Saya no Uta/Characters

Fuminori Sakisaka

Voiced by: Hikaru Midorikawa

The main character. A medical student in his twenties and the sole survivor of a horrible car accident. Saved by an experimental medical treatment, he now sees the world in a contorted manner with the exception of one thing: a girl named Saya.

Ax Crazy: He even buys an ax later on to use for the specific purpose of hacking apart one of his former friends.
Cannot Spit It Out: He won't tell anyone about his agnosia, for fear of becoming a guinea pig in lab experiments. Naturally, his silence ends up doing more harm than good.
Conveniently an Orphan: The fact that both his parents were killed in the horrific car crash means no one really knows what's going on inside his house.
Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: Unknowingly at first, but still.
Driven to Suicide: Attempted it before the beginning of the game due to his condition, but didn't succeed. Succeeds in 1 of the 3 endings in a particularly gory way, by smashing his face repeatedly into the blade of an ax.
Failure Is the Only Option: He and Saya don't end up together in any of the game's 3 endings.
Fate Worse Than Death: How he viewed his abnormal condition up until Saya came into his life.
Good People Have Good Sex: Averted, he and Saya have a very active sex life even though they get more depraved as the story goes on.
Harmful Healing: The brain surgery that saved his life did way more harm than good for his psyche, unfortunately.
H-Game POV Character: Initially seems to be a Type II B, but depending on the choices picked, he can quickly deterioriate into either a Type VI A or B.
Horror Hunger: Due to his condition he seemingly loses his appetite for normal food which now tastes unappealing to him, no matter what dishes Saya tries to cook. However, after he returns home one day and finds Saya crouching down and eating something lying on the floor...
I Just Want to Be Normal: In the first of the three endings.
I'm a Humanitarian: And his first human meal is one of his former friends, no less.
I Will Wait for You: Again, in the first of the three endings.
Jerkass
Kick the Dog: Telling Yoh that he always hated her after she tries confessing how much she cares about him. He really could have been a lot less cruel about turning her down.
Lack of Empathy
Love Makes You Crazy and Evil
Non-Action Guy: Kouji is a much better fighter than him because of this, and nearly beats him in their final duel before Saya intervenes.
Not Good with People: In a sense. After losing his normal senses of perception, he can only relate well with Saya, who's actually an alien, and not with other people since they look like monsters to him.
Parental Abandonment: Both his parents were killed in a horrific car crash that led him to his medical illness.
Sanity Slippage: His insanity slowly worsens as the game progresses.
There Are No Therapists: Averted hard. There are therapists available, but Fuminori refuses to see any of them.
Took a Level in Jerkass: He is said to have been a much nicer person before the events of the game take place.
Tragic Villain
Unholy Matrimony: With Saya.
Villain Protagonist
Yandere: His reaction to finding someone raping Saya was to take the nearest meat cleaver and go crazy hacking at the man with it. He is also willing to let the world be damned for the sake of their love.

Saya

Voiced by: Naoko Takano

A strange girl who's been living with Fuminori ever since he got out of the hospital. She's the only thing that appears normal to him.

