#43 screencaps jesus christ

[welcometomymindscape]

Bloom Into You Character Analysis- Sayaka Saeki

WARNING: This is super long and I had a really overlong paragraph noting this before deciding, like, it was a downer and totally unnecessary. So yeah, this is long and uses a mixture of text and images. Ones for Touko and Yuu should be coming shortly (The Touko one in a couple hours since it’s just me reposting, the Yuu one I’m making from scratch so it might take a bit more time.)

Cut go!

To really understand Sayaka, we have to go back in time a bit. To Sayaka’s time at Tomosumi Girl’s middle school. While there, one of Sayaka’s upperclassmen asked her out. She didn’t necessarily have a positive reaction at first, but she grew to love the other girl. 

When high school came, Sayaka’s was tortured when the girl that she loved seemed to not want to interact with her at all. As a result, Sayaka decided that she needed to take matters into her own hands. She assumed her senpai was suffering just as much as she was. 

Her upperclassmen didn’t share her feelings at all. If anything, she merely saw it as a sort of game that was was playing with Sayaka, not anything that she should take remotely seriously. It wasn’t a true relationship. She doesn’t ask Sayaka’s feelings about this, of course. She doesn’t even try to consider them. In her eyes, what she was saying was axiomatically true and that Sayaka would naturally agree. That she would still have the skepticism that plagued her at the beginning of her relationship before Sayaka realized how she felt.

Again, this is something that Sayaka thought at the beginning of their relationship, that it was something that was “weird”. Socially it’s not something that is done.

Sayaka felt like her feelings were real. She thought that her senpai was leading her somewhere beautiful and different and full of genuine, if seemingly unusual, love. The pain that she felt as a result was quite real. It must have hurt so much. 

So she tries to convince herself, as a coping mechanism, that her senpai is totally right. That was just a meaningless phase, and that girls simply didn’t love other girls. Everything that she felt was fake; if it was fake, then why was the girl she “loved” so blithely turn her down, after opening her to this possibility to begin with. The whole struggle did quite a bit of damage to her, to the point that she was so distracted that she got second place in the entrance exams. She is determined to be better than her, and surpass her in no time. 

And as she continued to convince herself, #1 herself walked by.

And in that one, shining moment, Sayaka’s feelings returned full force. And she decided that the feelings for Tokou… felt real enough, that she wasn’t going to necessarily let her broken heart deny that she seems to have them.

Time passes, as time often does, and Touko and Sayaka get closer. Due to the relationship that the two have, one that is rather close, the two become known as something of a power duo. 

Sayaka is seen as knowing Touko better than anyone else. In fact Sayaka says that herself, basically word for word, to Yuu. However, it is partially because she knows Touko better than most people that she keeps the other girl, emotionally, at arm’s length, and would never consider telling her friend about her feelings.

She’s somebody that knows that Touko, emotionally speaking, wants Sayaka to keep herself at arm’s length romantically, and thus on some level she does so emotionally as well, which I’ll get to in a bit. But instead, she decides to attempt to do what she can to protect her.

If she can’t be Touko’s love, she can at least do everything she can to make her safe and happy. She really is rather ambivalent about the stage show, but she gets that, for whatever reason, it’s something that Touko wants to do. And thus she considers it her responsibility to help, and pick up the pieces together if something goes wrong.

I think that’s enough context. Let’s jump into the show proper.

In the first episode, Sayaka is honestly pretty chill. She welcomes Yuu with, more or less, open arms, and is decently playful with Touko, the two having a relatively decent rapport. You get a slight hint of how well Sayaka really knows Touko with her certain declaration that Touko will turn everyone down, but by itself that doesn’t mean that much.

Then, in the rest of episode 1, the relationship between Yuu and Touko rapidly accelerates. Sayaka can kind of tell this, and it’s rather clear that she is not particularly happy about it. 

In this case, Touko manages to talk Sayaka down a little and get her to concede that it’s Touko’s choice at the end of the day, but you can see very clearly that Sayaka feels just a tad jealous. 

Jealousy is something that Touko doesn’t have in short supply of in regards to Yuu, as Sayaka demonstrates slightly low-key throughout the series, but most especially again in Episodes 6 and 7. The fact is that, I think on some level, Sayaka is a little scared. She’s already had to deal with one person moving on without her, deciding that their relationship isn’t truly worth much, and she feels like the same could easily happen with Touko too, especially when she’s too scared to confess, both for Touko’s sake and her own. 

