#But. yaz fits perfectly in her spot in this episode

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

no offense to mel shes great its not that i want her gone or anything, its just that her narrative role would make so much more sense for yaz to have

[mrmallard]

FF13 has six main characters in the party, and in my heart I think my favourite is Sazh. And a part of it is that Sazh seems to be the guy who gets left behind by the narrative the most.

I like all the cast - I'm defensive about Lightning and Hope because of the hate they got, and I thought that both of them had perfectly fine character arcs which got them to where they needed to go. Vanille is okay, probably damaged the most by the vocal director asking her English VA to emulate the Japanese VA's vocal intonation exactly, and while I don't remember Fang a whole lot, I remember the parts of the game where she's hanging out with Lightning and I honestly ship it pretty hard. Snow is a cool guy and he doesn't afraid of anything etc. - jokes aside, replaying the game, I really like Snow and I like how it's setting up his whole "hero" bluster to fail so he can develop and grow into the hero he naively shouts about being at the start of the game.

Sazh is cool because he's probably the oldest guy in the group, and his motivation is tied to his son and wanting to save him - the web of motivations across the board tends to get a bit tangled, but his whole deal is about his son. They make him a bit overly wacky, but I thought that he had some pretty cool interactions with Lightning and Vanille, and I like that compared to characters like Lightning and Snow - a talented but jaded military grunt and an overly optimistic hotheaded rebel leader, respectively - he's just a regular, down to earth, blue collar dude with a straightforward, personal goal that gets him tied up in the ensuing mess.

And like - while Lightning is a soldier and Snow is this like peacekeeper guy, Sazh is a pilot. He's a guy who loves his son and flies planes. I like down-to-earth characters like that. So yeah, while the more anime-adjacent characters get all strong and important and stuff, Sazh just kinda hangs out. He's definitely around, but in 13-2 he's basically just in a DLC and I read that he's doing his own thing in Lightning Returns.

The thing about Sazh - being a bit more sidelined than the rest of the crowd - is that he fits a mold that I tend to fall into pretty hard. Like when series 11 of Doctor Who aired, I found myself really rooting for Yasmin Khan; the other two companions were having their own played-out personal character arc, and she got the short end of the stick regarding characterisation. But also, because the other two companions were having their character arc with each other, Yaz was the primary companion who went off with The Doctor, and that kind of blossomed into its own thing.

And then when Ryan got shafted for series 12, I felt bad because his step-grandad was written as missing his nan more than he was, one of the episodes where he gets to shine and just be himself was arguably my least favourite episode of the revival series (not because of him, he was a bright spot - because the episode was predictable and bland exactly like how a low-effort Syfy original movie is) and his individual character arc - overcoming his dyspraxia - is ignored for most of the run, then suddenly reintroduced at the end of his run so it could culminate with him throwing something like a basketball. I have a lot of sympathy for Tosin Cole, who I thought was underutilized as an actor, and for the character of Ryan Sinclair for being an underutilized character. I love an underdog; Yaz got to rise above and Ryan got shafted.

And while I haven't played LR yet, Sazh gives me the same vibe. I'm pretty sure he only appears once in the main portion of 13-2 and then in a casino DLC, and I could be wrong but I think he's fairly well removed from the main conflict of Lightning Returns, at least compared to the main players in Lightning and Snow and stuff.

So yeah, as much as I already like him, I kinda have no choice but to stan considering the circumstances. Sazh Katzroy is great.