Action Girl
Apocalypse Maiden: Her pregnancy marks the end of humankind.
Betty and Veronica: Veronica to Yoh's Betty.
Blue and Orange Morality
Brown Note: Her true form is treated like this. All of the humans that have seen it have immediately lost their sanity if they aren't outright killed by her. Only people who are already insane/disturbed seem to be unaffected, not to mention people with Fuminori's brain disorder.
Ceiling Cling: Capable of doing this to sneak up on her prey, and she kills Ōmi this way.
Combat Tentacles: Her true form has many of these.
Cute Monster Girl: NO.
Death by Childbirth: In the second ending.
Deuteragonist
Does Not Like Shoes
Don't Look At Me: In the first ending, she visits Fuminori in the mental ward at night one day, but refuses to let him see her true form despite his desire to see her one more time. Instead, she passes him a cellphone from behind the door which they use to exchange messages with each other, until she finally bids him farewell.
Eldritch Abomination
Extreme Omnisexual: Implied, given her treatment of Yoh.
Failure Is the Only Option: She and Fuminori don't end up together in any of the game's 3 endings.
The Fake Cutie: Looks and acts this way in front of Fuminori.
Flower Motifs: She compares herself to a dandelion. Fitting, considering the ending where she scatters her "pollen" to infect humans worldwide.
A Form You Are Comfortable With: Her true form is implied to be a cross between a Blob Monster and a Starfish Alien.
Good People Have Good Sex: Averted, she and Fuminori have a very active sex life even though they get more depraved as the story goes on.
- Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Later revealed to be this. Involving tentacles, to boot.
- Fan Disservice: The revelation that her true form is that of an Eldritch Abomination might make their sex life even more disturbing than it already was.
The Grotesque
- Grotesque Cute: Obviously only applies to her human form.
Hell Is That Noise: In-universe, her true voice when it's heard by normal humans is treated this way, and sounds quite bizarre.
I Do Not Drink... Wine: Fuminori mentions he never saw her eat in front of him at the beginning of the game. He later finds out why.
I Just Want to Be Loved: Eros type.
I'm a Humanitarian: Technically, although she only counts as one because she looks like a human in front of Fuminori while eating her favorite kind of meal.
- To Serve Man: She can eat animals as well, such as birds or cats, but prefers humans above all else.
It Amused Me: She used to haunt the hospital Ougai worked in prior to meeting Fuminori, and spent her nights wandering the halls and scaring the crap out of insane patients (who would never be believed by anyone) for her own amusement. In fact, this was the reason she met Fuminori in the first place since she was trying to terrify him with her appearance, but when he didn't react to her with fear, she became interested in him.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the first ending when she returns Fuminori's sight to normal again, while knowing that he can never love her the same way as he did before.
Kill It with Ice: In the third ending, Saya gets killed with the help of liquid nitrogen after Ryouko discovers the only vulnerability in her biological makeup: below freezing temperatures.
Leitmotif: Song of Saya I & II, two soothing but distinctly otherworldly and eerie tracks that capture everything about her character perfectly.
Living Emotional Crutch: So very much for Fuminori. If he had never met her, he would have killed himself a long time ago. In fact, one of the three endings has him commit suicide immediately after seeing her dying body.
Lovable Sex Maniac: Fuminori notes she is always eager to go to bed with him every day.
Love Makes You Crazy and Evil
Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: She's not really Ougai's daughter, but she still calls him her papa.
Magical Girlfriend: A monstrous variation of the trope, although her love for Fuminori is still portrayed as genuine.
Mysterious Waif
Nigh Invulnerability: She's not immune to pain though. Bullets still clearly hurt her, but they won't outright kill her. Liquid nitrogen on the other hand...
Only One Name: Her name was given by Ougai, who named her after his beloved mother's cat.
Power Gives You Wings: Or rather, in her case it's parturition.
Psychopathic Womanchild
Rape as Drama
Rapunzel Hair: Goes all the way down her waist to her feet. She has two shorter locks of hair that stick out rather like cat ears, too.
Rasputinian Death: In the third ending. Even after getting half her body frozen by liquid nitrogen and then blown off by a 12-gauge shotgun, she somehow manages to slowly crawl over to Fuminori's side, all while Kouji is bashing her body over and over with a steel pipe, until she finally reaches him, weakly touches his face and then finally dies.
Sanity Slippage: Subtly suffers from this after she's raped.
Star-Crossed Lovers: With Fuminori. The only ending where they both survive is the one where he's locked up in a mental institution for the rest of his life, and she's out there somewhere still searching for her foster father, Ougai.
- Together in Death: The third ending makes this incredibly poignant.
Strange Girl: Justified, because she's literally an alien.
Super Intelligence: Her entire race has this trait.
- Good with Numbers
- Super Speed Reading: Demonstrates this ability while poring over Fuminori's medical charts.
Unholy Matrimony: Again with Fuminori.
Villain Protagonist
Violently Protective Girlfriend: In one of the endings, she kills Kouji brutally and starts consuming his body immediately after breaking his neck because he was hurting Fuminori.
Walking Spoiler: Of course, it's right-on-your-face obvious that she doesn't look like an average barely pubescent girl since everything that does look normal look horrible from the protagonist's point-of-view, and because of that Cute Monster Girl is not spoiled, but the deep details of her backstory and objectives in the present are only revealed in most endings.
Woman in White
Yandere: Rather than Murder the Hypotenuse though, Saya has a much worse fate planned for her...

Kouji Tonoo

Voiced by: Yasunori Matsumoto

Fuminori's friend. After Fuminori's accident he has been trying to help Fuminori's life get back to normal.

Action Survivor
Badass
Combat Pragmatist: His skill and experience in street fighting makes him a superior combatant to Fuminori, who has never fought anyone before.
Driven to Suicide: In the third ending. He hasn't killed himself yet, but the only way he can continue living with the knowledge he now has is by keeping a revolver loaded with a single bullet in his room all the time.
Go Mad from the Revelation
He Knows Too Much: Fuminori tries to kill him because of this. Luckily, Ryoko finds him before he dies inside the well he was pushed into.
Hero Antagonist
Horrible Judge of Character: Justified in that Fuminori was his best friend though, and Kouji would have never guessed he would later try to kill him. Nonetheless, he still suffers a bit from this when Fuminori shows up, starts acting strange, and abruptly asks to be driven all the way to a far, remote location without suspecting he might be up to something.
The Insomniac: Suffers from recurrent nightmares after surviving in the third ending.
The Matchmaker: He and Ōmi were trying to get their respective friends, Fuminori and Yoh, together as a couple before the accident happened.
Nice Guy: He's the only genuine example of this, unlike Fuminori, at least before he gets broken down by his subsequent experiences.
Only Sane Man: Lampshades this at one point, when he wonders why he keeps meeting crazy people all the time. This is before he loses it too, though.
Pipe Pain: He picks up a steel pipe during his final confrontation with Fuminori at his new home.
Sanity Slippage
Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: With Ōmi, before she got killed. This only applies to their personalities though, and not their physical attributes.
Sole Survivor: In the third ending.
A Tragedy of Impulsiveness/Too Dumb to Live: The player can actually invoke these tropes by choosing to have Kouji immediately phone Fuminori after finding the refrigerated remains of his girlfriend in Fuminori's house, rather than choosing the more rational option of contacting Ryoko first. Depending on which choice is picked, Kouji will either play these tropes entirely straight or avert them.

