app † mayfield
Character Name: Saya Otonashi
Character Series: Blood+ (anime)
Character Age: 173 (appears 16)
Background: In early 1833, Joel Goldschmidt, a natural biologist, and his assistant, Amshel Goldsmith, discover a mummified, vaguely female-ish creature frozen in a glacier in Iceland. They name it "Saya", and Joel has it shipped to his French estate, named "The Zoo", where he conducts his research. It arrives on April 8th. Joel and Amshel proceed to dissect the mummy, and extract from its womb two cocoons. When they try to dissect these as well, Amshel cuts himself, and the blood he drips onto the cocoons causes a reaction: they grow warmer, and begin to pulsate. Because of the mummy's physiology resembles a bat in some ways, they christen the species chiroptera.
On August 4th, the cocoons hatch and twin girls emerge. As part of an experiment, the second is locked, unnamed, in a tower, and given only the barest essentials for survival. The first Joel adopts and raises as his own daughter, naming her Saya after her mother. She is given everything she could want, showered in gifts and affection, and given the freedom to go wherever she wanted within the confines of The Zoo. However, she regularly had to take "medicine" as "treatment" for some sort of "ailment".
By 1863, Saya and her twin have stopped aging completely. Joel has discovered Saya's fast healing rate, and that when her blood is mixed with her twin's, they crystalize and turn to dust. Joel and Amshel decide to secure a bridegroom for Saya to produce offspring more research specimens. In 1870, Amshel purchases a twelve-year-old boy from his mother for a loaf of bread. Joel introduces this boy to Saya as Hagi, and says he is to be her friend. Hagi initially rebels against Saya's bossy nature and hates the fact that he was bought like a slave, but eventually Saya's kindness begins to show and the two become inseparable.
Sometime during the following years, Saya hears a singing voice and follows it to a remote tower on the outskirts of the estate. Calling out to the person in the tower, she asks for their name. The person doesn't have one. Saya decides to name the person Diva, meaning great songstress, and asks to be friends. In response, Diva drops a blue rose from the tower.
1883 is the year that changes everything. Saya's self-confidence has slowly begun to erode as everyone around her aged, while she alone remains unchanged. One day she overhears Hagi confronting Joel on this. Hagi had heard that Joel regularly drew blood from the servants for Saya's "treatments", and this, combined with Saya's unchanged appearance and incredible healing rate, makes Hagi wonder what exactly Saya is. Joel responds that he doesn't have an answer, but that just as humans exist on Earth, so does Saya, and she needs blood to survive.
With Joel's 70th birthday approaching, Saya begins to worry what she will give him. After all, everything she owns was given to her by Joel. So she plans a special surprise. The first part is Joel's favorite flower, the fire lily: Saya has found a place on the estate where they bloom redder and brighter than anywhere else. The day of Joel's birthday, Saya and Hagi plan a picnic on a bluff to pick flowers. Before leaving, however, Saya prepares the second part of her gift: she steals the key from Joel's office, climbs the tower, and unlocks the door to invite Diva to sing for Joel. Leaving the door open, Saya rushes off with Hagi.
On the bluff, Saya shows Hagi the flower she wants to pick--it's on the side of the cliff. She begins to climb down, but Hagi stops her, and goes after the flower for her. But cliffsides are never safe, and as Hagi lunges to reach the flower, his handhold crumbles in his hand and he falls. It's a long fall. When Saya reaches the bottom of the cliff, she finds Hagi's broken, limp body, the dirt below him soaked in blood. Panicking, Saya remembers Hagi's conversation with Joel, and comes to a conclusion: if what she needs to do to live is drink blood, maybe that's what Hagi needs too. So Saya cuts her hand and feeds Hagi her blood.
Immediately, he begins convulsing, and then falls still again. Saya can't hear his heart. Terrified, she flees to the house, seeking help. What she finds is a massacre: broken bodies litter the ground, the mansion is in flames, and there, on the steps, is a girl who looks exactly like Saya, holding tenderly Joel's body as she sucks his blood. Diva looks up at Saya and smiles.
