Characters / Persona 5: Sae Niijima

Persona 5 Main Character Index
The Phantom Thieves of Hearts (Starting Members [Joker] | Later Members [Goro Akechi | Kasumi Yoshizawa])
Confidants (Sae Niijima) | Targets - Palace Rulers / Endgame Antagonists (The Dreamer) / Minor | Other Characters
Spin-Offs: Strikers (Jail Monarchs) | Tactica | The Phantom X

Sae Niijima

"When and where did you hear about that world? How is it even possible to steal another's heart? Now, tell me your account of everything. ...Start from the very beginning."

Arcana: XX. Le Jugement (Judgement)
Arcana Bonus: True Justice. ^{Explanation (Major Spoilers!)}Reinstates her belief in Justice and allows the game to advance beyond November 20.
Voiced by: Yuko Kaida (JP), Elizabeth Maxwell (EN)
Stage actors: Kaoru Marimura (The Stage)

Makoto Niijima's older sister and the public prosecutor in charge of the Phantom Thieves case. She became Makoto's sole guardian after the death of their parents and while she does care for her, she secretly resents her as Makoto has the freedom to choose what to do with her life while she is stuck in a dead-end job where she's constantly overshadowed by her male colleagues; as a result, Sae has lost her sense of "Justice", and will do absolutely anything to win a case, all as a twisted form of getting back at society.

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A-I

• 11th-Hour Ranger: While Sae never actually becomes a Thief herself, she ultimately ends up becoming the Spanner in the Works for the Antisocial Force. Upon achieving the good route, it's Sae who is responsible for faking the Protagonist's death and later is the one responsible for deducing Shido's identity as the head of the conspiracy.
• Accomplice by Inaction: She doesn't like that her coworkers tortured and drugged Joker, but she goes forward with the interrogation on him anyway. It's evidence of her growing desperation to catch the Phantom Thieves.
• Action Girl: Not shown in-game, but she is mentioned in Dancing in Starlight to be more skilled in Aikido than Makoto, and also pursues kickboxing as a hobby. Played straight in Mementos Mission, where she roundhouse kicks a purse snatcher so hard she breaks her shoe's high heel.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In The Animation, a few of Sae's scenes establishing that she does care for Makoto are cut out, such as the first dinner together in which Sae expresses that as strict as she is, she does want Makoto to succeed. Immediately after Okumura's death, Sae seems unusually gleeful at the prospect of "using" the man's grief-stricken daughter for information, causing Akechi to sigh and walk away. "Dark Sun" also omits Sae's apology to Futaba for putting pressure on Sojiro.
• Adults Are Useless: Acknowledges this when the Thieves go on One Last Job, admitting that a lot of adults (herself included) have failed in their duties and how she plans to avert this trope moving forward. As a way of averting this, her help is necessary to save Joker's life and prosecute Shido.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: She does this to Makoto on November 19 to reassure her.
• Aloof Big Sister: To Makoto. While Sae cares about her, she also keeps her at an arm's length. Relations between the sisters are often tense for much of the game because of their disagreements about the Phantom Thieves, which thus forces Makoto to keep secrets from Sae, but once Sae starts supporting the Thieves, the distance between her and Makoto lessens, turning her into a Cool Big Sis.
• Amoral Attorney: By the time of the game, Sae is a cynical, bitter shell who no longer wishes to pursue justice and simply wants to do whatever it takes to win a case, even if she has to twist the truth and manipulate evidence to make the innocent appear guilty. By the time of the Casino heist, Akechi suspects that if they don't change Sae's heart, either the Phantom Thieves will be arrested, or someone else might be set up to take the fall for their crimes. While the Thieves don't steal her heart, she does change for the better as a result of an emotional plea by Makoto toward her Shadow. It's ultimately averted in the ending, in which Sae, having Took a Level in Idealism, decides to quit her job at the Public Prosecutors Office and become a criminal defense attorney, believing it's a better way to pursue justice.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Averted. She's skeptical of the Metaverse at first, but by the time of her interrogation, she's long realized that the supernatural is pretty much the only logical explanation — when Joker reveals that the cognitions of people can be altered within, she decides to humor him and see if the story he's telling is consistent with what she does already know.
