YMMV / The Song of Saya

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Fuminori lives, and has been living, in the hell of his perceptions for some time, and although he hates everything because it disgusts him, he goes a long while before even seriously considering doing anything wrong. And if Saya cures his madness, he suffers no ill effects. This raises some questions about Yosuke, Fuminori's neighbor. He loses his mind after literal seconds, turns immediately to violence against the monsters (his wife and daughter) and quite violently and sadistically rapes the only other human he thinks there is in the world, who appears to him as a prepubescent girl. Considering he was a sensitive homebody who liked his peace and quiet, was he really just a calm everyman, or did Saya trip over a psychosis that had been bubbling under the surface and got more than they bargained for?
  • Alternatively, the only reason Fuminori DIDN'T lash out is because, as he was in the hospital, he was possibly restrained and had time to come to terms with his condition. He also had knowledge as a medical student which helped him comprehend what happened to him and identify it, while Yosuke was thrust into it completely uncomprehending of his situation and by the time his sanity disappears, he's still not completely convinced he hasn't been transported to some horrible, nightmarish place rather than seeing the world differently.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: It's a bleak, cynical, and gory Cosmic Horror Story about a medical student who sees the world around him as a meaty hell and his fellow people as monsters (save for his Magical Girlfriend), and delves into some very dark territory like cannibalism and graphic rape scenes. When it first came out in Japan in 2003, it bombed and got a negative reaction from players because of its brutality. Even though it has since gone on to become one of the consistently best-selling titles of Nitroplus, it still remains a niche title as it can be hard for people to stomach.
• Awesome Music: "Shoes of Glass", the ending theme for the first and third endings, is absolutely beautiful and epic.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Despite being one of the big twists, Saya being an Eldritch Abomination instead of a normal girl tends to be figured out by new players (on YouTube or otherwise) before the actual reveal. Fuminori's agnosia making everything normal look horrific and Gorny makes it easy to reason that the reverse is also true, and the hospital flashback in particular contains very blatant foreshadowing, like Saya being confused that Fuminori is unafraid of her and saying she likes to scare mental patients (which makes no sense if she really is a cute girl).
• Crosses the Line Twice: There's a hilarious aside where Fuminori mentions Saya's favourite food; spare ribs.
• Draco in Leather Pants: A significant amount of fans seem to think that Fuminori and Saya's relationship is beautiful and romantic, while ignoring or excusing their evil actions like the murders they commit or outright raping an innocent woman. While they do love each other, the story goes out of its way to show that it is a Destructive Romance that makes worse people out of both of them, with only their warped perspectives keeping them even remotely sympathetic.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Or Americans Love Saya no Uta, rather; Nitro+ CEO Takaki Kosaka seemed genuinely surprised at Anime Expo 2014 that this game had American fans. He also went on to say that the title didn't sell well when it was new, but since then, it has become one of the company's most consistently best-selling titles over a 10 year period. It even got to the point where the most prominent adaptation is an American comic book.
  • It is also popular enough in Russia for it to get a Fan Remake, Saya no Uta - Derangement.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of the endings has Saya "blooming" to turn humanity into meat-like monsters like her. A few years later, Hikaru Midorikawa voiced Zenya in sweet pool (another Nitro+ game, no less) who can give birth to meat monsters.
  • A fan made Saya into a playable character in Mugen. Come 2015, she is a playable fighter in Nitroplus Blasterz Heroines Infinite Duel. Oh dear...
• Ho Yay:
  • Yoh and Omi have quite a bit of subtext, if you squint. There's Omi's anger at Fuminori for being a jerk to Yoh, Yoh and Omi's texting habits where the two share personal secrets, Yoh desperately wishing for Omi to be there whilst at Fuminori's house...
  • Yoh and Saya, though it's got hefty amounts of disturbing material: Saya essentially kidnaps Yoh, gropes her, and tells her that "she's pretty" and her breasts are "so big and soft" before raping her while saying "[we'll] love you to death." While Saya does do this to give Fuminori "family", the text makes it clear she's also doing it because she's jealous of Yoh, even though she has no real reason to be, as Fuminori makes it clear he wants nothing to do with Yoh and everything to do with Saya. A slightly later scene also has Saya joyfully engaging in raping Yoh along with Fuminori, which may or may not count.
• It Was His Sled: One of the first things anyone hears about this visual novel is that Saya is actually a monster, even though this is supposed to be one of the big twists.
• Memetic Mutation: Mentioning this game on some image boards will result in spam of "Turns out your octopus girlfriend is a big nag with curlers in her tentacles, huh?"