Hagi arrives then, revived, to protect Saya--but he's different. Wings erupt from his back and his arms become greyish-green and monstrous. Saya looks on in terror as Hagi, no longer human but now her chevalier, fights off Diva.
After recovering, the Saya resolves that, as she was the one who freed Diva, and as Diva is her twin sister, so Saya must be the one to kill Diva. She has a special sword fashioned, a Japanese katana with grooves in the flats to hold her blood. She and Hagi set off, and as their long, sad journey begins by train, Saya asks Hagi to make her a promise: after everything is done, after Diva is killed, Hagi must then kill Saya with his own hands. Hagi, now even more completely devoted to Saya's every wish, soberly complies.
However, after two or three years, Saya starts to lose her strength. Her wounds take longer to heal, and she is becoming tired, so, so tired. She and Hagi realize that she is going to fall into a long sleep. When the time comes, Hagi has a coffin prepared, and Saya is laid to rest in it. She sleeps for almost thirty years, and when she awakens it is 1914. Once she becomes re-acclimated, Saya and Hagi once more begin the hunt for Diva. Their search takes them to Russia in 1916, a time of unease in a country on the brink of revolution. Believing that Diva may be hidden in the Russian imperial court, they infiltrate the palace as part of the orchestra.
Throughout their investigation, all leads point to something sinister involving the Romanov priest/healer Grigori Rasputin. After the Revolution and Rasputin's death, Saya and Hagi set out into Siberia for Rasputin's hometown, Pokrovskoye, to see if it holds any clues. However, three years have already passed, and Saya is becoming tired again. When they reach the village, there is no trace of Rasputin, but they do meet a girl named Sonya whose father was conducting research in the capital. She lives alone now--her father's body was found in the woods, drained of blood--but she offers to put the up for the night.
In the middle of the night, Hagi sees someone in the woods, and leaves to investigate. For his trouble he is impaled through the chest on a stake. The next morning, Saya wakes up to only find Sonya in the house. When Sonya goes outside, she is attacked with an axe by an old woman from the village. Saya rushes outside, and the old woman screams about how she saw Sonya drinking the blood of villagers. An inhuman arm shoots out from Sonya's body and kills the old woman. Sonya rises to her feet, and begins to attack Saya. However, Saya is unarmed, and flees into the woods where she reunites with Hagi.
In a clearing, they come across a horse-drawn carriage. Sonya arrives and addresses the driver as Amshel, telling him to take Diva and go. He, Grigori, will stay behind and hold off their princess's enemies. Amshel and Diva flee, and Saya and Hagi engage Rasputin in battle, and Saya manages to strike a killing blow with her sword. Rasputin dies, and Saya collapses into Hagi's arms. The time for her long sleep is coming, and she's scared of waking up in a world where no one knows her. She falls asleep, and Hagi promises that he will always find her, no matter what.
When Saya awakens again, it is around 1950. She is unable to find Diva during this time, and again after a few years falls into hibernation. In 1972, ten years before either Diva or Saya are scheduled to awake, Diva's presence is confirmed in Vietnam. Red Shield, an organization founded by the grandchildren of Joel Goldschmidt to exterminate Diva, approaches Hagi with a plan to induce trigger Saya's awakening early. Because Saya takes the blood of her chevalier, Hagi, immediately upon each awakening, they deduce that by injecting her with his blood directly, they can bring her awake.
This plan goes horribly awry. The injection awakens Saya, certainly--but it also sends her into a berserk rage, mowing down everything in sight: chiroptera, soldiers, and villagers alike. Hagi tries to stop her, but Saya, not recognizing him, attacks him as well and severs his right hand. Hagi flees, and Saya falls back asleep. David, a member of Red Shield present, entrusts Saya to his subordinate George Miyagusuku before he dies. George brings Saya to Okinawa and lays her inside his family crypt, then waits out the next thirty years of her hibernation.
