Sandbox / Umineko When They Cry Yasu

Voiced by: Sayaka Ohara (JP - visual novel), Rie Kugimiya (JP - Umineko: Golden Fantasia)

Sayo in the EP 8 manga, wearing her mother's dress.

"It's obvious that a witch can do things like that. ...Becoming a witch, I'll bring forth all the things I wish. People, hearts, everything. And now, there's nothing I can't do. Because I am already a witch."

Sayo, also known as "Yasu", is the true identity of the witch Beatrice, as well as Shannon and Kanon at the same time. Sayo was the one who instigated a mass murder-suicide on Rokkenjima from October 4th to October 6th in many of the arcs.

Sayo's birth name is Lion Ushiromiya, the illegitimate child of Kinzo and his daughter Beatrice Ushiromiya, as well as the baby Natsuhi was given by Kinzo 19 years ago to raise, due to her inability to give birth at the time. One day Natsuhi gave the baby to a servant, but pushed the servant off a cliff out of anger and resentment over raising a child that wasn't her own. The servant died, but the baby managed to survive by a miracle, although with a major abdominal laceration that damaged the baby's sexual organs. Genji, Doctor Nanjo and Kumasawa managed to hide the baby's survival, passing the baby off as an orphan from the Fukuin house. When Sayo was still very young, Genji arranged work for her at the Ushiromiya estate as a servant in hopes that this would allow Kinzo to bond with her as a parent without Kinzo committing incest with his own child once more.

In the real world, Sayo planned the murders and wrote the message bottles containing the description of them. In the official Twilight of the Golden Witch manga, it was confirmed that the epitaph was solved by the adults before Sayo could carry out their plans; Rudolph and Kyrie were the ones who carried out the massacre from there. Despite Battler offering her his help to live on, Sayo was still overturn by guilt and self-loathing and drowned herself at the sea.

The manga goes on to confirm that the battles between Battler and Beatrice since Legend of the Golden Witch occur after that in Purgatory, between Sayo's deceased spirit (Beatrice) and Tooya's missing memories (Battler).

It should be noted that the name Sayo Yasuda only appears in the manga, not the visual novel (however, the name Sayo is hinted by Shannon, one of Sayo's personas, in the VN's Episode 1).

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• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: She wanted to keep faithfully waiting for Battler's return. After he wrote a letter for everyone but her, Sayo decides to move on and starts a relationship with George instead, but her love for Battler never completely fades.
• A-Cup Angst: Played for Drama. Sayo started to figure out something was wrong with her body when it didn't show any signs of puberty in middle school. Given that both Shannon and Beatrice have large breasts and the fact that Battler likes them big, it's clear Sayo has quite a complex about it, especially since she even uses Fake Boobs so no one will find out that she never grew breasts.
• Adaptation Expansion: The manga lays down explicitly all of Sayo's inner issues and the thought process that led her to her final choice, in the form of another message bottle titled "Confession of the Golden Witch" that was found by Ikuko and Tooya. The VN on the other hand, only exposed a part of it and encouraged the reader to go through the story again and try to figure out the rest themselves.
• Adopt-a-Servant: A complicated example. Sayo is the illegitimate Child by Rape of Kinzo and his own daughter Beatrice II. Originally, Kinzo had the intention of making Lion/Sayo the legitimate heir of the family by having Krauss and Natsuhi adopt her. However, Natsuhi pushed a servant holding Sayo off a cliff and the servants who knew she survived hid her out of fear Kinzo would sexually abuse his child again. They instead passed her off as another orphan of the Fukuin House and arranged things so Sayo would work for the Ushiromiya main household from a very young age. This was all in hopes that Kinzo would be able to develop a normal parent-child bond with Sayo if he didn't know she was the descendant of his mistress Beatrice Castiglioni, which could have led to yet another messed up Replacement Goldfish scenario.
• Afterlife Angst: Double Subverted. Sayo did get what she wanted by triggering the Ushiromiya family massacre and dragging the souls of everyone to her Golden Land where they're free from their miseries. However, Sayo still died full of regrets over the deaths she felt responsible for and tells a suicidal Ange that there is no happiness nor a future for any of them in the land of the dead. Sayo then encourages Ange to live a happy and fulfilling life so she doesn't end up like her.
• Almighty Janitor: Upon solving the epitaph, Sayo technically became the next head of the Ushiromiya family and the owner of 10 tons of gold, but she'd prefer to keep a low profile as a servant over the burden of all that responsibility and the grudges of Krauss and Natsuhi if they learned that their expected positions were suddenly snatched away.
• Ambiguously Bi: Her main love interests are George (as Shannon) and Battler (as Beatrice), but she does also love Jessica as Kanon, it's just that she separates her love into fragments plus she more or less starts the relationship more because Jessica admitted her crush on Kanon to Shannon in private, although her feelings for all three are still very much real even if she has a tendency to only ship the three personas in heterosexual couplings.
• Ambiguous Gender: It's very strongly implied that Sayo was designated male at birth, but was raised as female due to having her sexual organs damaged as a baby.
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: As a teenager, Sayo began feeling extremely uncomfortable and insecure once she noticed her body wasn't developing like a girl's body should. She went as far as to create a male identity to cope. Finding out about her injuries from the cliff fall only made matters infinitely worse for Sayo. Much of Sayo's conflict and "furniture" complex comes down to not feeling fully comfortable as either gender because of the condition of her body. Despite everything, Sayo universally gets treated as a girl by the series and even the author explicitly refers to her as such.
• Ambiguously Evil: The fact that Sayo can be even labeled "evil" depends on the viewer's viewpoint and value system.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Sayo is considered attractive either as a woman or a man. Both Shannon and Beatrice are seen as very beautiful women and Kanon is such a Bishōnen that all the girls at Jessica's school fawn over him.
• Bastard Angst: After finding out the truth behind her birth, Sayo is horrified because not only is she an illegitimate child, she's a Child by Rape born from Parental Incest. All this leads Sayo to believe she was never supposed to be born.