]Her animosity to Yuu feels far more nuanced than petty jealousy, though. She doesn’t want anybody else getting close to Touko, she’s Touko’s protector and nobody else is allowed to be, because Touko is what she has, who she loves, and she can’t let what happened happen again. In my opinion, the jealousy in large part stems from fear.

Sayaka isn’t particularly important again until Episode 7, but this is where her character starts to shine, and she becomes much more relevant to the story. So let’s dig into this. 

The episode begins with Touko beating Sayaka on a pop quiz. Someone teases Sayaka because she continually can’t beat Touko (just like when they first met, she’s always #2), and this is her response. 

I actually see this as really important, but I think my point will be clearer if I save it for later. Just… keep it in your headspace. 

Later on in the episode, the Student Council is briefing their new recruit, Yuu’s friend Koyomi, about the stage show and, as a writer, what she could contribute, with Koyomi making it clear that for her, this is little more than writing practice.

As they talk however, their school supervisor Riko comes in, and between what Sayaka sees as slight moments of intimacy and Riko’s rather terrible attempts at damage control, she starts to suspect that the two are actually together. 

Later that night, she’s plagued by the thought of Yuu and Touko getting together, to the point that she’s actually shaking. Her fears consume her and she needs to go to the cafe and ask. Riko is doing other things but Miya is there, and so, after a bit of fumbling, Sayaka manages to ask what is on her mind, and Miya gives her a direct, clear affirmative, much to Sayaka’s shock. 

I think the shock could stem from a few things. I’m not sure it’s really gotten into Sayaka’s head that being gay is more than a teenage thing. Her first crush explicitly broke her heart by saying that it isn’t, and the only other relationship she really knew about was the Sayaka-Yuu-Touko mess, and all three of them were teenagers. In some ways, I think this was a good moment for her, to really understand that it is something that transcends age. It’s worth noting that her reaction when she starts to worry Miyako is going to say that she’s wrong and just seeing things that aren’t there looks genuinely pained.

The other reason for her surprise, one she actually tells Miya, is how direct she was. And Miya’s response is rather equally direct, and something that I think also really does impact Sayaka quite a bit. 

It’s worth noting that Sayaka operates in secrets. Her relationship with her senpai was a secret, she tries to keep her jealousy toward Yuu a secret, she tries to keep her feelings for Touko a secret. She’s somebody that simply isn’t very open about her feelings. That isn’t to say that she doesn’t often have very good reasons for that, but it is simply the world she knows, and she could easily think that it is really the possible only world when she has feelings like her’s. And part of the issue is that she actually takes it rather far. 

She is so desperate to conceal her feelings that she closes herself off. Not just to random admirers, not just to Yuu, but to herself and even to Touko. She isn’t somebody that allows herself to be herself, because she’s scared. She’s scared that it will scare Touko away, at the end of the day. And being told that not only is that something that is rather childish, but something that she simply doesn’t need to do, is something that I think really would mean something to her, even if she doesn’t say so or even realize it. 

The conversation then drifts to being about Sayaka, and Sayaka admits that she has a crush on Touko. And thus Miya asks a rather logical question- why does Sayaka like her in the first place? And, seemingly a little caught off guard at being asked, her first answer is rather superficial. It’s one that I’m sure is true (she was captivated by Touko the minute that she looked at her) but superficial all the same. But then, calming down a little, she expands. 

At the time, this in part seems to establish that Sayaka loves Touko for who she is as a “person”. Though the effort to achieve her goals driven by Touko’s pathologies at the end of the day. It is her desire to strive for more and achieve her goals that Sayaka loves, and not whatever those goals specifically are. But as we learn, so is the first thing that she mentions. No matter who she was trying to be, that is a complete failure to be Mio and is, simply, a different person entirely. Sayaka fell in love with Touko Nanami, and nobody less. 

The more I think about this bit, the more I think there’s a lot going on here. Immediate is that she genuinely is concerned about Touko; Sayaka shows quite a bit of knowledge into what Touko is like, but the idea that she has the full picture is ludicrously unlikely. She just knows that Touko doesn’t want to get close to people, and she knows that for whatever reason Touko is consumed (and tormented) by something. So she doesn’t want to make that worse, which is very admirable. 