Ōmi Takahata

Voiced by: Hyo-sei

Kouji's girlfriend and Yoh's best friend.

Death From Above
Genki Girl
Go Mad from the Revelation: Seconds before Saya envelops her, she loses her sanity.
Kill the Cutie
The Matchmaker: She and Kouji were trying to get their respective friends, Yoh and Fuminori, together as a couple, before Fuminori's accident happened.
Sacrificial Lamb
Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: With Kouji, before she got killed.
Spear Carrier
Stuffed in A Fridge: Literally. Her boyfriend discovers her grisly remains (including what looks like her dismembered hand) in one of the storage containers in Fuminori's refrigerator.

Yoh Tsukuba

Voiced by: Mio Yasuda

A young woman with an unrequited crush on Fuminori. She sincerely tries to help and understand him but her attempts to reach out to him are always met with disdain. She dies in 2 of the game's 3 endings.

Betty and Veronica: Betty to Saya's Veronica.
Body Horror/Viral Transformation: Happens while she is slowly and painfully getting transformed into the same being as Saya. When Kouji phones her, she says that her ear is melting off, and her fingers aren't supposed to look like that...
Butt Monkey: Played for drama.
Buxom Is Better: Fuminori is more aroused by her voluptuous physique than by Saya's more childlike body.
The Cutie
- Break the Cutie: Goes through this is every ending but the shortest one, culminating in Kill the Cutie.
Empty Shell
Fate Worse Than Death: Fortunately, she dies in both endings when this is about to happen to her.
Girl Notices First: This does NOT end well for her.
I Cannot Self-Terminate: She begs Kouji to kill her at the end of the game because she is suffering so much in her new form.
The Ingenue
Love Hurts: Oh so much.
Nice Girl
- Dogged Nice Girl
Rape as Drama: First by Saya, then by Fuminori, then both at the same time...
- Sex Slave
There Is No Kill Like Overkill: First she gets shot four times, and then she gets beaten to a bloody pulp by Kouji's steel pipe when he freaks out after seeing her transformed state. The text states that she stopped moving after the twentieth time he used the pipe, but he keeps going all the way past thirty.
Tragic Monster
Unrequited Tragic Maiden: Things really don't end well for her in two of the endings simply because she had an unrequited crush on Fuminori.

Ryōko Tanbo

Voiced by: Mitsuki Saiga

Fuminori's doctor. A friendly professional who wants to help Fuminori as best as she can. Her real personality is actually very distant and calculated. She also knows a lot more about Fuminori's condition and treatment than she lets on. She dies in 2 of the game's 3 endings.

Action Girl
Badass Labcoat
Beneath the Mask: On the job, she's a kind, friendly doctor, albeit somewhat cold and extremely secretive. Off the job, she's paranoid and obsessed with killing the Eldritch Abomination that haunts her dreams.
Big Damn Hero
Despair Event Horizon: In the "bloom" ending.
Dying Moment of Awesome: Despite getting an axe cutting down through her left shoulder to her chest, she manages to point her 12-gauge shotgun at Saya, who has been partially frozen by liquid nitrogen, and pull the trigger in her final moments, all while smiling horribly.
Genre Savvy
Go Mad from the Revelation: Discovering Ougai's research really pushed her over the edge.
Go Out with a Smile: Definitely not the peaceful kind, though.
Hero Antagonist
Hidden Depths
Hospital Hottie
Ice Queen: Always has a ruthlessly cold demeanor, even when she's behaving at her politest to her patients.
The Insomniac: Suffers nightmares daily after finding about Ougai's research experiments.
Meganekko: Subverted when she reveals her true personality, though.
Normally I Would Be Dead Now: Her dying moment of awesome is all about this.
Occult Detective
Properly Paranoid
Psychotic Smirk: Flashes these several times to show her breaking sanity, but most triumphantly when she pulls the trigger of her shotgun in her final moments to finish off Saya while sneering at Fuminori.
Sawed-Off Shotgun: Carries one around with her all the time. She deliberately modified hers to widen its range and for maximum damage.
She's Got Legs
You Gotta Have Green Hair: Oddly, she's the only major character with an unrealistic hair colour, besides Saya whose human appearance isn't her true form, at any rate.