• Batman Gambit: Sayo's entire plan with the epitaph boils down to one of these constructed in a particularly haphazard way, with more vulnerability to failure than you usually get in these. This is justified since a part of Sayo wants the plan to fail and to be found out.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: In EP6, the duel between Shannon and Kanon, with Beatrice sitting on the sidelines, is actually a representation of the state of affairs within Sayo's head for a good year or two prior to 1986. By extension, most of the other arguments and fantasy battles between Shannon, Kanon, and Beatrice throughout the story represent this, too.
• Becoming the Mask: Sayo planned to "become" Shannon - the quiet and demure wife that George expects - by "killing" Kanon and Beatrice before she marries George. That shows just how desperately she craves to be loved. Of course, Battler's return ended up blowing her plan out of the water by awakening "Beatrice", Sayo's desire to commit suicide and take everyone down with her, once again...
• Bookworm: Sayo loved to read the mystery novels given to her by Kumasawa. This was what made her closer to Battler and it's implied Sayo got her ideas of closed room murders from the mystery novels.
• Break the Cutie: The definition of Sayo's entire life. The hell she goes through changes her from an innocent child to a desperate, suicidal person.
• Broken Bird: When you know Rika from Higurashi has been through horrific events, Sayo's is much worse as she used to be an innocent child who only wanted to fall in love and have a real family, but bullying, heartbreak, traumatic revelations and conflicting romantic feelings broke her to the point of losing all hope for a happy life and deciding to plan a massive Murder-Suicide.
• Broken Tears: Plenty of times during Confession of the Golden Witch. First when breaking down from the stress of the lack of development of her body, Battler's absence and her massive loneliness. Then when Sayo breaks down after learning the truth of her origins and her body. Also, when writing down her murder plans becomes too much for her.
• Bully Magnet: Sayo suffered bullying and mocking from the other servants during her first years of work. Aside from Manon, the only other servants who treated Sayo with any kindness were Kumasawa and her Imaginary Friend, Shannon.
• The Butler Did It: Essentially, albeit she was also secretly head of the family this entire time, but acted in the roles of her two servant identities to preserve the illusion.
• But Not Too Foreign: Mostly Japanese, but has some Italian blood in her from her grandmother Beatrice Castiglioni.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Sayo only called Kinzo "Father" once, at Kinzo's Last Request to her before his death. After she learned of the horrors he committed, she only calls him by his name as being his child brought her nothing but misery.

• Cast as a Mask: Five of them! There's Sayaka Ohara as both Beatrice and Clair (and as Yasu herself in Episode 7), Rie Kugimiya as Shannon (likely her actual voice and seemingly confirmed in Golden Fantasia), Yuu Kobayashi as Kanon, Daisuke Ono as The Man From 19 Years Ago (although it's implied to be Battler reading her script), and Ayako Kawasumi as Lion.
• Child by Rape: Sayo is the result of Kinzo convincing himself that his illegitimate daughter Beatrice Ushiromiya was the reincarnation of his lover and ultimately raping her. Sayo didn't take it well when she found out.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: With Battler in 1980. His completely forgetting to come back for Shannon and yet appearing again 6 years later like nothing happened when Sayo was facing her most horrible struggle was the final straw that made her want to end everything.
• Commonality Connection:
  • Sayo and Battler's shared love for mystery novels played a big part in their bond.
  • Sayo also became close to Maria because both of them had a fixation with magic and the occult as a way to cope with their unpleasant realities.
• Cope by Pretending: A particularly sad case taken to its logical extreme. Sayo never had any real friends, so she created Imaginary Friends to try and feel less lonely. Not only that, due to her dreadfully low self-esteem, Sayo doesn't believe anyone can accept her for who she really is. Instead, she assumes idealized personas she created for others to see while hiding her true self. Tragically, it was Sayo never learning how to deal with her problems in any way other than putting up an act which ultimately lead to her planning a massive Murder-Suicide.
• The Corrupter: Despite caring for Maria greatly, once Sayo's mental state starts deteriorating she quickly becomes a poisonous influence on the young girl, starting with teaching her 'black magic' to cope with her problems and eventually escalating into making her an accomplice to her murder-suicide plans.
• Cosmic Plaything: Ever since Sayo was born, the universe seems to be conspiring to ruin any chance of happiness she may get. It gets quite literal when she becomes the Witches' plaything, considering their love of tragic endings.
• Crippling Castration: Sayo's sexual organs were mutilated as a result of a cliff fall when she was a baby.
• Death Faked for You: After Natsuhi pushed her off a cliff, Genji, Doctor Nanjo and Kumawasa managed to hide Sayo's survival and fake her death.
• Death Seeker: The reason Sayo plans the murders is not only to kill everyone, but herself as well, since she genuinely believes that everyone would be better off if she never existed.
• Despair Event Horizon: Sayo passing this is what kicks off the plot. The reveal of her origins and mutilated body had already broken Sayo, but Battler's untimely return just at the time Sayo was facing her most horrible struggle was what made her lose all hope for a better life and plan the murders. The one hope she had left was for Battler to stop her.
• Desperately Craves Affection: So desperate that over the course of her life, Sayo seeks love from three different people while under different identities. The problem is that even if she shares a mutual love with someone, she feels that that love is eventually doomed to failure due to her body being unable to have children as a woman, and unable to perform as man.
• Determinator: In the true events of Rokkenjima, Sayo was lying on the ground, bleeding heavily from being shot by Kyrie, but still ran around the island in order to rescue Battler. And she succeed, even though she end up dying herself by suicide when Battler tried to take her with him.