• Badass Biker: Per Word of God, she's a skilled motorcyclist. Given what Makoto's Persona looks like, it must run in the family.
• Badass Normal: While she's not an active Phantom Thief herself, she's also trained in aikido like her sister. In a manga adaptation of the series, she delivers a kick to a would-be mugger's face hard enough to break a heel and probably a few of his bones.
• Being Evil Sucks: Sae is not evil enough that she has the unlimited power of Shido and co., or good enough that she can enjoy anything outside of her ambition. Which is why she begins the story in a bloodstained torture chamber, pressuring a half-unconscious kid for information. It's made abundantly clear that she would rather be anywhere else.
• Berserk Button: Her father and his ideals. Makoto's innocent comment about how she thinks their father would have supported the Phantom Thieves is enough to make Sae descend into a full-on rant at the dinner table and say some very cruel things to Makoto that she immediately regrets.
• Big Damn Heroes: During Strikers she gets called in by Makoto to use her legal know-how to get Zenkichi out of jail and void the warrant for the Phantom Thieves' arrest, allowing the group to continue operating in the open after nearly getting caught by a Special Assault Team element in Kyoto.
• Big Sister Instinct:
  • When Joker suggests that Makoto was involved with the Phantom Thieves, Sae is initially in denial. Then, when Joker goes further by suggesting Makoto deceived Sae on purpose, Sae slams the table and screams in Joker's face.
  • The Judgement Confidant officially begins after Joker relays how he assisted Makoto during the Kaneshiro incident.
• Blackmail: She uses a variant of this to get Sojiro to talk about Wakaba's research, warning him that if he continues to resist, social services might get on his case about Futaba (who hasn't gone to school or left the house for a long time), thereby causing him to lose his custody of her.
• Broken Bird: The pressures of her job, along with the death of her father in the line of duty and the struggles of raising Makoto by herself have left Sae cynical, bitter, and pessimistic, focusing only on getting ahead.
• Broken Pedestal: Does not think highly of her late father, blaming him for getting himself killed in the line of duty and leaving her to struggle raising Makoto alone. Makoto points out that Sae once dearly loved their father, just like Makoto still does.
• Celibate Hero: Sae does not appear to show any signs of being interested in romance. Makoto mentions that she has never seen her bring a guy home and that Sae never shares anything about her personal life with her. A conversation between Makoto and Sae in the Thieves' Den reveals that Sae was very uncomfortable when the press assumed that she was in a romantic relationship with a colleague. Notably, when Makoto asks Sae about her type Sae avoids answering the question by telling Makoto that she will answer it if Makoto tells about her type first.
  • However, this is possibly justified due to Sae struggling between having to take care of her sister at a young age and the intense workload of her job as a prosecutor not leaving her with any time for romance.
  • Furthermore, Makoto mentions in Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight that Sae has very strict standards when it comes to her choice of partner causing Ann to lampshade that it would be impossible for anyone (with the possible exception of Joker) to fulfill Sae's criteria.
  • A Magical Valentine's Day OVA from the animated adaptation of Persona 5 shows Sae going on a date with Joker to the opera. However, the fact that this scene is not present in the original game or the Royal re-release and the fact that the animated adaptation took some creative liberties with the characterization of the characters makes the canonicity of the OVA debatable.
  • Also, her Valentine's Day OVA is the only one that does not end with a kiss or an implied sexual encounter.
• Challenge Seeker: She doesn't mind work, even work that is gruelingly hard by most people's standards, as long as it has a chance of paying off.
  Joker: Don't you want to win?
• The Commissioner Gordon: After the interrogation concludes, she becomes your main ally within the Public Prosecutor's office.
• Create Your Own Villain: In a manner of speaking. Sae calling Makoto useless one night at dinner is the final straw that leads to Makoto charging into Kaneshiro's hideout, subsequently getting brought into his Palace by the Thieves, and awakening her Persona, becoming one of them herself. Joker has the option to rub salt in the wound by taunting Sae about how Makoto kept it under her nose the whole time.
