So I was just saying in the Skype chat today that, considering her backstory, Yusa doesn’t really feel like a Key character… This is a bit of an incoherent rambling but I’ll try to elaborate.
Most Key girls, often as a by-product of the visual novel medium, start off happy, but as you get to know them you unveil some trauma that the male lead is confronted with, and works with the heroine to reach a resolution. But with Yusa, we have someone who’s completely deranged from the very beginning, when we first meet her in Heaven’s Door. Oh she has a traumatic backstory for sure, but she never really woke up from that nightmare. She still continues to be tormented by her hatred of males, and acts on that in cruel and horrific ways. Her very first introduction in the story is of a horribly tragic yet unspeakably cruel villain. Someone who not only doesn’t want anything to do with the male lead, but wants to kill all men in the world (and acts on that desire). Even in a world where everybody dies, that’s pretty damn hardcore. It feels so unlike any typical Key girl we’ve grown accustomed to.
And you know what? I love it. I love how different her story is. We get thrown into the deep end very early, and only through some as of yet unknown intervention, was she able to become a different person. Was her trauma resolved? I don’t even know yet! I’m still very intrigued by her, and want to know more about her. It’s almost as if they’re doing this to build up interest in the visual novel (and it’s working!). I can’t even imagine what her route might be like, but I’m sure eager to find out.