• The Ditherer: Perhaps Sayo's greatest flaw is her unwillingness to face any sort of unpleasant situation and how she avoids making decisions out of fear of negative consequences. Sayo was always too afraid to actively do something about her situation, only pretending that nothing was wrong or letting others make the decisions for her. It was this very indecisiveness that led her to make the game in the first place; all of Sayo's conflicting feelings left her without knowing what to do anymore and she just abandoned herself to fate to not be forced to make a choice. This is something that Sayo acknowledges in the manga, admitting she was nothing but a coward who kept avoiding her problems. In the end, she never did anything to solve them and made them worse as a result.
• Dream-Crushing Handicap: In her childhood, Sayo dreamed of someday marrying the man she loves and starting a real family with him, something she never had due to being raised as an orphan. Sadly, she eventually found out she can't ever have children because of the injuries she got from being thrown off a cliff as a baby. To make it much worse, her boyfriend George constantly talks about wanting to have children after they get married, feeding into Sayo's fears that George will dump her if he learns the truth about her.
• Driven to Suicide: This is the way Sayo died in the real world, by throwing herself into the sea and drowning along with Battler.
• Driven to Villainy: Sayo planned the murders of everyone in the Ushiromiya household because the extreme amount of stress and psychosis caused from the traumatic revelations of her origins and broken body lead Sayo to believe all hope was lost and death was the only way to free herself and the Ushiromiya bloodline from a cursed fate.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: This is Sayo's default expression in the closest thing she has to real appearances in the visual novel as Clair and Beatrice in the EP7 Tea Party. They represent her deep depression and despair.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The older maids gave her the nickname "Yasu" and Sayo really didn't like to be called that. It doesn't help that the word can mean "cheap" (as in "a cheap article").
• Expository Pronoun: A complex example, as she has created multiple personas and thus has various incarnations in the story, each using a different pronoun. As herself and as the servant Shannon, she uses "watashi", the normal female pronoun. As Beatrice, she uses the archaic regal pronoun "warawa" to give her an elegant and haughty vibe. Kanon, the meek and gloomy boy persona, uses "boku". And as Clair in Episode 7, she uses the formal "ware" to give a theatrical effect.
• Extra Digits: The manga reveals that like Kinzo, Sayo had polydactyly (likely a recessive trait that resurfaced from Kinzo inbreeding with his own daughter), but her extra toes were surgically removed and only a small scar remained.
• The Faceless: In the visual novel, Sayo doesn't have a sprite in Ep7. This is confirmed by Ryukishi to be an attempt to obscure her real identity as Shannon. In-universe, she's only seen through the "characters" she creates, so the reader can only imagine what Sayo looks like. EP7 manga finally gave her a more concrete appearance by depicting Sayo as a young child with long blonde hair, but this is yet another attempt at obscuring her identity by giving her a form more similar to Clair. In the manga of Episode 8, however, she's most often shown with Shannon's appearance.
• The Fatalist: She has the right to be, considering the rather crappy hand life has given her.
• First Period Panic: Inverted. The fact that Sayo doesn't ever get her first period causes her to worry that something is gravely wrong with her body.
• Forgiveness: In EP8, Sayo is able to bring herself to forgive Natsuhi for throwing her off the cliff and ruining her life because Sayo already got back at her in the games and Natsuhi repented for her sin. She's also implied to have forgiven Kinzo by the time she confesses in EP7, as her narration portrays him in a pitiful, rather than resentful light.
• Freudian Excuse: The reasons why Sayo plans the Murder-Suicide of the Ushiromiya family are less out of hatred and resentment towards anyone in the family, and more of an act of desperation because she can't believe a happy life is possible for her due to her messed up origins as a child born of Parental Incest and her broken body making her feel unlovable. In her despair, Sayo can only believe the karma of Kinzo's crimes is dragging down everyone in the family, so her conclusion is that she and the Ushiromiya family can only find peace in the afterlife. In the end, however, Sayo knows it's wrong to force her death wish onto everyone and wants to be stopped.
• Friendless Background: Sayo could never make friends with any of the kids of her orphanage or her fellow servants because of her shyness and clumsiness, so she would usually turn to her imaginary friends to comfort herself. Throughout her entire life, the closest things Sayo had to real friends were Battler, Jessica and Maria. Even then, Sayo wasn't really that close to them because Battler left the family and didn't see Sayo again for several years, Jessica wasn't allowed to get too friendly with Sayo because Sayo was a servant and Maria thought she was playing with the witch Beatrice who was only possessing "Shannon"'s body.
• Gambit Roulette: Sayo's plan in the various games have countless possibilities for failure, and she acknowledges this - for example, as pointed out by Willard, if in Legend of the Golden Witch George had ignored Hideyoshi's attempts at stopping him from looking at Shannon's 'corpse' and simply barged in, the gig would be up right away. This is actually deliberately Invoked as Sayo's plan, due to her hoping to leave the fate of herself and everyone else to destiny. There are three possible outcomes for her, just like in actual roulette - either Sayo succeeds in her murders and successfully bombs the island, creating the "Golden Land" as Beatrice, or she is either caught and stopped before the end, as Sayo, or in the rarest scenario (the 'zero on her roulette', as represented by Kanon), she simply cracks under pressure and confesses to everything, aborting the murders.
• Given Name Reveal: Subverted in-universe. When learning that Kinzō is her father, she also learns her real name (Lion), and seems to embrace it at first, but she never uses it again in the end. Probably because after learning everything about Kinzō, she was less than happy to use the name he gave her. Her other given name (Sayo) is only revealed in the manga, although in a sense, it was already revealed right from Episode 1, but before the manga made it clear some assumed that it was only "Shannon"'s name (i.e. a name Sayo had made up).
• Go Mad from the Revelation: As a servant, Sayo wasn't exactly happy, but she was still mentally stable. Learning about her origins and the state of her body after having discovered the gold, however, made Sayo broken for good. That's actually when she began to call herself "furniture".
• Graceful Loser: Multiple references to a roulette when talking about her plans are born from the fact that Sayo not only expects her plan to be stopped, but even wants someone to do it.