• Crusading Lawyer: At the end of the game, Sae tells the protagonist that she's planning to become a defense attorney in order to pursue justice.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Her father's death in the line of duty left her to care for both herself and Makoto alone. The pressures of this, plus the pressure from her line of work, both from her male co-workers and the corruption in the system, have left her despising her father and the ideals of "justice" that he used to talk about.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: As her interrogation with Joker continues, she gets to know him and the Phantom Thieves' goals, ranking up her Confidant in the process. Eventually, she becomes an ally to the Thieves and speaks to her sister with a nicer tone.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Despite becoming a major ally of the Phantom Thieves during their campaign to steal Shido's heart, Sae disappears almost completely from the game aside from one appearance near the start of the third semester in Royal, showing that she, like Makoto, thinks her father is still alive under Maruki's influence. Though Makoto breaks free from that cognition early on, Sae doesn't show up again until after Maruki has been defeated and the world reverted to its original state.
  • Downplayed in Strikers. Her role in Strikers is a lot less significant than in the original Persona 5, but she still plays a crucial hand in moving the plot forward, as she's the one responsible for getting Zenkichi out of custody and the Phantom Thieves acquitted when they're being unlawfully prosecuted by the police. Though her in-game model never makes an appearance, when she shows up to save Zenkichi, the scene transfers to her POV as she walks into the interrogation room.
• Department of Child Disservices: Threatens Sojiro with charges of abuse over Futaba if he won't provide information on Wakaba Isshiki; while her points about Futaba's living situation are valid, it's clear Sae is being completely exploitative and has zero actual interest in Futaba's well-being.
• Education Mama: Fulfills this role to her younger sister. Sae's fairly strict with Makoto regarding her studies, constantly telling her to focus on them even with everything else going on.
• Establishing Character Moment: When Makoto asks if their father would agree with the Phantom Thieves, Sae lashes out. She blames their father's ideals on his death, revealing her feelings of abandonment towards him. Then she bitterly calls Makoto a burden.
• Everyone Has Standards: While Sae initially only cares about winning, she's disturbed by the Police Brutality that was visited upon Joker, and seems legitimately concerned about him when he nearly blacks out. It's also implied that for all Sae's cynicism, she hasn't yet crossed the line into actually forging evidence (though Akechi suggests that without a change of heart, she might forge evidence anyway just to catch the Phantom Thieves and look good to her boss).
• First-Name Basis: In contrast to her Shadow, the textboxes call her "Sae".
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: The crux of the true ending revolves around whether the Protagonist can convince Sae to stop trying to pursue promotions and court victories and instead pursue true justice by helping him catch the true culprit behind the Palace deaths.
• Green-Eyed Monster: As it turns out, she's jealous of Makoto, feeling her younger sister has the freedom to do as she chooses while she's stuck in a dead-end job. This envy is the foundation of her Palace.
• Guile Hero: When the Antisocial Force approaches her for helping Joker fake his death, Sae pretends that she had been manipulated by the Phantom Thieves into helping them, since she had received a calling card from them. This succeeds in deflecting suspicion from her.
• Heel–Face Turn: She starts out antagonizing the Phantom Thieves before becoming their ally after her Shadow is forced to sit down and actually listen to what Makoto has to say. Since interacting with a Shadow seems to have much stronger effects than simply talking to someone normally, in her case this ends up nearly as effective as stealing her Treasure would have been; in fact, it's implied that this started a process that the interrogation finished. It's not just on big things that she mellows on either: The moment she sees Futaba she apologizes for threatening her family early on to get info from Sakura.
• Hello, Attorney!: Just because she's an overworked and overstressed prosecutor doesn't take away from how stunning she is. In Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, Makoto reveals that the media instantly sought an interview with Sae when she became a prosecutor and speculated that she had an equally stunning celebrity paramour. Makoto denies the latter, but even Ann admits that Sae is beautiful enough to make that seem plausible. Even Sojiro outright calls her gorgeous when she comes over to give Joker some chocolate, despite his initial hostility towards her.
