks... take that as you will.
Tying this to AINI for a second, but all this to say Date is a complicated character and there's more going on under the surface than just getting a mask to hit on women. Genuinely I think he's just saying that as an excuse so he doesn't have to analyze it.
If anything, some of the dialogue in AINS implies he doesn't actually enjoy wearing the mask ("my [Saito's] stupid face...") and its ties to Saito, but hates being his past self AKA Falco even more. So he will continue to wear it and call himself with this mask on handsome. He's trying to cope, OK. Biggest question is, who are you, Kaname Date? Do you even know the answer yourself?