• Greater-Scope Villain: This what Sayo ultimately was in the real-life massacre. Sayo is initially set up to be the true mastermind behind the murders on Rokkenjima, and is indeed shown to have been motivated to kill everyone thanks to her suicidal self-loathing and trauma. At the end, it's revealed that Sayo did set her plan in motion, but the adults solved the epitaph before Sayo could actually kill anyone. The adults then turned on each other, and after everything fell apart due to a couple of accidental deaths, Kyrie and Rudolf were the ones who carried out the massacre to its conclusion. However, Sayo still created the scenario that resulted in the deaths of everyone but herself, Battler and Eva (most notably by placing a stack of shotguns, complete with ammunition, right in front of the emotionally charged siblings). Sayo makes no attempt to excuse herself from the fault and outright tells Ange that she's the one responsible for the tragedy that took her family away from her.
• Hair Color Spoiler: Averted. To keep the audience from guessing the truth easily, Sayo has a different hair color for every of her identities; brown hair for Shannon, dark gray hair for Kanon, blonde hair for Beatrice and white/pale green hair for Clair. This has caused confusion about which is her natural hair color in canon, but in the manga, it's confirmed she wears a blonde wig when she puts on the Beatrice disguise which means her true hair color is close to Shannon/Kanon's.
• Hates Their Parent: Sayo felt neutral about Kinzo when the latter lived. After he died, Sayo learned she was born of Kinzo's rape of his own illegitimate daughter and to make it worse, she finds evidence that Kinzo caused a massacre at the military base. Sayo's feelings for her father turned into utter contempt and disgust, to the point of writing Kinzo's gruesome death in her forgeries as she couldn't stand that a monster like him died in peace.
• Heartwarming Orphan: Sayo starts as an innocent orphan who wanted nothing more than having a real family. Then Sayo went past both the Despair Event Horizon and the Moral Event Horizon with her decision to just blow up the entire island.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: The manga of Episode 7 depicts young Sayo as a child whose eyes are always covered by her long bangs. This is meant to make her look different from Shannon and not make too obvious they're the same person.
• Hope Spot: Sayo views Battler's promise to take her away from the island so they could live together as this. The fact that Battler completely forgets about it and then comes back six years later, at a time when Sayo is suffering various major issues, only drives her further into madness.
• I Have Many Names: In Episode 7 alone, Sayo is referred to as "Beatrice", "Shannon", "Kanon", "Clair" and "Lion". The fact she uses multiple names − each symbolizing a different "role" − is actually the key to several puzzles.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Sayo is desperate to find someone who can love, accept and understand her completely. However, she thinks it's impossible because of her broken body.
• I Just Want to Be Special: The reason why Sayo wanted to become a witch instead of just being a servant.
• I Will Wait for You: Battler promised to whisk her away from Rokkenjima, but then he distanced himself from the island and the Ushiromiyas as a whole for six years out of frustration that Rudolf was cheating on Asumu. Sayo bore with it for a few of those years, believing that enduring his absence was a trial from God to test her love, but when Battler sends letters to the family while completely forgetting about her, she gives up on him and transfers her lingering feelings toward her witch persona Beatrice.
• If I Can't Have You…: Played with. Sayo admits one of the reasons why she wouldn't have been satisfied with committing suicide by herself and chose a mass Murder-Suicide of Battler and his entire family instead was because she couldn't stand the thought that Battler could eventually forget about her and move on with someone else. However, in the real world Sayo ultimately did kill herself alone while letting Battler live.
  Sayo: "If I believed the world could be this fleeting... then I would probably have been satisfied dying alone. If I died, will he cry for me? I'm sure he would. He would cry and cry until his tears dried. Then he'll move on with somebody else, as if none of this ever happened... No. I didn't want anybody else to have him."
• Image Song: Coin Game
• Improbable Infant Survival: Realistically, she shouldn't have been able to survive a fall off a cliff when she was just a baby, especially considering the adult who was carrying her did die from the fall. However, she didn't come off completely unscathed either since it wrecked the possibility of ever having children of her own.
• Inbred and Evil: Downplayed. Sayo is the product of Kinzo raping his illegitimate daughter due to believing that she was her mother's reincarnation. Learning the Awful Truth of her conception is one of the reasons Sayo is so messed up. While more unstable than outright evil, Sayo is the culprit who orchestrated the Ushiromiya massacre.
• Inconvenient Attraction: Sayo developed feelings for Battler, George, and Jessica because of their kindness towards her. After learning that she's their aunt/cousin, Sayo couldn't help to feel disgust at herself for falling in love with and wanting to marry her own relatives even though she condemns Kinzo's rape of his own daughter.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: She created and nurtured the character of an almighty, haughty witch in great part to deal with her frighteningly low self-esteem. And is all too aware of it, as the scenes between Beatrice and Shannon in Episode 2 show.
• Insecure Love Interest: Sayo doesn't believe anyone can love and accept her real self, so she uses a different identity for each of their love interests to love. This a major issue for Sayo's love life, as she knows she is tricking her love interests and she believes once they find out the truth about Sayo's body, they will leave her.
• Ironic Name: Sayo's given name can be pronounced as "Shaddai", the goddess of fertility. Very ironic given that she can't have children because of the injury she got as a baby.
• It Meant Something to Me: While his time together with Shannon and their promise wasn't a big deal for Battler and he easily forgot about it after his life got complicated by his family problems, the time they spent together means the world to Sayo and Battler's broken promise coupled with his sudden return becomes the last straw that causes Sayo's final breakdown.
• It's All About Me: Despite claiming to sincerely love the cousins, Sayo still had no qualms about manipulating and further alienating Maria with her fanciful stories about witches and magic instead of actively and productively doing something to help her situation with Rosa, to entertain a double relationship with both George and Jessica through her two main identities and in general to involve them all in her selfish and crazy plan of mass murder-suicide especially to punish and remind Battler for his guilt that he has (very understandably) forgotten of a silly and innocent promise he made to Shannon as a child. This is ultimately something she also realizes after her actions led Kyrie and Rudolf to killing everyone except her and Battler (and Eva), obviously leading to a case of....
