Character discussion for Rokusai Saika Shino from AIR.
For reasons, feel free to discuss the entirety of AIR without [spoiler] tags. If you haven’t finished AIR, don’t proceed any further!
So if you listened to the AIR Route Podcast, you’ll have heard Biz’s crazy theory that Saika is in fact the girl on the beach! Like, the same person. Let’s go over some of the evidence for and against this theory.
For:
- Similar age and gender.
- In the first scene she appears in, Yukito describes her as ‘a miniature Misuzu’. The entire scene is full of juxtaposition between Misuzu and Saika.
- It’s revealed that she is sick at hospital. This extends all the way into AIR Route, where her family are praying for her healthy recovery at the shrine. This could be connected to the curse of the winged one.
- Adding onto that, she keeps getting mentioned throughout the VN. Why would they keep mentioning such a minor character’s seemingly irrelevant side story?
Against:
- The seem to have different voices.
- In the Anime, they’re clearly portrayed as different characters.
I can counter the evidence against with this:
- The original version of AIR had no voice acting, and no visual depiction of Saika. Therefore, it’s possible that in the original script, Saika was intended to be the girl on the beach, but somewhere that detail got lost in translation from port to adaptation.
There’s no decisive evidence connecting the two but what evidence does exist is difficult to ignore, so it’s the kind of thing that’s entirely up to the discretion of the audience. What do you think? Do you think it’s possible that Saika is the girl on the beach; the very same girl who appears in the AIR logo?
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That was my initial understanding. At least going from the assumption that “it’s not someone completely new” there’s not really anyone else it could be.
That’s not a crazy theory at all, most people think that. The Anime is laughable evidence against it.
