[Suzerain of Sheol]

Sayori does have that irresistible adorableness, and she definitely made me laugh the most out of any of the characters, but for me, knowing why she acts that way makes it harder to appreciate her demeanor since it's coming from such a horrible place. I do love her as a character, the way her depression is portrayed is incredibly well-done and out of the four girls, she definitely resonates in a way the others don't, but at the same time, realizing that she's specifically crafted that way to make the player regret any choice they make in act one definitely adds a layer of artificiality to her character for me. It's tough, I really like her, but it's almost hard to rank her with the others as she comes across almost as more of a plot device than a character a lot of the time. (Which, yes, is pretty much the point, and goes for the others as well, just not to the same extent, at least for me.)

Natsuki was easily my favorite, mostly because of how she's the sanity anchor in the sea of madness, for the most part. I really like the subtle character work she gets, and I found how genuinely happy she was on the weekend date to be really touching (and very sad, obviously). As opposed to Yuri's, which...

I cannot stand Yuri. Maybe it's because I've seen at least 10 Let's Plays of the game and they ALL go for her, but I just find her totally insufferable at this point. She just comes across to me as a total (pun partially intended) edgelord tryhard. Which, yeah, she's a teenager, so it makes sense, but her personality and mental problems definitely strike me as the most contrived and "anime" out of everyone. Maybe there's a layer to her I'm missing, or maybe I'm being biased by the game forcing her into prominence in act 2. It just seems to me like the whole erotomanic masochism angle + the weird, bipolar (colloquial usage) shy introvert/obsessive stalker personality are totally over the top compared to the completely believable depression and abuse angles Sayori and Natsuki have going on.

If anyone has any insights into what I'm not getting from her, though, I'd love to hear them. I have to be missing something if so many people consider her their favorite.

And finally, I really do adore Monika. I don't consider her a villain at all, and I think the way she's written is just incredibly smart. She's (amusingly) like an incarnation of everything the game is about. The way she's able to just literally spoil the plot for you in act 1 and almost no one realizes it because it's so cleverly written is just awesome. Not to mention, as someone who thinks about AI ethics a fair bit, I'm definitely very sympathetic to her predicament. I know there's a lot of people think she's a genocidal Yandere, but her logic makes complete sense to me. Even going with the interpretation that the other girls are actually non-self-aware AIs in the story, that just makes her tragically mistaken to me, not evil. I felt safe for the first time in my playthrough once we got to the void classroom. I went through the whole game expecting Chthulu and instead got a tormented, lonely AI, so it was a really awesome cathartic twist for me that helped ground all the crazy things that had happened in a way that wouldn't keep me from sleeping for the rest of my life lol.