• It's All My Fault: Sayo tends to frequently blame herself for many things. One point worthy of note is that even though she Desperately Craves Affection, what she cries out to Battler in anguish in EP 4 isn't "Why doesn't anyone love me?" but "Why am I unable to love anyone?" showing just how much she hates herself and believes that it is her own fault that she cannot have a fulfilling relationship with someone.
• King Incognito: Though Sayo was raised as a servant, she is in fact the true head of the family and was always intended to be so, having been granted the headship by Kinzo before he died. However, none of the Ushiromiya relatives know about this since Sayo's true identity is kept a secret even after Kinzo granted them the headship.
• Kissing Cousins: Given that she is Shannon, Kanon and Beatrice, Sayo is involved with as many as three of her cousins (who are also her niece/nephews). To be fair, Sayo had no idea she was related to Battler and George until about two years prior to when the story begins and after finding out the truth, Sayo begins to feel disgusted at finding herself attracted to her relatives, believing it makes her no different from Kinzo who raped his own daughter.
• The Klutz: As a child, Sayo was extremely clumsy at work and would often drop and break things and lost items. Sayo's low self-esteem and having to work as a small child probably didn't help.
• Lack of Empathy: Sayo is so focused on her personal problems and on how much she wants to punish the people that, from her point of view, have hurt her to the point of completely neglecting the fact that she too, with her actions, hurts not only them but also the people she loves, the cousins:
  • With Maria, Sayo sympathizes with her situation, which translates into Kanon and especially Beatrice's roles, into a deep hatred for how Rosa treats her own daughter. But that sympathy is triggered more by the fact that she projects herself and her complicated relationship with Kinzo more into Maria's relationship with her mother, and also because she indirectly blames Rosa for her baby accident caused by Natsuhi due to the death of Sayo's birth mother, rather than real empathy towards Maria herself.
  • She has no qualms about betraying Jessica and George's trust and cheating them throught her Kanon and Shannon's identities respectively.
  • And when Battler's return to Rokkenjima slowly causes her to breakdown that makes her make the final decision to put her crazy plan into action, she does so above all because she was upset that Battler had forgotten that he once had promised Shannon to take her away from the island on a white horse, completely neglecting that Battler was a child and that if he has not returned to the island for years it has been for very understandable family reasons. Sayo is so selfish and numb that she doesn't even consider all the suffering her actions would bring on Ange, Battler's little sister, in the years to come after the death of almost all of her relatives.
• Last Kiss: When Battler tried to take her away from Rokkenjima with him, Sayo kissed him for the first and last time before throwing herself into the sea.
• Leitmotif: Sayo has several, being the "heart" of Beatrice and the "true culprit" of the message bottles.
  • Fall, Far (flat) and Toy box accompany Yasu throughout Episode 7's "flashback".
  • Sayo's true Leitmotif that encompasses her struggles as Shannon and Kanon is ALIVE, a nostalgic and tragic song.
  • End of the World (inst.) is frequently used as Sayo's Leitmotif during her two most painful years that led her to finally contemplate mass suicide.
• Lost in Character: Invoked. Sayo hates herself and her life so much that she chooses to create idealized "characters" that she would like to be and play their roles to the degree of almost becoming another person entirely, in an attempt to escape from reality. Although many fans interpreted this as a case of Split Personality at first, Sayo is perfectly conscious about what she's doing when creating these characters, and they are used to express different layers of Sayo's personality. They're more of a cross between characters played by an actor and Imaginary Friends, as opposed to something like Dissociative Identity Disorder.
• Love Hurts: It doesn't matter if her love is requited or not, Sayo believes she can't have a successful romance with anyone because of her broken body.
• Love Martyr: Toward Battler. Even though he broke his promise to come back for her and broke her heart by forgetting all about it, Sayo still can't forget about Battler and no matter how much Sayo loves George and Jessica, there's always a special place for Battler in Sayo's heart, even if it only brings her pain.
• Love Revelation Epiphany: Sayo began to develop feelings for Jessica only after Jessica told "Shannon" she was interested in Kanon, which made Sayo feel overjoyed that someone noticed the persona that represented the ugliest part of herself.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Immediately after solving the epitaph, Sayo meets with Genji, is put in an extravagant dress to play the role of Beatrice, and learns that the master of the house in which she has served for eight years is her father. At first, she was just confused, but after learning exactly what kind of things said father has done, the mere idea of this man's blood flowing through her veins becomes horrifying to her.
• Mad Bomber: Sayo rigged up enough explosives to completely wipe out the Ushiromiya estate and any evidence of the murders with it, leaving nothing but a crater behind. And that shrine that was presumably destroyed by a lightning bolt? It was actually blown up when Sayo was testing explosives that were half a century old. Though to be fair, the giant bomb that ultimately wiped out the mansion and all surrounding areas was constructed by Kinzo and merely used by Sayo for her plans.
• Mad Dreamer: Sayo's "dreams" are her attempt to escape from the reality she finds unbearable. The collapse of her dreams as she realizes that they are not real was the final straw that sent her to despair.
• Madness Mantra: "Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die." (as she writes her bloody murder mysteries).
• Manipulative Bastard: As the culprit, Sayo goes all-in on using everything and everyone around her to pull off her elaborate crimes. This includes manipulating the adults of the family and her fellow servants through a combination of bribery and threatening them and their children, exploiting Maria’s belief in her to better sell the existence of Beatrice, and using her various personas to sew suspicion and confusion, as well as create the illusion of locked-room murders. In the manga, despite her hesitation and desire to be stopped, she nevertheless admits to feeling a ‘dark satisfaction’ from planning her schemes, and is resolute that she would have gone through with some version of them if she’d only had the opportunity.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: A mundane example, since the "spirits" are really just "characters"/Imaginary Friends Sayo made up and not real people. If you just count the ones that are given control of Sayo's body, the number is likely three (with Clair being an embodiment of all three at once), but if you count all of her Imaginary Friends as well, the number quickly shoots into the double-digits. "I am one yet many", indeed. Spoofed here.