• Hero Antagonist: She's one of the few public prosecutors who isn't obviously corrupt, and her main issue doesn't actually compromise her morals. She's also this as a Target; she's the only non-Futaba Palace Keeper whose desires don't drive her to evil action, only to ignore just how corrupt her boss is.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Quite hidden, as the game doesn't ever truly address it directly, but there's a definite implication through the combination of Makoto's Confidant and the main plot that part of the reason Sae is so harsh on Makoto when their father comes up and is really cynical about idealistic justice is because Sae is terrified of the idea of either she or especially Makoto meeting the same fate as Mr. Niijima — dying alone in an ultimately fruitless pursuit of justice, leaving the bereaved in their wake. She comes around to the Thieves' side partly because, with an aspiring tyrant like Shido and an assassin like Akechi running around, all of their lives are in danger anyway, and equivocating about justice has become a moot point. At the very least, it's clear that her father's death had a much deeper impact on Sae than she ever tries to let on.
  • She's really not that different from Makoto, despite her seeming aloofness: An artbook released after the game reveals that her hobbies are motorcycling and kickboxing.
• How We Got Here: The story of the game unfolds as Sae is interrogating Joker about the botched Casino heist. The game's story hops between the formation of the Phantom Thieves and Sae's interrogation, and her Judgement Confidant ranks up as the plot continues to unfold until Joker's story reaches the interrogation itself.
• Hypocrite: For all her disgust at the Phantom Thieves and their methods, Sae is perfectly willing to resort to similar methods in order to catch them, claiming that they "can't be caught by following the rules." Akechi even calls her out on it, telling Sae point-blank that her actions make her no different from the people she claims to despise. She eventually comes to agree, and out of the many ways in which she changes her tune since, disavowing any boons of extralegal tactics is ironically not one of them.
  Sae: This opponent can't be caught by following the rules. What need is there to stick to formalities?
  Akechi: So you wish to ignore protocol in order to reform society? I hope you realize that's no different than what the Phantom Thieves are doing.
• Implausible Hair Color: Although she's only in her mid-late twenties at most, she already has silvery-gray hair.
  • It's likely that she just dyes her hair.
• Implied Death Threat: Following the Holy Grail exerting full blown More than Mind Control over the masses, the Proxy SIU Director removes Sae from the investigation and tells her to take a long break. Sae sees through his thinly veiled threat and knows that it wouldn't be long before she and the Phantom Thieves will be arrested or worse.
• Inspector Javert: At first, she's perfectly willing to believe the worst in the Phantom Thieves and refuses to change her mind about them no matter how much good they're doing, to the extent that Makoto wondering if her father would have supported their actions leads Sae to lose her temper and give her a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech. This changes after the Thieves infiltrate her Palace and during her interrogation of Joker, where she becomes dismayed to learn her selfishness made her nothing more than a convenient puppet for the Antisocial Force to frame them. She then quits her obsession with promotions and becomes the team's Commissioner Gordon instead.
• It's All About Me: Sae actually isn't appreciative of the Phantom Thieves' changing Kaneshiro's heart despite all the good it did because the prosecutor was on his case and hoping to use his successful arrest and conviction as the basis for a promotion. (Due to Kaneshiro's change of heart, he confessed his crimes of his own volition and only the Phantom Thieves got any credit for it.) Makoto is rather saddened to hear this.

J-S

• Jaded Washout: While she initially possessed a strong sense of justice, Sae has been worn down by being Promoted to Parent in the wake of her father's death and being overshadowed by her male colleagues; by the time of the game's beginning, she's nothing but a cynical, bitter, borderline Amoral Attorney who only cares about winning cases no matter what, and resents Makoto, viewing her as a burden and being jealous that has her younger sister has the freedom to choose what to do with her life while Sae herself is stuck in a dead-end job where she's constantly overshadowed by her male colleagues. She grows out of it thanks to Character Development, rediscovering said sense of justice and deciding to become a defense attorney.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When Sae threatens to bring legal action against Sojiro and potentially cause him to lose custody of Futaba, she points out that from an outsider's point of view, Futaba's circumstances — never leaving the house, much less going to school, to say nothing of suffering from suicidal depression — don't paint a very good picture of her home life. The Phantom Thieves even briefly wonder whether Sojiro's abusing Futaba until they finally get him to talk about her.