I think there’s a bit of fear that is more personal too. Touko is somebody that Sayaka isn’t quite sure is gay; she thinks she might be, but doesn’t know for sure. And her previous relationship was her getting burned because the person she loved turned out to not be into girls after all, and I don’t think that’s something that she’s necessarily forgotten, and something that has been a big deal for her (even if it’s something she is getting ready to overcome). I think she also deeply is scared about being alone; it’s part of all her anxiety and jealousy over Yuu’s relationship; to her, the dreams of potentially being able to have relationship can feel essentially like all she has, and if she loses that, she has nothing.

But I think she kind of realizes something during this conversation. That it isn’t all she has. Touko is someone that she admires, someone she wants to support. She loves her, yes, but she wants to be a good supportive friend too. She wants to be someone Touko can depend on, can count on, and can bolster her strengths instead of weakening them. In a way, a path starts to open for her that she didn’t even really consider before. 

She struggles with the idea that maybe she’s been selfish by hiding everything from Touko like she has, but she gets politely assured that if anything it’s the opposite, and she’s being kind protecting her the way that she has. 

Cut to the next day. Sayaka gets second on another quiz. This time. The scene goes. Like this. 

The contrast to that little bit I suggested you remember from the beginning of the episode is ridiculously stark. Sayaka actually seems to have gained a competitive edge that she was completely lacking. And that’s in large part because she’s not just kind of hedging anymore, and has decided that though she loves Touko, and this absolutely is something she will tell her eventually, right now what is important is being a good friend to Touko. Do what she can to help her be happy, succeed, and excel. And this is how Touko responds to this.

I’m trying to imagine how much this must mean to Sayaka. She is trying to get stronger, learn to work with Touko as just a friend and set any baggage to the side, and Touko suddenly talks about how that is what she loves about Sayaka. That she’s a supportive friend, somebody that is always willing to have her back and help her do her best. She outright says that Sayaka helps her reach her ideal, something that Sayaka loves about her; that she continually strives to be the best she can be, and try to reach her goals. And Touko just outright said that she, Sayaka, was a huge part of why she tried to do that. And that it doesn’t need to be as a girlfriend, but just as a friend she cared about. 

Sayaka ends the episode with a parallelism of a sentiment from earlier, that some distance is okay for now. But they are fundamentally different sentiments. In that scene, Sayaka was talking about distance from Touko at all; just pining for her from afar, and clearly just not doing the best that she could to be a friend, not because she meant to, but because of baggage that she likely didn’t even realize she had. But now she is, to an extent, free from that. She can be better. She can be stronger, and she can grow, as somebody happy to consider herself (for now) Touko’s best friend.

Oh, did you think I was done? Nope! We’re only at Episode 8, baby. Let’s rock!

So Sayaka is waiting for Touko to arrive via train, and bumps into an old “friend.”

And she has things to say. Let’s walk through them.

Like, it’s worth remembering that Sayaka is the one that was tormented by this relationship for quite some time, to an extent probably still was well after she met Touko. It was in some respects a key formative moment for her, and something that she will in some regards probably always remember. 

And now the person that shot her down is basically taking all agency away from Sayaka entirely; it’s not that she agonized for months because of her own will and her own feelings, it’s not like the pain that she felt for so long after getting completely shot down and her feelings invalidated by somebody that she cared enough about to desperately try to convince herself that not only was this understandable but she was completely right to do so, until faced with a situation that simply made that sort of rationalization impossible, like, none of that was because of Sayaka. 

But it was all because she was tricked into a relationship and made to feel that way, by somebody who was able to treat it as nothing and blithely dismiss it when Sayaka desperately came to her for reassurance. Like in essence, not only is Sayaka being told that her feelings mean nothing because she didn’t truly feel them, not really, she’s being told that they mean nothing since they originate from someone who, as far as Sayaka can see, never cared that much for them in the first place.

I mean, strictly speaking the anime (and manga, I’d assume, since there’s a whole spinoff LN about it) doesn’t tell us that much about her mentality in middle school, but of Sayaka’s many, many insecurities, given that she constantly drives to be the academic and athletic equal to a self-made wunderkind, I’m not sure being “ordinary” is something Sayaka is particularly interested in being; if anything, given how her drive to succeed is one of the things Sayaka loves about Touko, it’s probably quite the opposite; that she especially likes people that she feels are extraordinary or try to excel. 

