Sayaka Maizono - The Mage of Light
NOTE BEFORE READING
None of these Classpect theories belong to me — I simply subscribe to them, so I’m using them to analyze specific characters across various types of media. You can find the original sources while reading through as well as at the end of the essay in a source list.
Additionally, this essay contains spoilers for the first chapter of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, so proceed at your own risk!
DEFINING MAGE OF LIGHT
Mage - One who Knows [Aspect], or Knows through [Aspect], for Themselves
Mage Archetype - Prophet; has supernatural access to information which they utilize to inform Themselves, and capable of performing miracles to benefit Themselves
Active Class - Prioritizes Themselves, Self-Oriented, Self-Directed, Proactive, Consciously Exploits Aspect to benefit Themselves
Light - Narrative Relevance, Relevance, Importance, Self-Worth, Essentiality, Knowledge, Information, Understanding, Foresight, Learning, Teaching, Intellectualism, Awareness, Self-Awareness, Narrative Awareness, Enlightenment, Revelation, Revelations, Truth, Ideas, Concepts, Storytelling, Stories, Eyes, Sight, Vision, Visibility, Attention, Focus, Chance, Fortune, Riches, Luck, Fate, Destiny, Karma, Love, Romance, Literal Light, Brightness, Illumination, Sunlight, The Spotlight
Mage of Light - One who Knows Light, or Knows through Light, for Themselves
CLASSPECT ANALYSIS
Sayaka is a rather simplistic character in the context of Danganronpa, which naturally makes her easy to conduct a Classpect analysis for. Not to say that that’s necessarily bad in and of itself, but hey, that’s a topic for a different essay.
Makoto first introduces us to an internal tidbit of information on Sayaka, remarking that her role as the Ultimate Pop Sensation denotes her as a very prominent figure in media, apparently being famous across Japan in its entirety. This is an immediate tie to the Light Aspect, which has to do with Importance and the (metaphorical) Spotlight. Going further than this, Sayaka even happens to be the lead singer of her music group, which gives her a bit more objective Importance compared to the other members.
Her Relevance isn’t just relegated to her role as a popstar, either. Over the course of chapter one, she becomes Makoto’s assistant and effectively acts as a sort of tutorial for the game. This can be traced back to the essence of the Light Aspect: Narrative Relevance. Sayaka is an introduction to the functioning of Danganronpa — leading us into our Understanding of the Concepts presented by the game itself.
And here we have a myriad of references to Sayaka’s quirk: intuition, which she often humorizes as herself being a psychic. Once more, this is a surefire indication for the Light Aspect in terms of Understanding, Foresight, and Awareness, but it also has direct links to the Mage Class. For perspective, let’s consider the definitions of intuition and psychic, respectively:
Intuition is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.
A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws.
The shared key verb for Seer and Mage is Know, and the shared archetype is that of the Prophet. Both intuition and psychic abilities are related to Knowledge and Prophesying, and miracles arising from one with psychic powers are befitting of a Prophet, too. Thus, the way a Prophet accrues information is supernatural and distinct from Knowledge that is readily available to the average person. A Prophet is a Prophet because they hold information that isn’t readily available to most. All of these traits are applicable to Sayaka — even performing miracles, as having such distinct Knowledge could be considered a miracle itself.
Additionally, both intuition and psychic abilities also primarily exist within the world of abstract Ideas, quite similar to Rose’s interest in Freudian psychology and Vriska’s belief in luck. Neither of these Concepts are particularly accepted as legitimate and realistic, and the same can be said for psychic abilities, as each of these faculties typically aren’t accepted by science itself. And much like Rose and Vriska themselves, Sayaka doesn’t seem to be very bothered by this or concerned with her supposed psychic abilities being unrealistic.
Sayaka also mentions that she’s wanted to talk to Makoto for a long time, and claims that Makoto never looked at her, whereas she would look at him all the time. She Knows that neither Makoto’s Sight nor Vision were directed towards her, while her own Sight and Vision were directed towards him constantly.
Knowing through her Eyes and Vision seems to be quite Important to Sayaka when it comes to remembering bits of her past and gathering Information — that is, it may be a bit more pronounced than others, especially due to her significant intuition and psychic abilities. Here, she even cites Japanese legends and folktales that she likens to this memory, which is a link to the Storytelling portion of the Light Aspect.
Now we get to the spicy stuff. Although you may not think it, Light is an Aspect of Love and Romance, similar to Heart. Sayaka wants to Know about Makoto’s Romance life, likely to benefit Herself more than our humble main protagonist. Additionally, she seems to have a Romantic interest in Makoto, which probably isn’t news to most since the game teases it a lot anyway. Still, though, it fits with Light’s motifs, thus making it notable.
Moving beyond the free time events, we can delve further into the main game.
Sayaka states that she wanted to be a star — or, to have a position of Importance in order to fulfill her own Self-Worth, as well as the Self-Worth of others.