• Jerkass Realization:
  • During her discussion with Makoto about the Phantom Thieves, Makoto innocently comments that she believes their late father would have supported them. Sae has a rather low opinion of their father's ideals, especially since said ideals led to him being killed in action. Hearing Makoto say that causes Sae to lose her temper and verbally attack her younger sister, going so far as to flat-out tell Makoto to her face that she's useless and does nothing but eat away at her life. Makoto is visibly distraught, and Sae immediately regrets it and apologizes, but it's too late to take it back.
  • Gets hit by this again during the interrogation after Makoto gets implicated. The protagonist will pick up on this, and can opt to twist the knife a little further.
    Joker: You never noticed?
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's cynical and bitter over the pressures of her job, and considers raising her younger sister a burden and admits as such despite the fact that Makoto works her butt off to please her and lessen said burden. Despite it all, she does care for her sister, as it's indicated that some of her stricter attitude is born out of a desire to keep Makoto out of trouble and ensure that she succeeds.
• Kick Chick:
  • An unseen example. The same artbook that reveals she's into motorcycling also reveals that one of her hobbies is kickboxing.
  • Played straight in the Mementos Mission manga, where she stops a running purse snatcher by roundhouse kicking him in the chin, breaking her shoe's high heel in the process.
• Knight in Sour Armor: While she works as a public prosecutor and tries to pursue justice, Sae has become openly cynical and bitter due to the corruption in the system and the pressures of her line of work and being Promoted to Parent after her father's death in the line of duty, and openly looks down on Makoto's belief that Justice Will Prevail. When the Thieves enter Sae's Palace, Makoto is able to get through to her by reminding her of the sense of justice she once had, and Sae eventually sheds the "sour armor."
• Lawful Stupid: She wishes for the Phantom Thieves to be arrested despite the fact that they're making criminals confess their crimes because they're using a morally questionable method of Heel–Face Brainwashing. She eventually gets past it and throws in her lot with the Thieves, becoming their Commissioner Gordon.
• Married to the Job: She's so obsessed with her work that Makoto pities her and fears ending up like her. She mentions that some days, Sae doesn't even come home. When the Thieves are planning to steal Sae's heart, Makoto admits that she knew Sae had a Palace for some time, but had hoped to change her sister's heart without having to steal her Treasure.
• Master of Illusion: Only in the police building, because it's part of her Palace, but it allows her to create an illusion of a guard and the Protagonist for the Traitor to "kill", making them think they've stopped the Thieves.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Her Confidant is unusual. It is self progressing with the plot but has no side benefits; the only Confidant skill it provides is "True Justice", which exists purely to progress the calendar beyond November 20. Because it progresses during a Framing Device, it also does not grant the XP boost to fusing Judgement Personas until it is maxed out. It also skips from Rank 6 to 10 in its progression, completely bypassing ranks 7-9.
• Ms. Exposition: Through her interrogation of Joker, she tells us about the major targets whose hearts are stolen throughout the game before they are introduced in the game proper, up to and including herself.
• My Card: She gives you this as her Friendship Trinket, and as a sign of changing her career and becoming a defense attorney.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After she verbally attacks Makoto, Sae immediately realizes how thoughtless she was being and apologizes, but by that point, Makoto has nearly been reduced to tears. Joker can twist the knife in further when he reveals that Makoto is a Phantom Thief during the interrogation; Sae appears to be visually distressed if he smugly asks if she ever noticed it to begin with.
• Named After Someone Famous: Yaeko Yamamoto, A.K.A Yae Niijima, was a fierce woman of samurai birth from the late Edo period who personally fought in the defense of Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle (with a repeating rifle, no less) and later worked as an army nurse during the First Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. For a long time Yae was criticized for both treating her second husband like an equal (as he himself was a strong believer in women's rights) and her westernized wardrobe, which led to Yae gradually drifting apart from her husband's allies after his death.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Likely as an homage to her Shadow self's garb, she sports a dress with a plunging neckline on in the Valentine's Day OVA for her date with Joker, though nowhere near as revealing.
• Not Me This Time: While attention is never called to it, Sojiro assumes she's the one who tipped Joker off about Futaba during their argument on 7/22. Sae is naturally confused, because Futaba tipped Joker off about Futaba.
