Inui Saki - Zwei Never

This is going to be kinda a rant post but whatever. For people who didn’t know, Sprite had plans for a sequel of Aokana but it never came to reality. Some time ago, the internet leaked the teaser ( with a vocal version of the track Ao no Kanata He) , and some storyboard panels featuring a new heroine who appears to be Irina’s sister, who also was mentioned quite often during the first installment of the novel.

But yeah, the point is, Aokana 2 was going to be a thing, and Saki should have been able to claim a spot on the grand stage because they spilled a lot of hints in the first part and you can totally tell that her story wasn’t complete, it felt like a halfbaked buildup and served as a plot device to a certain extent. Regardless, the fact remained that there was some emphasis on her presence, thus proving that Sprite had set things up for her and just waited for a full-fledged sequel to roll.

Anyway, I’m still going to share my view on her, based on how she was portrayed in the original game plus some interpretations there and then.

Overall, I think Inui Saki is quite misunderstood for a large part of the story. They painted her up to be some sort of edgy player who tends to bully the weak (which was not really off the mark but more on that later), but most of the time that was just the main characters narrating the story quickly jumped to their conclusion. The majority of what you know about Saki was mostly indirect, either someone was just spitting what they “think they know” or some shady video clips, they did not even get to see her speak up and just decided for themselves that she’s bad, so yeah it all felt very shallow and mysterious, just the tip of the iceberg.

Looking back, while Irina was the one who came up with the sadistic plan to crush the fun out of FC, Saki simply followed her order. The thing about Saki is that she’s just terrible at communication, you don’t get to see what’s really on her mind until the very end. The people around her only saw her as the villain because of how intimidating her playstyle is, without understanding how she felt inside. Sure, being considerate should be part of common sense, but in sports, you don’t need to always express yourself, and just focus on what matters, which is winning. The concept of “play to win” vs “play for fun” is a delicate one.

I myself have once participated in competitive gaming (almost felt like e-sport) and I can tell you how toxic and negative it can get. At first, you convinced yourself that you don’t care about winning and just trying to do your best or choose to do off-meta for the fun, but at one time your urge to win might rise and become brakeless, thus transforming you into a different person as a result.

So what I’m trying to say here, is Saki was first portrayed as a stone-cold player who didn’t care how her opponents feel during the match, which is not a big deal when you think it’s the nature of the competition overall. If anything it looked like they were just being sore losers. Not like she ever trash-talked them or anything, she came to the first tournament, humbled their best player, refused to elaborate then left the scene like a Chad.

The reality is, Saki herself only ever wanted to fly, and flying was about one of a few things on her mind. She voluntarily chose the role of the bad guy to further Irina’s goal and was ready to accept solitude by flying so high that no one else would be capable of catching up, just as her nickname suggests, a monarch of the sky. People are often afraid of the unknown, and because Saki never opened up herself, the fear of her surroundings would just keep growing, and so she was bound to be forever deemed as a devil.

Also not sure if this was intentional but when she activated her Agravain phase 2 her whole aura kinda resemble that of a bat, which is something likened to living in the dark so kinda poetic right there.

It was not until the match with Asuka that we finally get to see the full character of Saki, and I think it was worth reserving that timid part of her for the late game to add up more spice to the climax. Saki in the end just had a problem with dealing with people, she didn’t know or understand how to make friends, and people often mistake her as being rude or evil bla bla, but only Asuka saw through that poker face of hers and took the initiative to create an opportunity for something positive between them.

This is why Asuka route is the best imo because of how well they pierce everything together along the road. It wasn’t even a overused rivalry trope, instead, they opted for a straightforward clash of ideals that resolved succinctly without any long-winded sequences.

On the other hand, Asuka should be considered the prodigy child. She’s someone who’s completely new to the game but managed to revolutionize FC almost immediately. So yeah, you get the idea, normally, Asuka as the main character should be the underdog with nothing at her disposal besides “hard work”. I mean sure, Asuka also trained a lot with other people but compared to the insane amount of effort Saki put into throughout the years since her childhood, boi, that’s just nuts how fast she grew.

Meanwhile, Saki as the antagonist was supposed to be the genius one who just fucking goat at everything and having little weakness bla bla. However, as mentioned above, in Aokana she just “worked hard”. I think this right here is what also makes me enjoy Asuka route a lot, they just flipped the ideas around AND mixed them, but not without remaining consistent to the end and it all paid off.

And while we’re talking about the meta, I think the match between Saki and Asuka wasn’t entirely asspull for the protagonist’s side. I mean Saki might have had the upper hand with Agravain 2.0, but that’s it, it’s her final card, her limit, if you present something else that could top Agravain 2.0 then that’s her loss.

This goes in sync with how “ordinary” of a player she was, she was just someone who practiced hard, and that lead her to that final game with Asuka, being backed up by the esteemed science crew and the state-of-the-art technology run by her school, all of that made her head and shoulder above the average FC players.

Yet again, all these power requires progress, it was the result of how much effort Saki and her team put in, and they didn’t come out at the drop of the hat, so for her to face an unforeseeable opponent with a new ceiling was nigh impossible to find a way out during that short time of the game.

On the contrary, Asuka, by turning off the balancer, had managed to unshackle her latent power and was able to turn the tide of the game and raise the bar to another level or two. Since she’s a prodigy, this does not feel out of the loop from how I see it, you can say the non-default setting of the Anti-Grav had been nerfing Asuka all the time so yeah, kinda hax but it is what it is.

So to sum it up, while Saki and Asuka are in the same tier as FC players, their styles just clash against each other. On the red corner, Saki follows the traditional “slow and steady” approach which takes time to accumulate strength and sharpen her skill. In the blue corner, Asuka is simply uncontested in her ability to adapt and react to any huge wall laid in front of her. Like a fearless child who yearn to know more about her world, she’d unfazedly learn to walk the sky regardless of how bleak the situation is.

Moreover, Saki decided to go out of character for once to ignore Irina’s order and gave up on the idea of “play to win” to opt for the “fun” part, thus risking her chance of salvaging the situation. For many people that seem like Tuesday for them, but for Saki, that was the day of her life, when she dared to take a step up and break off her shell.

Of course, she did mention trying to win for Irina but this time it felt a lot different than the usual one-sided matches where she was completely remorseful of the situation. So in a sense, it was not a good move for Saki in that final match, because, unlike Asuka, she cannot adapt quickly to spontaneous changes, but that change serves as a stepping stone that’d benefit her later as she discovered another fuel for her desire to fly, which will take time to come to show its true form (zwei never).

You can say that both oppositions had gained their motivation and were striving to win while having fun, and so they put everything on the tables in that fateful finale, which was the key element of the final act in Asuka route.

All and all, I think Saki as a character was more than qualified to become something more phenomenal than she already was, had she not been robbed of a dedicated route. Everything you know about Saki in the first Aokana is more or less teasers and build-up, as there were a lot of holes in her story and motivation or so. But even if we disregard that sequel, I think they’ve done a good job of designing her as a counter-thesis for Asuka whose route also gathers more attention and care imo, which further reinforces the idea of Saki having a comeback in the sequel that might never come. But again, what is hyped may never die, and I’ll keep waiting until that day arrives.