#sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint when certain emotions creep in

[emometalhead]

I've been having like low level paranoia since yesterday evening, and now I just can't shake the feeling that something drastically awful has happened.

[oh-my-otome]

Hello! I love your blog. I was creeping around your blog and I saw that Ieyasu character analysis. It was perfect. I was wondering if you could do something similar for Saizo? I feel that his attitude towards his MC would drive her away in the long run. Like sure, she loves him and wants to be there for him, but he leaves her alone for considerable amounts of time, and idk he just feels so closed off. Their relationship has a lack of communication that could cause them to drift apart. Thoughts?

Hello, there! Thank you so much! I’m so glad that you enjoyed it! 

These are really fun to do! Ieyasu’s can be found here. 

Saizō is the king of lies, and tells them as easily as the wind blows. As much as he tries to outsmart everyone else, even he becomes ensnared by his failure to tell the truth.

He’ll say that he won’t lift a finger to help, and the next thing you know, he’s been skulking in the shadows, making sure that everything is all right, ready to swoop in and assist at the drop of a hat.

Even other people notice it:

He gets annoyed when you or Yukimura don’t do things right, saying that it’s not his problem and that he doesn’t care, only to turn around and help you through until the end, despite what he said.

For as much as he declares that he does not care about love or family, and shows his annoyance outwardly, Saizō will do anything and everything that he can to protect the ones that he cares about, no matter the cost.

Hotaru even outs him:

MC: “What do you do when you get lost?”

Hotaru: “My older brother will come and pick me up.”

So in other words, he’ll stop everything to rescue his little bro from the elements.

Keep pretending to be annoyed, Saizō. It’s totally working! You’ve fooled us all!

For all of his posturing that they annoy him, Saizō does love his siblings, as he keeps Hotaru safe from Kotarō, whenever he shows up, and respects his sister’s advice. He bitches and moans about them, but in the end, even for Saizō, family is family.

To Saizō, it is not only blood that makes a family, but connection, as he cares deeply for his fallen friend, his protégé Sasuke, and his lifelong childhood friend Yukimura.

But for Saizō, these connections must be built over time, as we see that tertiary degrees mean little to him: he cares nothing at all for Inuchiyo, and shows a similar disinterest in Yahiko. He’ll speak to him when spoken to, but he doesn’t go out of his way to engage him, like other suitors who spent time with him.

Even though he is almost always away from his village, and even though he has lived with the Takeda since he was a child, Saizō considers his home to be wherever his MC is, and he makes a beeline for her the minute that he comes back.     

Firmly in the kuu and tsun categories of dere-types, Saizō displays a special dichotomy of behavior patterns, both coldly reclusive and hot-tempered. More often than not, Saizō chooses to withdraw from others, giving them the cold shoulder, but he is no stranger to blowing a fuse, either, and is quick to use sarcasm, both as an insult and as a defense mechanism.

Rather than admit when he’s wrong, Saizō will also use sarcasm as a shield to protect his ego. Sometimes, this manifests when he wants to tease you, only for him to realize halfway through, that you have him in the palm of your hand:

Saizō’s MC is far more inconsistent than most other MCs, even from event story to event story.

She is either convinced that her only purpose on this earth is to obsessively love him no matter how he treats her, and unceasingly make him dango.

Or she loves him like a regular person and is occasionally tired of his bull and will call him out on it. And then unceasingly make him dango. 

When Obsessed MC shows up, she is little better than Kotarō in his Fan Boy mode. They just go about it in different ways.

When she is more normal, she’ll speak her mind, but then immediately go back to worrying about what Saizō thinks about something, instead of just sticking with her original opinion.

While he does go on missions often, which can create emotional distance in a relationship, he has the added benefit of having an MC who is quite obsessed with his opinion of her. 

Her self-worth is one of the lowest of all of the MCs, as she tells herself again and again that she lives to make dango– just that one dish –to keep Saizō happy, and that so long as she can do that, she will be happy, herself.

With a dynamic like this, unless she boosts her self-esteem, no matter what Saizō does, she will remain, as not only are they not on equal footing in terms of *education and finances, but she believes that she is happy where she is.

Like Nobunaga, he’s also a hypocrite:

Saizō displays a certain amount of vanity when it comes to his job. He supplements his income with money from his front, the popular restaurant in Kyoto, and also with the books he writes. 

Using his reputation, he tends to pick and choose his missions to a certain degree, but even he cannot escape the rules of the village, and when they want to come down on him, they do not hesitate based on his previous accomplishments.

Saizō’s arrogance is one of his defining features, and to be fair, he does have quite a bit of plot armor, but he is never able to escape the memory of killing his best friend.

Whenever it rains, Saizō is overcome with feelings of guilt, and the rain itself represents how helpless he is to change what he’s done– no one can change the weather, and no one can go back in time.

In fact, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for Saizō to see it as his own personal hell that the friend he loved so much, and is responsible for killing, shares a similar personality with the woman he loves.