• Not So Stoic: She's stern and serious most of the time, but she has various things that set her off. She's also noticeably disturbed when Joker's interrogation mentions the possibility of Makoto being a Phantom Thief, thus meaning that Sae might end up having to arrest her own sister.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: The problem with Sae isn't just that she's an Inspector Javert but that she's starting to creep into this trope as well. She has begun to confuse victory and justice and it isn't until her Shadow is defeated and forced to listen that she begins to separate the two and return back to how she used to be.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When her boss tells her that he's losing his patience with her, Sae's normally calm demeanor is shattered, and she desperately pleads for more time.
  • She has another one when, at the end of her interview with Joker, she realizes that Akechi is the one responsible for the mental shutdowns.
• Old Maid: As a young woman, she's nearing old maid status, as the interim proxy SIU Director, while informing her that she's been taken off the case and can't interrogate Shido, casually and condescendingly informs her that she hasn't gotten married yet and to spend her time off looking for someone to settle down with.
• Perpetual Frowner: She usually has a stern frown on her face, as you can see in her picture. It makes the moments When She Smiles all the better.
• Pet the Dog:
  • While she's portrayed as emotionally distant toward Makoto, once Sae gets her own notice from the Phantom Thieves, she tells Makoto that she'll be able to relax once this is done, and they can enjoy some time in the baths as sisters. This is even capped off with a literal head pat. This is before she has her heart changed, showing that she's nowhere near as malicious as the previous targets.
  • Even though she knows Joker will have to turn himself in so that Shido can be formally prosecuted for all of his crimes, she's clearly less than happy about having to resort to that. Once he agrees, she's quite grateful, and allows him to spend Christmas Eve with his girlfriend (if he has one) or Futaba and Sojiro (if he doesn't) before turning himself in.
  • Upon meeting Futaba for the first time, Sae immediately apologizes for putting pressure on Sojiro.
• Police Brutality: She confesses that she that threatened someone suspected to be a contact of the Phantom Thieves. When Makoto is shocked by this, Sae "reassures" her that it was only a little bit.
• Police Are Useless: Played with. While at the start of the game she's become so disillusioned with the justice system that she forms a Palace, after the Phantom Thieves defeat her she becomes a steadfast ally and helps them take down the Antisocial Force.
• Promoted to Love Interest: In The Stinger Persona 5: The Animation OVA "A Magical Valentine's Day", she takes the protagonist out to the opera on a Valentine's Day date (although hers is the only scene that doesn't end with a kiss).
• Promoted to Parent: Due to their father dying three years prior to the start of the story, Sae was left to provide for Makoto alone.
• Purple Is Powerful: Downplayed, as she only wears purple nail polish, but in Persona 5: The Animation she takes a minor step further and adds purple eyeshadow to her maquillage, which subtly enhances her intimidating presence as much as her beauty.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: She's a by the book, well-meaning public prosecutor, at least compared to the other investigators. Despite her hostility towards the Phantom Thieves, she isn't corrupt and at least listens to what they have to say. However, the story also highlights that she's well on her way to becoming another cruel adult thanks to the pressures of her job.
  • She lets Akechi get away with utilizing police resources, despite admonishing him for doing so.
  • She's rather annoyed to find that the other investigators drugged the protagonist in the opening interrogation.
    Sae: [seeing an empty syringe on the floor] Those bastards...
  • Despite the blatantly supernatural elements of Joker's story making it hard to believe it, Sae decides to trust that he's telling the truth (realizing that it's unlikely that he's lying to protect himself) and lets him tell about everything from beginning to end. The Judgement Confidant ranks up as Sae decides to trust in the Protagonist's story more. This is in part due to them influencing her Shadow, but they did not steal her Treasure: She's still fundamentally an honest person. She ends up cooperating with the Phantom Thieves to trick Akechi.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • When Makoto admits she believes their father would have been on the Phantom Thieves' side, Sae snaps and gives Makoto a brutal one of these. Sae immediately regrets it and admits that it was uncalled for, but she can't take it back.
    Sae: You don't have to do a single thing, and you're provided with food, clothes, a home... I've had no time to think on such ridiculous thoughts. Would Dad have been happy with them? I don't care. He died upholding some lofty sense of righteousness, leaving all his responsibilities on us. Isn't it about time you grew up and acknowledged our situation!? Right now, you're useless to me. All you do is eat away at my life!