When she reawakens, it is 2005. She is disoriented, hazy, and amnesiac. George takes her in and raises her as his daughter, alongside his two adopted sons Kai and Riku. One year passes. From here on, I'll refer to these episode summaries.
Personality: The core of Saya's personality is that of a very ordinary girl. She is quiet and a bit of an introvert and withdrawn around strangers, but she is also very friendly. She is caring and compassionate, but a little spoiled around her family and close friends. She has a strong sense of responsibility, and though she hates fighting, she'll do it if she has to. Because of her complex background, Saya doesn't see family the way most people do. Blood doesn't matter; your family are the people you consider your family. It's an emotional connection, not a genetic one. One thing Saya's family has taught her is to try keep an upbeat attitude; "everything will be alright" is the Miyagusuku motto. But Saya often has to make a conscious effort to be positive.
Always one to put others before herself, Saya is likely to get more and more reckless as her friends and family are in danger. It helps that she's impervious to, well...just about everything. Swords, bullets, poison...none of it will do anything more than temporarily deter Saya, and she would willingly stab herself through the stomach if it was the only way to kill an enemy at her back. She has only recently come to terms with her desire to live life to its fullest, both for herself and for her loved ones, when for the longest time her own death had been her ultimate goal. What she is--chiropteran, not human--both frightens and disgusts Saya. She's terrified by the idea of a repeat of her rampage in Vietnam, and is scared of being rejected by others because of her true nature. She's also prone to blaming herself, even for things that aren't her fault.
Over the past hundred-and-fifty-plus years (of which only sixty or so were spent awake), Saya has suffered through physical and emotional turmoil, and she has the psychological scars to prove it. She's emotionally fragile, a little lost and trying to piece herself back together. She is a very private person, prone to withdrawing emotionally to protect both herself and others. In her view, her existence is a burden, and the least she can do is lessen it by not troubling others with her problems. She doesn't like causing others concern, and she's pretty good at faking it if she has to.
When Saya has a goal, she focuses on it tenaciously. She's not quite single-minded about it, but depending on the goal--killing her sister, for instance--she'll try to force herself to be, particularly at the expense of her own health. Lack of sleep and nutrition can become a problem if Saya's objective is serious enough, but she'll still push through with raw willpower until she breaks down and can't move. Then she'll give herself a chance to rest--but only a brief one.
But through all of the pain, loss, and heartache, Saya has somehow retained her ability to laugh and smile. It was a close thing--she nearly forgot what happiness was like--but in the end, she regained it. What she wants and enjoys most, more than anything, is to be normal: to have the chance to eat big dinners with her family, laugh with her friends, joke with her brother, and smile with her knight. She's an almost polarized character: a stoic warrior with a brittle, deceptively tough-looking shell, and a gentle girl who just wants the simple things in life.
Abilities: As a chiropteran queen, Saya has superior physical strength, speed, endurance, and senses. However, these tend to depend on how well she is and how regularly she feeds on blood. Because her normal practice is to receive regular transfusions (roughly once every week to two weeks or so) rather than feed on a constant basis directly from a source body, she's usually only just above human strength. Because Saya does not feed regularly enough to keep her abilities at peak, she is roughly at the level of an Olympic athlete, unlike her sister, who is at full strength and can punch through walls.
Additionally, she has latent, rapid regeneration abilities and is able to recover from nearly all wounds no matter how severe. She can also alter her appearance to take the form of any other person whose blood she has drunk, although she has never been seen to do so; of the twins, only Diva has used this skill. Drinking her chevalier's blood increases her regeneration speed. Saya's blood is the only thing that can kill Diva, Diva's chevaliers, or any chiroptera made with Diva's blood or the Delta-67 agent (which is also made from Diva's blood); likewise, Diva's blood is fatal to Saya. Any human who drinks Saya's blood will undergo transformation into a chiroptera and become her chevalier.
Having trained with a fencing instructor and with decades of practice, Saya is a more than apt swordswoman. She's a decent cellist--though a century out of practice--and has a particular talent for eating unspeakable amounts of food. She is fluent in French, English, Japanese, and also likely knows some Latin.