• Master Actor: Sayo is able to play the roles of all her idealized personas to the degree of almost becoming another person entirely. Her voice and behavior can also change greatly between two scenes.
• Master of Disguise: Sayo spent several years constantly switching between the "Shannon" and "Kanon" disguises without anyone noticing it. As Beatrice, she looks unrecognizable. It's implied and later confirmed that Sayo uses wigs and Fake Boobs as part of her disguises.
• Meaningful Name: Sayo's given name can be read as 3, 4 hinting towards her personas. Also, didn't Higurashi's Big Bad also have a name involving those numbers?
• Meido: When she isn't wearing Beatrice's dress, Sayo is usually portrayed with Shannon's maid outfit.
• Mirror Character: To Ange. Both are women who loved Battler and wanted to be with him forever, but are abandoned and possibly forgotten by him. Both resent and blame at least one of their parent figures (Kinzo for Sayo and Eva for Ange). Both were severely bullied. Both used "magic" as escapism. Both gave up on life and chose to commit suicide. In the manga, Sayo-as-Beatrice lampshades the similarity herself. When Ange shouts out her sadness and despair over none of her loved ones coming back for her, Beatrice recalls when she experienced similar feelings as Sayo. Beatrice doesn't want Ange to end up like her; dying miserable and alone, only being able to find an illusion of happiness in the afterlife. She persuades Ange to find the will to live and become happy in the real world.
• Ms. Imagination: A rather tragic example; while Sayo does have a very vivid imagination, it's mainly used as a coping mechanism for all the troubles in her life.
• Multi-Gendered Split Personalities: While not exactly split personalities, Sayo has three core personas; two females and a male one. Sayo's male identity, Kanon, was created when Sayo started to notice there was something wrong with her body due to its lack of any signs of puberty. Sayo then started dressing and acting as a boy part-time to "see if being in a male role feels more natural", while still spending the rest of her time as her main female persona Shannon.
• Murder-Suicide: Sayo's plan is murdering the Ushiromiya family according to the epithet and then kill any remaining survivors with the bomb that blows up the island at midnight. However, Sayo intentionally plans the murders in a way that's easy for the plan to fail because she ultimately doesn't want it to succeed.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Sayo shows to Ange that for all of her problems, she ultimately regrets the choices she made that led to the Ushiromiya family massacre. All that her games accomplished was that she took the lives of those she loved and now she has absolutely no future at all, instead of living to try for a better tomorrow she accepts that she condemned the entire family. She also warns Ange that she risks running into the same mistakes she did by running from her future.
• Old Flame: When it seemed like Battler really wasn't going to return, Sayo tried to forget about him and began to pursue a romance with George. Just when Sayo had resolved to marry George, Sayo heard Battler was going to return that same year. She found her feelings for Battler were as strong as ever and she still wanted him to fulfill their promise. This, combined with a shitload of issues Sayo was already dealing with, caused Sayo to completely breakdown.
• Older Than They Look: Sayo was nine years old when first put to work, but Genji lied about her age, lowering it by three years to avoid suspicion from Natsuhi about Sayo being the child she rejected. Because of Sayo's feebleness and underdevelopment it was easy to fake.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Played with. In EP7, "Yasu" is the only way to directly refer to Sayo. "Yasu" is only a nickname that was given to her by the other servants, which is based on the last name that she received from the Fukuin house, Yasuda. The manga made clear that her given name is in fact Sayo. However, that name was known since EP1, it's just that some people weren't sure if that was just another made up name for "Shannon".
• The Ophelia: More of a case of someone who in spite of living a sad (and mostly unescapable) reality chose to revel herself on delusions and made-up personas.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Sayo's anguished declaration to Battler when he goes on a rampage to find the culprit (Kyrie) is to beg him not to leave her.
• The Pollyanna: Or tried to be, at least. Much like Maria in her diary, Sayo's narration of her story in EP7 tries to attenuate the misery of her situation as much as possible with various coping mechanisms, but if you read between the lines it becomes obvious that her life was pretty horrible. The "red guts sequence" at the end of Episode 7 gives us an inkling of how Sayo really felt about it.
• The Prankster: Though not a particularly mischievous or malicious example. It's mainly a way for Sayo to cope with her low self-esteem, especially with how the servants believe Beatrice will play pranks on them or steal their things.
• Pronoun Trouble: Due to gender-neutral writing in Episode 7's "flashback", the pronoun to be used to refer to "Yasu" has been the subject of much debate. Most people usually settle on "she" though, as it's the gender of most of her personas, and the main gender she seems to identify with, having been raised as a girl.
• Rage Against the Reflection: In the manga, while thinking about how much she hates mirrors since they only show her "pitiful self" and not the person she wishes she could be.
• Raised as the Opposite Gender: Implied. It's shown that Sayo was raised as a girl and there are several hints that she may in fact have been designated male at birth. The Episode 8 manga skews heavily towards this interpretation.
• Recursive Crossdressing: Played with. She first starts dressing as Kanon in an effort to "see if being in a male role feels more natural" (which Genji and Kumasawa supported and encouraged) due to her body's lack of development. However, the truth about her body (which is indirectly confirmed to have been designated male at birth in the first place) was unbeknownst to her back then.
• Redemption Equals Death: Even though Battler tried to convince her to live on to atone for her sins, Sayo didn't believe she could do it. Filled with guilt and regret, Sayo threw herself into the sea with one golden ingot.
• Rousing Speech: In the EP8 manga, Sayo gives Ange a heartfelt and motivating speech after the latter finds out the One Truth of the Rokkenjima Incident. Sayo tells Ange she knows what it is to feel so lonely and desperate that you only want to turn your back on reality and die, but Sayo states nothing good ever came out from running away from her problems. In the end, she ended up choosing death as her final escape and dragged everyone in the island down with her. Sayo then tells Ange to not make the same mistakes as her; she must find the courage to live on, become happy and make reality shine because you will not be able to find real happiness in the land of the dead.