  • She gives a short but effective one to Joker in the Bad Ending if he sells out all of his fellow Phantom Thieves.
    Sae: I honestly expected you to have more of a backbone...It seems your reputation precedes you.
• Relative Button: Sae gets unnerved when Joker tells her that Makoto was investigating the Phantom Thieves of Hearts by herself. She hesitates and then assumes that he is lying to provoke her.
• Resentful Guardian: While she does care for Makoto, she also sees her as a burden, and admits as much in a fit of anger.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: As she gets to know Joker's side of the story, she also comes to know about the Antisocial Force and the true colors of her superiors and Akechi. Knowing this, she helps to fake Joker's death and aids him in taking down Shido's conspiracy, putting her career at risk in the process.
• Selective Enforcement: She does nothing about Futaba's abusers, but attacks Sojiro for not doing a good enough (in the opinion of her, a total stranger) job cleaning up the mess they made.
• Shame If Something Happened: During the summer, Sae at the behest of the Special Investigation Unit attempts to strong arm Wakaba's research on Cognitive Psience out of Sojiro. When he refuses to hand the research over, she makes an unveiled threat that she may target his guardianship of Futaba if he doesn't cooperate. When speaking about it later she doesn't sound very proud of herself, especially since it wasn't even useful information.
• Sharp Dressed Woman: Usually seen in a dark business suit.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Sae's cynical and bitter while Makoto's idealistic and determined to fight for justice.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Has a disdain for the idealistic justice her father used to espouse and dislikes that Makoto is trying to emulate him, claiming that Makoto can only think about such things because she doesn't have to work for a living. Her Palace is a representation of her own self-loathing over this.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Only appears in one scene in Strikers but without her, Zenkichi would've never been released from prison, and the Phantom Thieves would've never been acquitted from being wrongfully accused.
• Spanner in the Works: The single most important factor in unlocking the good and true endings lies in her decision following her interrogation of the protagonist. Whether he lives or dies is dependent entirely upon her actions.
• Start of Darkness: The reason Sae started becoming more selfish and less noble is backlash after the death of her father. Though she admired him greatly and was upset by his death, deep down a part of the reason she's upset is because this put a lot of pressure on her to raise Makoto alone when she likely wasn't even an adult yet. This forced her to "mature" and focus more on actually earning a living rather than simply pursuing justice. The fact that she resented criminals for slightly skewed reasons did not help either.
• Statuesque Stunner: Her heels appear to put her at around the average height of a Japanese man (5ft 7in), while still standing shorter than Joker (5ft 9in) and Akechi (5ft 10in). The artbook for Royal includes a character height diagram and puts her at about 5ft 6in, which is still on the taller side for Japanese women, but not outrageously tall.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Part of the reason why she's so obsessed with proving herself is because women have a much harder time achieving success than men do in Japanese society. When she's taken off of Shido's case, her new boss tells her that she can use the time off to get married.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Outwardly serious and no-nonsense, but occasionally shows a kinder side, especially later in the game.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • To Katsuya from Persona 2. Both are relatively upstanding individuals in positions of power who take care of their younger siblings, but have strained relationships with them due to various issues.
  • She also has some similarities with Naoto from Persona 4, both being relatively young people in law enforcement professions, who struggle with being women in a "man's world," an issue that helps give rise to their Shadows.

T-Z

• Take Up My Sword: A non-lethal variation; the Phantom Thieves task her with taking up the crusade to reform society after they level Mementos for good.
• Talking the Monster to Death: The Phantom Thieves' plan to trick Akechi hinges on this. Rather than stealing her Treasure and forcefully rewriting her morals, they instead have Makoto reach out to Sae's Shadow and remind her why she wanted to work in law enforcement in the first place. As Sae's Shadow was born out of the constant pressure she was put under by her coworkers to produce a result in the Phantom case no matter what, including falsifying evidence, forcing her Shadow to accept that cheating and true justice are antithetical is enough to change her cognition without completely rewriting it. This allows her Palace to remain intact and the Thieves to trick Akechi into killing Sae's projection of Joker rather than the real thing.