But setting that little bit of silliness aside, in many ways Sayaka is very, very different from the kid initially deeply hesitant in her own feelings. And in many ways is far better off for it; she’s certainly somebody with a drive and a purpose in her life, somebody that has found somebody she cares about and is willing to protect who does care about her in turn (if in a different way than she might like), she’s somebody that strives to do her best in everything she sets her mind to do, and often manages to accomplish that. She has her issues, plenty of issues, but many of them aren’t things the girl in front of her seems to understand at all, and if anything Sayaka would feel is responsible for. And they’re issue that she is often, slowly, trying to get better at, step by step. 

  But now the person that, in many ways, challenged and could have obliterated her very sense of self, is basically saying that that Sayaka is the one that matters, and the Sayaka that Sayaka has worked so hard to be, has put all her life into being, is “wrong” somehow, and that’s not something Sayaka would be particularly inclined to let go. 

Like, in many senses Sayaka is like Touko in that she is tied and fixated to a perception of herself in the past. But whereas Touko is somebody that can’t escape that self and refuses to even try, Sayaka would prefer, at this point, to simply make a clean break of it. 

And so Sayaka does, as grandly and personally as a person probably could do. And I think that honestly, Sayaka probably genuinely didn’t feel that way until Senpai had been done talking; at the very least, it was something that was solidified in her at that moment. After the person she loves more than anyone else talks specifically about how she appreciates her for who she is, flawed as that person might be, and how Sayaka actually manages to make Touko stronger as a result of all her concentrated effort, well, that isn’t much of a comparison to somebody that would tell her to her face that none of that was, in essence, her choice to begin with and she would rather that person not exist. 

Like the above moment when Sayaka says this Senpai is rather happy, even if it’s because she has the totally wrong impression of what Sayaka is trying to communicate. And I think that in many ways that’s the right reaction; at the end of the day, regardless of whatever feelings the two have, had, or may have had for each other, Sayaka just ending everything now and saying, in no uncertain words, that she simply wanted Senpai out of her life, is probably what is best for the both of them, Sayaka especially, given how cathartic it would be to finally, actually, be able to say that, to be able to actually get the last word to somebody that managed to render her speechless and break her heart. 

In fact, I want to note that she completes this with a genuinely intimate gesture. This is the sort of thing Sayaka seemed genuinely terrified to do in the past, she was somebody that was all about self-control and creating a firm barrier between her and Touko, but that barrier has pretty clearly broken down a little. Touko doesn’t particularly mind this- her issue isn’t Sayaka having feelings for her at all, but simply Sayaka trying to commit to and act upon them- which I’m sure was a bit of a shot, but also something of a relief.

So! Let us move on from the past and discuss the present. Now that there is less discord in the group over the nature of the performance, the primary issue is the oncoming track meet. And Yuu and Sayaka in particular seem to be having some problems working together. Yuu is the one that takes the initiative in trying to maybe mend some fences, but Sayaka freely chooses to reciprocate, with little animosity. 

The two then chat about their first impressions of each other, and then Sayaka just kind of quietly (and quickly) says 

Like, you get the impression that having gotten to know Yuu, she doesn’t dislike her. Not really. She may dislike that Touko likes her, she may dislike how she thinks Yuu feels for Touko, but now that she has sightly tempered her jealousy, her feelings toward Yuu as a person come across as decently amicable, and that’s not really something that changes in the rest of the show. 

In a way, more than anything, what seems to be operating as a barrier is the thing that neither of them particularly seemed interested in confronting up to this point; their respective feelings for Touko. Yuu raises the issue first, with Sayaka simply dismissing it, and Yuu does the same. And thus Sayaka ends up concluding…

That that’s where they are. Two rivals in love, even if neither is willing to strictly admit to the other, Touko, or, in Sayaka’s eyes, maybe themselves. And this conversation really does seem to help them; they don’t converse much until the next episode, but they unreservedly agree on the day of the Athletic Meet, and then during the meet itself

They actually manage to do what had been a struggle for them in the first place; get in sync enough to properly pass the baton. At heart, Sayaka’s problem, from watching the anime, isn’t animosity, both jealous and simply the two not seeming to understand each other, and not really being able to be themselves, and regardless of what they admit or don’t strictly admit, it’s clear to both of them, it seems, that that’s simply not a thing that is any longer true. 