However, rather than laying back, Flowing with reality, and Allowing such Importance come to her as one with a Passive Class might…
She strives to achieve this goal through direct Action, thereby Forcing herself onto reality — something more applicable to one with an Active Class. She’s Exploiting her Knowledge of wanting to be in The Spotlight, and then proceeding to Actively work to make it happen. The Mage and Seer Classes notably complement the Witch and Heir Classes, as with Knowledge, one may Change reality, and to Change reality, one must have Knowledge of what they want to do and how to do it. Here, Sayaka is Changing her circumstances in terms of stardom; being Proactive about her Own wants and Exploiting Knowledge in order to bring about Change.
Just as Classes can be denoted with Passive and Active descriptors, Aspects hold these labels, too. In Light’s case, it is an Active Aspect, meaning that Heroes of Light tend to view reality Subjectively, charting a Narrow, Individual path through it. With Light’s Activity, its players are typically hot-headed, and being placed at the top of the Aspect wheel alongside Mind, Hope, Breath, and Life, it’s an Aspect with a focus on Ideas and Notions rather than the bottom of the Aspect wheel — Heart, Rage, Blood, Doom, and Void — which has a focus on the Real and Material. Here, we can see that Sayaka Knows what she wants — a Singular, Individual path for Herself that practically demands Attention with each step. She also wants to embody the Idea of a popstar; a dream and a fantasy which significantly shaped her youth. With this scene in particular, it could also be said that she Knows how to retain Focus in order to chart her Own personal path of Destiny and obtain such Ideas.
The more she contemplates on her dream during this scene, however, her entrapment within the walls of Hope’s Peak Academy begins to really dawn on her. The Singular path of Idealism that she’s desperately worked to grasp falls out of reach due to being disconnected from the outside world and her fellow group members. So, how does Sayaka react to this Revelation?
She completely loses her shit. The possibility that the world is forgetting about her is too upsetting for her to think about. Sayaka fears lacking Light — Importance, her sense of Self-Worth, and the Spotlight — and absolutely dreads being consumed by the Irrelevance, Meaninglessness, and Obscurity of Void. Although she’s typically cool in terms of temperament, it’s clear that dire circumstances which test her to such extremes cause her to become hot-headed.
It’s this very conflict and hot-headedness that leads Sayaka to create and carry out a plan to murder Leon — which, as you can likely infer, is an action that benefits Herself specifically rather than anyone else. Once more, she sees a Singular, Narrow pathway to cross, and takes direct Action to do so.
Although Proactivity and Imposing one’s will onto reality can be a good thing, these traits eventually lead Sayaka to her death. Before finally dying, though, she leaves a dying message to indicate who her murderer is — making Information Known to Others, for Others. While this isn’t Sayaka’s primary function in relation to the people around her, it does happen to be on par with Active Classes not always acting to benefit Themselves, and vice versa with Passive Classes. Due to Mages, Seers, Witches, and Heirs being the closest to the middle of the Passive/Active spectrum where Lord and Muse lie, this quartet of non-master Classes tend to be able to adapt to both Passivity and Activity rather easily, which is rather in line with Sayaka’s will appearing to be Reactive and cool-headed — Passive — regarding how she interacts with reality.
Celeste also provides this conjecture about the process Sayaka may have used to commit a crime: framing Makoto for it by switching rooms. This action would only benefit Sayaka, and further exemplifies how far she’s willing to go to preserve Herself and her own Ideals first and foremost, and simultaneously solidifies her tendency to consider Herself and her wants/needs before that of Others.
Now, let’s transition into the final portion of this analysis: Ultimate Talent Development Plan.
“Shining like a star” is just as Light-y as it gets with Sayaka. Not only is she a star in the sense of performance, but she’s also a star in terms of Importance and Attention.
This scene is pretty indicative of Sayaka’s title, as she has some sort of Narrative Awareness that allows her to Know the events of other timelines — or, other Fates and Destinies, as she previously cites; two similarly relevant concepts when it comes to the Light Aspect. Hell, she even mentions miracles, which are directly tied to the Mage Class. Even though it does appear that she wasn’t Proactive in bringing about those miracles herself, it’s still an interesting connection, and I believe it could be argued that this is an example of one with an Active Class sparingly Allowing their Aspect to act through them the way one with a Passive Class typically would, in the same vein that I had mentioned before with the Know and Change quartet. Thus, it could be construed as Allowing Fate, Destiny, and the Mage’s miracles to benefit Herself.
That’s about all I have to say about Sayaka’s Classpect so far. If I think of anything else, I’ll definitely update the essay, but for now I think I have a comprehensive overview here. I’m going to continue creating Classpect essays for Danganronpa characters, so you can look forward to seeing more at some point!
SOURCES
Arrghus - The Fixed Aspects
Optimistic Duelist - HSE: The Aspects Part 3 Part 1: The Aspect Zodiac
Optimistic Duelist - HSE: The Aspects Part 3 Part 2: — Hot and Cool
Optimistic Duelist - Know and Change
Optimistic Duelist - The Aspects Aren’t the Only Existential Duality at Play in Classpects
Wikipedia - Prophet