Character Series: Blood+ (anime)
Character Age: 173 (appears 16)
Background: In early 1833, Joel Goldschmidt, a natural biologist, and his assistant, Amshel Goldsmith, discover a mummified, vaguely female-ish creature frozen in a glacier in Iceland. They name it "Saya", and Joel has it shipped to his French estate, named "The Zoo", where he conducts his research. It arrives on April 8th. Joel and Amshel proceed to dissect the mummy, and extract from its womb two cocoons. When they try to dissect these as well, Amshel cuts himself, and the blood he drips onto the cocoons causes a reaction: they grow warmer, and begin to pulsate. Because of the mummy's physiology resembles a bat in some ways, they christen the species chiroptera.
On August 4th, the cocoons hatch and twin girls emerge. As part of an experiment, the second is locked, unnamed, in a tower, and given only the barest essentials for survival. The first Joel adopts and raises as his own daughter, naming her Saya after her mother. She is given everything she could want, showered in gifts and affection, and given the freedom to go wherever she wanted within the confines of The Zoo. However, she regularly had to take "medicine" as "treatment" for some sort of "ailment".
By 1863, Saya and her twin have stopped aging completely. Joel has discovered Saya's fast healing rate, and that when her blood is mixed with her twin's, they crystalize and turn to dust. Joel and Amshel decide to secure a bridegroom for Saya to produce offspring more research specimens. In 1870, Amshel purchases a twelve-year-old boy from his mother for a loaf of bread. Joel introduces this boy to Saya as Hagi, and says he is to be her friend. Hagi initially rebels against Saya's bossy nature and hates the fact that he was bought like a slave, but eventually Saya's kindness begins to show and the two become inseparable.
Sometime during the following years, Saya hears a singing voice and follows it to a remote tower on the outskirts of the estate. Calling out to the person in the tower, she asks for their name. The person doesn't have one. Saya decides to name the person Diva, meaning great songstress, and asks to be friends. In response, Diva drops a blue rose from the tower.
1883 is the year that changes everything. Saya's self-confidence has slowly begun to erode as everyone around her aged, while she alone remains unchanged. One day she overhears Hagi confronting Joel on this. Hagi had heard that Joel regularly drew blood from the servants for Saya's "treatments", and this, combined with Saya's unchanged appearance and incredible healing rate, makes Hagi wonder what exactly Saya is. Joel responds that he doesn't have an answer, but that just as humans exist on Earth, so does Saya, and she needs blood to survive.
With Joel's 70th birthday approaching, Saya begins to worry what she will give him. After all, everything she owns was given to her by Joel. So she plans a special surprise. The first part is Joel's favorite flower, the fire lily: Saya has found a place on the estate where they bloom redder and brighter than anywhere else. The day of Joel's birthday, Saya and Hagi plan a picnic on a bluff to pick flowers. Before leaving, however, Saya prepares the second part of her gift: she steals the key from Joel's office, climbs the tower, and unlocks the door to invite Diva to sing for Joel. Leaving the door open, Saya rushes off with Hagi.
On the bluff, Saya shows Hagi the flower she wants to pick--it's on the side of the cliff. She begins to climb down, but Hagi stops her, and goes after the flower for her. But cliffsides are never safe, and as Hagi lunges to reach the flower, his handhold crumbles in his hand and he falls. It's a long fall. When Saya reaches the bottom of the cliff, she finds Hagi's broken, limp body, the dirt below him soaked in blood. Panicking, Saya remembers Hagi's conversation with Joel, and comes to a conclusion: if what she needs to do to live is drink blood, maybe that's what Hagi needs too. So Saya cuts her hand and feeds Hagi her blood.
Immediately, he begins convulsing, and then falls still again. Saya can't hear his heart. Terrified, she flees to the house, seeking help. What she finds is a massacre: broken bodies litter the ground, the mansion is in flames, and there, on the steps, is a girl who looks exactly like Saya, holding tenderly Joel's body as she sucks his blood. Diva looks up at Saya and smiles.