• Royal Bastard: Sayo is the illegitimate child of the family head Kinzo that he raped out of his other illegitimate child.
• Sanity Slippage: After finding out the truth about her origins and the state of her body, Sayo becomes more and more unstable.
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: Sayo's favored weapon. As bullets from this type of shotgun tend to scatter, this explains why most of Sayo's victims turn up with the appearance of their heads smashed.
• Scars Are Forever: The manga reveals Sayo had scars in her feet from the operation that removed her Extra Digits. One day, Sayo accidentally spilled hot soup she was bringing to Kinzo on her feet and when Kumasawa took off her shoes to treat the burns, Kinzo immediately noticed the scars, causing him to suspect that Sayo was his lost child.
• Sent Into Hiding: She is kept secret by different groups for different reasons. Natsuhi and Kinzo keep Sayo secret because Sayo is Kinzo's bastard child, and Natsuhi threw Sayo off a cliff. Genji and Kumasawa, on the other hand, keep Sayo's existence secret partially at Kinzo's wishes, but they keep secret even from him and Natsuhi that Sayo survived the cliff fall because they think that Kinzo might eventually fall in love with Sayo, as he did Sayo's mother, Beatrice Ushiromiya.
• Shout-Out: Sayo's nickname being "Yasu" is a reference to Yasuhiro "Yasu" Mano from the Japanese mystery game The Portopia Serial Murder Case. The game's infamous twist was that Yasu, who is the player character's friend and detective partner, turns out to have been the culprit behind the murders the entire time (so much so that "Yasu is the culprit" quickly became a meme, which was later adopted by the Umineko fandom). However, whether Umineko's "Yasu" is truly the culprit is questionable.
• Shrinking Violet: She was very shy and lacked self-confidence when she was younger, due to being bullied. Some of this still can be seen in her Shannon persona.
• Significant Double Casting: In Episode 7 of the PS3 port, Yasu is voiced by Sayaka Ohara, who also voices Beatrice. This is because Yasu is Beatrice's true identity. Although going by the manga version, it might be more of an example of Cast as a Mask (especially since Episode 8 redraws the flashbacks with a young Shannon rather than the manga's interpretation)
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Sayo is generally attracted to nice people, which isn't limited to the male gender. First, she fell in love with Battler because he's kind-hearted, friendly and funny and he sort of promised to be her prince charming. Later, she developed feelings for George because he's a gentleman who was willing to give up everything to marry her. And then, she became attracted to Jessica when she noticed and was nice to Kanon and Sayo found Jessica's liveliness charming.
• Skewed Priorities: While Sayo had far more understandable reasons for actually starting her murderous fantasies, what drove her so far was the combination of Battler's return and his forgetting of their childhood promise.
• Sobriquet Sex Switch: Sayo changes her servant name from Shannon to Kanon when she's in her male persona. Also, "Kanon"'s real name Yoshiya is, in fact, a modified Japanese reversal of Sayo's name. Shi and ya need to be slurred together into one sound, as the Japanese kana does to write the letter "Sha," and you wind up with "Shayo," which is only slightly different from "Sayo."
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With all three of her love interests to a degree, but the most emphasized is Sayo and Battler. Sayo fell madly in love with him when they were children and Battler promised to take her away of the island in a white horse, which became Sayo's ultimate dream. Unfortunately, Battler ran into some serious family problems and left the family for six years, forgetting all about his promise with Shannon. Sayo tried to believe in Battler, but when it became clear he didn't intend to return for her, she decided to try and forget about him, starting to pursue a romance with George and then Jessica. Battler's untimely return became the trigger to Sayo's Despair Event Horizon, as her unresolved feelings for him added to her emotional and mental instability which was pretty much completely shattered by that point. This lead to Sayo choosing to end everything via mass Murder-Suicide. However, in the real world, Sayo did get a chance of happiness with Battler when both survived the massacre and Battler tried to take Sayo away from the island with him. Sadly, Sayo was still overwhelmed by her guilt and self-loathing, choosing to commit Suicide by Sea. Battler "died" trying to save her, losing his memories in the process. In the end, they can only be Together in Death as Battler and Beatrice in the Golden Land.
• Stepford Smiler: A unique type, but closest to the Unstable type in the form of Shannon.
• Straw Nihilist: A big part of her motives and a big reason why she is able to commit so many terrible atrocities against those she professes to love is that she believes that it's simply impossible to find happiness in reality. She believes that the karmic weight of Kinzo's sins makes it impossible for any positive result to come to the Ushiromiya family and that even if they survive 1986, they are doomed to failure. She views her murders as a mercy because she believes that by covering the island in an illusion and blaming a non-existent witch would result in the Ushiromiyas being seen as innocent victims rather than the terrible people they actually were showing that she believed nothing good would come from the truth. Likewise, she believes that she herself cannot obtain happiness and that the revelation of her body and parentage would lead to George and Battler rejecting her. Uniquely for this trope, she desires more than anything for her nihilistic belief to be proven wrong. As Beatrice in the meta world she grows out of this mindset and convinces Ange to live in spite of the cruel reality by creating her own happiness.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Played with. In her Beatrice persona, Sayo is the splitting image of her mother and she's said to look a lot like her mother by Kinzo. But given that nobody noticed it all those years until they solved the epitaph, it may not be that strong after all.
• Suddenly Voiced: Played in an unusual way in the PS3 port of Episode 7. For a long while, "Yasu" is the only non-voiced character (she has plenty of lines, but they aren't voiced)...until the line where she says she wants to become a witch. During the whole scene after that, her voice gradually evolves into that of Beatrice. The only other voiced lines Sayo has are when she is made to meet Kinzō after discovering the gold, and also when Sayo demands why Genji and Nanjo didn't just let her die after they reveal the truth about her origins and the state of her body to her.