As it turns out, Saizō is particularly sentimental, going out of his way to keep a comb in near mint condition from childhood into adulthood, and setting traps just to protect it. He won’t even tell you that he has it, keeping it a secret, even though it’s yours.

He extends the same reverence for his friend’s sword, keeping both items close to him, and not allowing another person to touch them, barely speaking about either one, as he continues to internalize his feelings.

Saizō has the odd kink of being turned on by ear cleaning. He does mention that he likes the way you “moan” (his words, though MC is not moaning out of pleasure), but he also finds the entire act itself– including the ear gunk, etc –arousing as well.

If anyone’s ever used an ear pick before, you know there’s no way he’s doing all of that “thrusting” it “deeper” without also encountering not only liquidized **ear wax, but blood.

Because Saizō loves dango so much, and because his MC obsessively desires to please him by almost exclusively making his favorite food and little else, and because Saizō just sits there happily eating it without a care in the world, Saizō’s lack of energy when he’s off-work is not entirely due to battle fatigue, but lack of proper nutrition.

Eating one type of food, exclusively, leads to malnutrition and lack of vitamins, which causes, among other things, fatigue and muscle weakness.

Realistically, rather than being buff, Saizō would experience the cannibalization of muscle tissue, as well as impaired brain function (and hemorrhages, gum disease, etc.)

When it comes to things that he doesn’t know, Saizō typically avoids it rather than learn about it, writing it off as something he doesn’t need to know about, or by saying that it’s just not done where he’s from.

At the end of the day, his plot armor takes care of it, rendering the story moot.

This is one of the reasons why people complain about Saizō– he’s rarely allowed to have any real flaws, because he can get out of any situation.

If another man accosts his MC, Saizō displays his jealousy by psychically inserting himself into the situation. 

He doesn’t just say something to the guy, or try to de-escalate the situation by leaving. Instead, he uses intimidation to mark his territory, often provoking the other man, even though he knows that he outclasses him on physical strength alone.

That is, if the other man is of a lower social station than himself. 

Saizō doesn’t dare to pull that type of thing with Kenshin and his nephew Kagekatsu, who both have him beat as far as being highborn.

When these two show an interest in his MC, Saizō quite politely squeezes between them, but smartly refrains from showing any disrespect.

When it comes to Kotarō, Saizō is plainly indifferent. 

He will only engage him if he absolutely has to, instead allowing Kotarō to exhaust himself in a star-struck frenzy, but Saizōkeeps his guard up, all the same.

If his MC or his brother are around, Saizō is a little more on his toes, but there is a slight difference in the way he protects the two from Kotarō:

Saizō will step in immediately if Kotarō is near his brother, but if it’s his MC, he is willing to use her as bait.

Saizō is Sasuke’s guardian, but true to the way children of Iga are raised, Saizō refrains from coddling him, instead giving him the same tough love that any other ninja would receive. 

Sasuke adores him, though, and respects him greatly. Of his two dads, he is close to Yukimura, but reveres Saizō.

Saizō, for his part, understands fundamentally that he could be much gentler when it comes to how he’s raising Sasuke, and walks a fine line between treating him the standard Iga way and wanting to give Sasuke a little bit of what he never had, himself.

Because he is a kuu/tsun mix, though, it is difficult for others to pinpoint if he’s actually being kind to them, or if he’s just doing enough to get them to leave him alone, in the moment.

As the reader, we know, but we can also tell that the characters usually take whatever they can get from Saizō, even if they’re confused about why he’s behaving the way he is.

This can usually be seen when Saizō, seemingly randomly, treats Sasuke to a surprise mission, when Saizō gives Yukimura a rare straight answer with no back-sass, and when he gives his MC some service.

When it comes to Yukimura, Saizō’s loyal to the bone, but he’ll still tell him off when he gets too reckless, such as when he faced off against Ieyasu and was about to be killed.

Although he treats Yukimura as both family and his closest friend, he does find him attractive as well.

Kiyohiro is usually tasked with gettingSaizō to actually show up for missions, and he plays a nanny role for Saizō the same way that Kanetsugu has to stay on Kenshin in order for anything to be done.

Saizō is the author of the Lover’s Guides, which have several volumes and spin-offs, but it should be noted that they do not include any information on foreplay, often leaving the people reading them to either be completely stumped as to what to do next, or become frustrated– usually to hilarious effect.

*none of the MCs would be on the same level as **any of the lords when it comes to wealth or education.

The Maeda family was the second largest land-owning family, the Tokugawa being the first., making them incredibly wealthy and powerful.

**Still gross, but:

 @wonky-glass-ornament: “Spot on, but I wanted to point out something about the earwax thing: Asian have a different type of earwax than white and black people. Theirs is dry and flaky, whereas ours is wet and oily. Cleaning your ears, therefore, is quite different if you are Asian. Link.”