Hagi arrives then, revived, to protect Saya--but he's different. Wings erupt from his back and his arms become greyish-green and monstrous. Saya looks on in terror as Hagi, no longer human but now her chevalier, fights off Diva.
After recovering, the Saya resolves that, as she was the one who freed Diva, and as Diva is her twin sister, so Saya must be the one to kill Diva. She has a special sword fashioned, a Japanese katana with grooves in the flats to hold her blood. She and Hagi set off, and as their long, sad journey begins by train, Saya asks Hagi to make her a promise: after everything is done, after Diva is killed, Hagi must then kill Saya with his own hands. Hagi, now even more completely devoted to Saya's every wish, soberly complies.
However, after two or three years, Saya starts to lose her strength. Her wounds take longer to heal, and she is becoming tired, so, so tired. She and Hagi realize that she is going to fall into a long sleep. When the time comes, Hagi has a coffin prepared, and Saya is laid to rest in it. She sleeps for almost thirty years, and when she awakens it is 1914. Once she becomes re-acclimated, Saya and Hagi once more begin the hunt for Diva. Their search takes them to Russia in 1916, a time of unease in a country on the brink of revolution. Believing that Diva may be hidden in the Russian imperial court, they infiltrate the palace as part of the orchestra.
Throughout their investigation, all leads point to something sinister involving the Romanov priest/healer Grigori Rasputin. After the Revolution and Rasputin's death, Saya and Hagi set out into Siberia for Rasputin's hometown, Pokrovskoye, to see if it holds any clues. However, three years have already passed, and Saya is becoming tired again. When they reach the village, there is no trace of Rasputin, but they do meet a girl named Sonya whose father was conducting research in the capital. She lives alone now--her father's body was found in the woods, drained of blood--but she offers to put the up for the night.
In the middle of the night, Hagi sees someone in the woods, and leaves to investigate. For his trouble he is impaled through the chest on a stake. The next morning, Saya wakes up to only find Sonya in the house. When Sonya goes outside, she is attacked with an axe by an old woman from the village. Saya rushes outside, and the old woman screams about how she saw Sonya drinking the blood of villagers. An inhuman arm shoots out from Sonya's body and kills the old woman. Sonya rises to her feet, and begins to attack Saya. However, Saya is unarmed, and flees into the woods where she reunites with Hagi.
In a clearing, they come across a horse-drawn carriage. Sonya arrives and addresses the driver as Amshel, telling him to take Diva and go. He, Grigori, will stay behind and hold off their princess's enemies. Amshel and Diva flee, and Saya and Hagi engage Rasputin in battle, and Saya manages to strike a killing blow with her sword. Rasputin dies, and Saya collapses into Hagi's arms. The time for her long sleep is coming, and she's scared of waking up in a world where no one knows her. She falls asleep, and Hagi promises that he will always find her, no matter what.
When Saya awakens again, it is around 1950. She is unable to find Diva during this time, and again after a few years falls into hibernation. In 1972, ten years before either Diva or Saya are scheduled to awake, Diva's presence is confirmed in Vietnam. Red Shield, an organization founded by the grandchildren of Joel Goldschmidt to exterminate Diva, approaches Hagi with a plan to induce trigger Saya's awakening early. Because Saya takes the blood of her chevalier, Hagi, immediately upon each awakening, they deduce that by injecting her with his blood directly, they can bring her awake.
This plan goes horribly awry. The injection awakens Saya, certainly--but it also sends her into a berserk rage, mowing down everything in sight: chiroptera, soldiers, and villagers alike. Hagi tries to stop her, but Saya, not recognizing him, attacks him as well and severs his right hand. Hagi flees, and Saya falls back asleep. David, a member of Red Shield present, entrusts Saya to his subordinate George Miyagusuku before he dies. George brings Saya to Okinawa and lays her inside his family crypt, then waits out the next thirty years of her hibernation.