• Tarot Motifs: Reversed Judgement symbolizes self-doubt and a Refusal of the Call, which relates to how Sae is willing to forge evidence and frame a random person for the psychotic breakdown incidents and how she doesn't believe she has what it takes to succeed on her own merit. Both of these aspects are best highlighted in her Palace.
• Team Mom: Near the end of the narrative, she acts as one of the two adults who are de facto (but non-acting) Phantom Thieves themselves alongside Sojiro, being their friend on the force and the maternal influence of the team.
• The Team Normal: Alongside Sojiro. The two are more or less the adult, non-combat advisors of the field agents of the Phantom Thieves.
  • Interestingly Sae actually enters the Metaverse during the Thieves Gambit against Akechi, though it wasn't long enough for her to encounter any distortions (i.e., she still can't understand Morgana).
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She doesn't exactly get along with Akechi, often disagreeing with him on the job and suspecting that he was the one who stole the data from her laptop (when it was actually Makoto's doing, something Sae likely didn't want to believe). It turns out that Akechi sees Sae as little more than a pawn to be manipulated.
• Took a Level in Idealism: She gradually rediscovers her desire to pursue justice, and in the ending, decides to become an attorney instead of a prosecutor. Especially notable because Japan's judicial system is infamous in legal circles for having a more than 99% conviction rate, meaning that she's willing to take on a ludicrously difficult profession for the sake of that ideal.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Despite not having her heart stolen, she becomes a warmer and kinder individual later in the game.
• Tough Love: She does love Makoto, but her desire to see Makoto grow strong enough to stand on her own (and to overcome any obstacles that come with being a woman in Japanese society) lead her to be pretty harsh at times.
• Uncertain Doom: During her interrogation of Joker, Sae realizes that she is likely to be the next target of the Antisocial Force after Joker is executed. Considering Akechi does succeed in killing Joker in the first bad ending, it's likely that Sae would then go on to become a victim of a mental shutdown.
• The Unreveal: It's never revealed what her Treasure was since it never left her Palace. All that's known is that it was a briefcase in the Metaverse which the Phantom Thieves switched with a fake one in their plan to fake Joker's death. She decides that her most prized "Treasure" is her sense of justice to protect those important to her, and while not outright stated it probably is a Tragic Keepsake from her father.
• Unwitting Pawn:
  • During the early parts of the story her pursuit of the Phantom Thieves is fairly neutral: She's just doing her job. When Akechi points out that they could very well be responsible for events like the mental shutdowns she starts getting a lot more aggressive in her attempts to track them down, possibly viewing it as justification for her more unethical/harsh actions.
  • The Antisocial Force uses her to lure out the Thieves, placing her in charge of the investigation and then dismissing her once the Thieves send the calling card.
  • The Phantom Thieves, in turn, use her in their plan to fake Joker's death by having Joker tell her to show his phone to Akechi which Futaba remotely triggered the Nav app to send Akechi to Sae's Palace, or rather, the identical police station next to it so he would carry out his plan to kill Joker, but it only resulted in the "deaths" of cognitive versions of a corrupt guard on his side and Joker, who in reality was sitting in the interrogation room doing nothing since Sae left.
• The Voice: In Strikers, she talks to the heroes over the phone, but is almost always offscreen. The one time she is actually in a scene, the camera is set from her perspective.
• When She Smiles: Her default facial expression is always an ice-cold stare or scowl. But once she takes a level in kindness, it complements her beautiful appearance.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: When the Phantom Thieves release their final calling card on Shido, this puts Sae directly in Shido's sights. Upon being questioned by the police and called a traitor, she pretends to faint and lose her memory, blaming the Phantom Thieves to create misdirection and simultaneously protect them.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: During the Casino heist, Makoto is able to get through to Sae's Shadow, and Sae herself by extension, by reminding her sister of the sense of justice she once possessed. After this, Sae Takes a Level in Idealism and participates in a plan to save Joker's life.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Long before she met Joker, long before she felt anything but seething disdain for him, she was the only possibility for his Judgement link. There have been links that can be opened by more than one person, but- despite the many people Joker met before Sae- said link was not among them.

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"I'm counting on you, everyone... I will believe in you to the very end...!"

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