And then there’s the bit at the camp before everything goes to hell.

This is actually a short scene but it might be worth talking about a main reason it’s probably here. Outside her final bit and the scene in 7 before she goes to talk to Miyako, this is, as far as I can tell, the only time Sayaka wears glasses in the entire show. It’s just not something that she does either at school proper or at the student council, or in any sort of casual capacity. She is of course, happy to do it in her own home, and evidently occassionally in front of Touko. It shows, to an extent, a weakness or flaw of her’s- nobody would judge her at all for being near-sighted, most probably, but it’s something that she feels holds her back, and she doesn’t want other people to see it, unless they’re people that on some level, she has some degree of comfort with. 

And Yuu is in the room too. She’s okay with Yuu also being in this moment, of seeing something that she lets very few people see, because she simply feels that Yuu isn’t somebody that she needs to hide her insecurities or weaknesses from, because on one level or another, they’re two people that understand each other. 

Things take a darker turn at the end of the night, with Sayaka thinking about how she wishes she could do something, but in the end she’s glad Yuu’s there, because as much as she loves Touko, she also loves what they have right now, that there is a time and place for those happy moments, and gets that potentially ruining everything simply isn’t what she wants. 

Of course, then everything goes to hell, as it does. 

After Touko breaks, Sayaka is not only able to quickly figure out that something’s wrong, but very quickly what happened, and even why it bothered Touko so much. 

And that’s simply because she’s somebody that does, on some level, get who Touko is, and many of Touko’s problems. She knew, after all, to look for the student council book of her sister in the first place even before Touko thought to hide ti. On some level Sayaka isn’t just attentive, but she’s somebody that gets Touko enough that trying to hide things from her… doesn’t really work.

And so, she decides on a plan, and a way to deal with Yuu.

And it’s pretty placid, as it goes. Unlike the last time she feels the need to make such a missive, she feels no need to make things personal and is simply calm and frank: Touko doesn’t want Yuu worrying about her, she’ll take care of this. And on some level it may be (okay is) a jealousy thing, in part this is simply a duty Sayaka has assigned herself and has always had for herself. If she can’t do it now, when she alone understands the problem, when she alone has the knowledge necessary to solve it, what purpose does she have, really? 

And, well, it doesn’t quite work out that well. And I think there’s a couple reasons for that. Number 1.

I think Sayaka gets quite a bit of what is going on with Touko at this point, and I think the point Sayaka is trying to make is one that Touko does really need to hear. But the larger issue is one that she’s simply missing partially because she doesn’t know about this part of Touko’s life, she only knows about Touko after she began her years-long performance and given that they both were continually trying to keep the other as emotionally distant as possible. That’s a distance Sayaka is trying to close right now, both as a friend and as somebody that loves Touko. But Touko is simply too closed off with that information at heart, and she simply doesn’t know enough about Touko’s life, the “real” Touko’s life, to really get at the core of the problem.

But I think there’s another fundamental one. It goes back to what is occurring with Touko being “better” for her in the long run”. Like, I’m entirely unconvinced that Sayaka really gets how completely self-destructive Touko is. She has rarely tried to really get close to Touko before, especially on these sorts of terms. It took Touko basically outright saying it to Yuu, someone who knows Touko on this level simply a lot better, to really figure out what the core issue is. 

Like, for somebody who sees Touko as somebody that always strives to do better at what she achieves, and excels, the two things she says she loves about Touko the most, the possibility that all this stems from Touko simply despising herself as a person is something that would be rather difficult for her to grasp, and rather understandably so. So her attempts just… don’t work, and it comes down to Yuu figuring out a way to improvise things, because she’s really the only one that can.

The rest of the final episode is pretty much all Touko and Yuu, but we do get one final shot of Sayaka at the end, reading something and then smiling. 

It’s kind of hard to say what that is exactly, it can’t be an edited script because we just saw Koyomi slaving away on it in a previous shot, but regardless it does seem like, for one reason or another, Sayaka has regained a bit of optimism about things, and a degree of determination which is all for the good.

Okay that was far too long (4.6k words really now) but thank you for coming to my Sayaka-chan Ted Talk. 

Hope your day goes well. Cheers.