When she reawakens, it is 2005. She is disoriented, hazy, and amnesiac. George takes her in and raises her as his daughter, alongside his two adopted sons Kai and Riku. One year passes. From here on, I'll refer to these episode summaries.
Personality: The core of Saya's personality is that of a very ordinary girl. She is quiet and a bit of an introvert and withdrawn around strangers, but she is also very friendly. She is caring and compassionate, but a little spoiled around her family and close friends. She has a strong sense of responsibility, and though she hates fighting, she'll do it if she has to. Because of her complex background, Saya doesn't see family the way most people do. Blood doesn't matter; your family are the people you consider your family. It's an emotional connection, not a genetic one. One thing Saya's family has taught her is to try keep an upbeat attitude; "everything will be alright" is the Miyagusuku motto. But Saya often has to make a conscious effort to be positive.
Always one to put others before herself, Saya is likely to get more and more reckless as her friends and family are in danger. It helps that she's impervious to, well...just about everything. Swords, bullets, poison...none of it will do anything more than temporarily deter Saya, and she would willingly stab herself through the stomach if it was the only way to kill an enemy at her back. She has only recently come to terms with her desire to live life to its fullest, both for herself and for her loved ones, when for the longest time her own death had been her ultimate goal. What she is--chiropteran, not human--both frightens and disgusts Saya. She's terrified by the idea of a repeat of her rampage in Vietnam, and is scared of being rejected by others because of her true nature. She's also prone to blaming herself, even for things that aren't her fault.
Over the past hundred-and-fifty-plus years (of which only sixty or so were spent awake), Saya has suffered through physical and emotional turmoil, and she has the psychological scars to prove it. She's emotionally fragile, a little lost and trying to piece herself back together. She is a very private person, prone to withdrawing emotionally to protect both herself and others. In her view, her existence is a burden, and the least she can do is lessen it by not troubling others with her problems. She doesn't like causing others concern, and she's pretty good at faking it if she has to.
When Saya has a goal, she focuses on it tenaciously. She's not quite single-minded about it, but depending on the goal--killing her sister, for instance--she'll try to force herself to be, particularly at the expense of her own health. Lack of sleep and nutrition can become a problem if Saya's objective is serious enough, but she'll still push through with raw willpower until she breaks down and can't move. Then she'll give herself a chance to rest--but only a brief one.
But through all of the pain, loss, and heartache, Saya has somehow retained her ability to laugh and smile. It was a close thing--she nearly forgot what happiness was like--but in the end, she regained it. What she wants and enjoys most, more than anything, is to be normal: to have the chance to eat big dinners with her family, laugh with her friends, joke with her brother, and smile with her knight. She's an almost polarized character: a stoic warrior with a brittle, deceptively tough-looking shell, and a gentle girl who just wants the simple things in life.
Abilities: As a chiropteran queen, Saya has superior physical strength, speed, endurance, and senses. However, these tend to depend on how well she is and how regularly she feeds on blood. Because her normal practice is to receive regular transfusions (roughly once every week to two weeks or so) rather than feed on a constant basis directly from a source body, she's usually only just above human strength. Because Saya does not feed regularly enough to keep her abilities at peak, she is roughly at the level of an Olympic athlete, unlike her sister, who is at full strength and can punch through walls.
Additionally, she has latent, rapid regeneration abilities and is able to recover from nearly all wounds no matter how severe. She can also alter her appearance to take the form of any other person whose blood she has drunk, although she has never been seen to do so; of the twins, only Diva has used this skill. Drinking her chevalier's blood increases her regeneration speed. Saya's blood is the only thing that can kill Diva, Diva's chevaliers, or any chiroptera made with Diva's blood or the Delta-67 agent (which is also made from Diva's blood); likewise, Diva's blood is fatal to Saya. Any human who drinks Saya's blood will undergo transformation into a chiroptera and become her chevalier.
Having trained with a fencing instructor and with decades of practice, Saya is a more than apt swordswoman. She's a decent cellist--though a century out of practice--and has a particular talent for eating unspeakable amounts of food. She is fluent in French, English, Japanese, and also likely knows some Latin.