• Suicide by Sea: While Sayo never did kill anyone on Rokkenjima in the real world, she still felt responsible for causing the massacre and chose to commit suicide by throwing herself into the sea.
• Surprise Incest: In the midst of her relationship with George, she learns that she's the result of their shared grandfather raping his own daughter, making George her cousin/nephew.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Discussed, as this trope is arguably one of the central points of the plot. Sayo had a pretty tough life for sure, but solving the Epitaph threw her over the edge. She learns, in the span of an hour, that she's really Kinzo's granddaughter, that her sexual organs are damaged permanently (leaving her unable to consummate a relationship with anyone), that she's the daughter of an incestuous rape, that she was nearly killed as a baby, and that her beloved Jessica, George and Battler are all her cousins. This already puts her in a precarious mental state, but Battler coming home to the family and completely forgetting his promise proves to be the last straw, causing her to try and enact her murder plan. The parents solving the Epitaph first put a halt to this, and she resigns from her scheme in guilt. While Sayo never killed anyone personally, she still engineered the circumstances necessary to get them to kill each other, and thus felt immense guilt about the ensuing massacre. The games she engineers as Beatrice are an attempt to get Battler to understand the situation from a large-scale perspective, and thus explain her motivations to him.
• Talking to Themself: Throughout most of the story, whenever Beatrice, Shannon or Kanon are speaking to each other it represents Sayo talking to herself about her own inner conflicts.
• That Man Is Dead: A trick Sayo likes to use on the gameboard. Sayo can cast away one of her identities and state in red that "Shannon" and/or "Kanon" are dead while Sayo really is still alive. Figuring this out is the key to solve riddles such as the one of the murder of Nanjo in the third game. Though this only applies to the anti-fantasy interpretation, as each persona are distinct individuals in the anti-mystery interpretation and appear simultaneously in front of other characters many times when not from the point of view of the detective.
• Together in Death: Not being able to believe she could live on, Sayo threw herself into the sea. Battler followed her and both drowned together. The Battler personality indeed died with Sayo at that time, but his physical body survived and became Tooya Hachijo.
• Tragic Villain: Driven mad by the tragedies of her life, Sayo planned a brutal Murder-Suicide to take down everything and everyone from the Ushiromiya household with her. However, in the real world she didn't actually get to do the villainous acts she had planned, but was still responsible for the way the massacre started.
• Trans Relationship Troubles: One of Sayo's biggest sources of fear and angst is that she's terrified her fiancé George will be disgusted at her and dump her if she reveals her body (which is all but stated to be assigned male) is "broken" and can't give him the children he wants.
• Trans Tribulations: A somewhat convoluted example. It's very strongly implied, and all but outright confirmed in the manga, that Sayo was designated male at birth. Her sexual organs were badly damaged due to being thrown off a cliff when she was a baby and she was raised as a girl afterwards. As a teenager, Sayo began to suffer from severe body dysphoria as a result of her body not developing like a girl's should, going so far as to create a male identity for herself (Kanon) as a way to cope with her confusion over her gender identity. After learning the truth of her origins, Sayo calls herself "furniture" because she believes her broken body makes her inhuman and nobody will ever love her because of it.
• Trauma Conga Line: Thrown off a cliff as a baby, bullied as a child by her fellow maids, her first love leaves the island with little hope of returning after he (half-jokingly) promised they'd spend the rest of their lives together. Sayo then spends years waiting in vain for said first love to return for her, only to have her heart broken when Battler forgets to send a letter for her. Finally, Sayo discovers that she is Kinzo's Child by Rape born out of his incestuous advances towards his illegitimate daughter. To make it even worse, she also learns the truth about her mutilated body, which makes Sayo think of herself as a "furniture" unable to love. For the following two years, Sayo is constantly tormented by her self-loathing, growing psychosis and conflicting feelings for George and Jessica. The straw that broke the camel's back is Battler's untimely return, which finally makes Sayo decide she had enough and just want to end everything.
• Unpleasant Parent Reveal: When Sayo first found out Kinzo was her father, she was only surprised and felt saddened that he died mere minutes after she finally knew they were related. That was until she heard all about his past crimes, especially the massacre of the soldiers and his rape of his own daughter and her mother Beatrice II. Afterwards, Sayo was utterly disgusted about sharing the same blood as such a monster.
• Unwanted Rescue: Retroactively; when Sayo learns about the circumstances of her birth and what the injuries from her cliff fall had done to her body, she demands why Genji and Dr. Nanjo simply didn't let her die.
• Uptown Girl: Sayo falls in love with Battler, George, and Jessica, who are all members of the obscenely wealthy Ushiromiya family, while she was a servant. Later this turns out to be subverted, since Sayo is technically also an Ushiromiya as well as the true head of the family.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Sayo was originally a sweet and innocent child who only wished to have a real family one day. As she grew up, some traumatic revelations and having a lonely, almost friendless life drove her to do some rather questionable things.
• Villain Protagonist: As pitiful as she may be, Sayo is still the person who planned the total extinction of the Ushiromiya family, as well as having physically and mentally tortured all of its members (including those she claims to love) for a long time in the Beatrice's role.
• Walking Spoiler: Many of the story's mysteries revolve around Sayo; in a sense she's the real main character of the series.
• Wild Card: Sayo is this in the struggle between the Ushiromiya siblings for the gold. She's the one who actually has the gold, but doesn't care at all about where it will end and just uses it as a tool for manipulation.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Sayo planned a massive Murder-Suicide that involved killing the members of the Ushiromiya household in cruel ways and blowing up the island, yet her extremely tragic life makes it practically impossible to not feel sorry for her.
• Yandere: Definitely far from Sayo's main motivation for killing, but certainly is part of it. Part of Sayo's plan is a twisted and desperate attempt to get Battler's attention, hoping he will stop her and save her from her cursed fate. It's subverted since, in the real world, Sayo didn't kill anyone and chose to commit suicide alone while letting Battler live.