• Moment of Awesome: Ryoko gets one of these when she shoots and shatters the frozen Saya while an axe is sticking out of her shoulder, wearing a pretty damn impressive slasher smile on her face as she does so.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Happens when Fuminori decides he's fine with eating human flesh.
    • Accentuated by the fact that, right before, Saya gives him the opportunity to cure his mental illness. He'll lose Saya and end up in a mental institution for all the murders, but least he won't be in a constant living hell anymore. Refusing that marks the point when Fuminori officially discards his humanity.
    • Some would put it a little later, when Fuminori brutally rapes Yoh. It's not his first heinous act, but some of his actions before that were mostly in response to the really bad hand life had dealt him. Raping Yoh, though, that's a complete crossover into Blue-and-Orange Morality at best and pure sadism at worst. Especially since Saya altered her so he that sees her as a normal person, so he definitely has no excuse.
    • One of Fuminori's earlier actions — attempting to murder Koji, one of his best friends, just to get him out of the way — could also count.
  • Saya essentially kidnapping and then raping Yoh, before turning her into the same being Saya is, an action that causes the victim severe, unending pain. Saya does this not only for Fuminori, but out of baseless jealousy. The fact that this comes so soon after Saya herself is raped makes it plain stomach-churning.
    • An earlier scene of her altering Yosuke's brain as an experiment may also count, though unlike Yoh's rape, this wasn't done out of malice and Saya clearly did not properly anticipate the consequences of it.
  • Yosuke's sadistic rape of Saya. It makes his brutal death at Fuminori's hands pretty well-deserved.
• Narm:
  • As mentioned in the Funny Moments section, Koji's nightmare in one of the endings can be a little too silly to take seriously.
  • The sex scenes, thanks to the cheesy voice acting, cliched and almost melodramatic descriptions, and weird expressions and anatomy.
  • Saya being raped by Yosuke, assuming you didn't find it horrible or frightening. The scene doesn't really do anything to further the plot (though the ones leading up to it do), and Saya's sudden helplessness feels cheapened by the fact that she's almost invincible in every other part of the story, to the point where it informs a major part of the climax.
• Nausea Fuel: ...Y'know, in case you didn't get the picture from reading the top of the main page. But even the premise only scratches the surface. It is in fact no hyperbole to say that the fact that Fuminori has sex with the obviously childlike Saya is the absolute least disturbing aspect of their relationship.
• Nightmare Fuel: Seeing everything in gorn-o-vision. An Eldritch Abomination seeking to convert humanity into its own kind. A formerly normal person slowly (or not) being Driven to Madness, cannibalism, murder, rape, and utter depravity by both of the above. A Fate Worse than Death for at least one character, or even for every living human in one ending. There's definitely no shortage.
• Nightmare Retardant: Realizing that one of the songs used from the game, Schizophrenia, was also used in a rather funny level in Talkhaus level contest played by raocow.
• Paranoia Fuel: While the game exaggerates its effects, agnosia is a real disorder that, due to brain injury or neurological trauma, can distort a person's senses and perception in many different ways. Yikes.
• Rooting for the Empire: A significant amount of fans actually root for Fuminori and Saya's Destructive Romance and evil actions and prefer the ending where they win - in one poll, 73% said they liked that ending best. This despite both of them being rapists who turned their victim into a Broken Bird and Sex Slave, among other things.
• Signature Scene: Saya growing her wings as she gives birth. It is a Cover Drop and is the scene that gets the most fanart... even though Saya is strongly implied to die in that scene.
• Tear Jerker: The whole damn game, really. The music contributes a great deal to this.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The general reaction to the IDW comic book. About the only thing that was kept the same was that there is an Eldritch Abomination named Saya with black hair and a white dress, she has a love interest with messed up senses, the love interest had a former love interest of his own, and the love interest has a friend. Even the genre is changed, from horror to mystery/action with touches of horror. The story also moves fast since the comic is only 3 issues, not giving nearly enough time for the story to cook.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The game would really be a lot more touching if the two main characters weren't horrible, monstrous people who are all too willing to throw away everyone else in the world for the sake of their "love", going from torture to cannibalism to attempted murder to horrific rape, even to people they once considered friends. There's only so much callousness one can write off with "horrific brain disorder", after all.
  • Given his situation, it's understandable that Fuminori would be drawn to Saya, since she's the only thing that looks normal to him. That still doesn't explain the fact that he's drawn to her sexually, though, since he sees her as a prepubescent girl. In fairness to him, however, Saya fully returns his feelings and is even more lustful than he is, and when someone does rape her, he gets VERY violently protective. It still doesn't stop some fans from forming a sour impression of him and wondering if there was something off about him even before his life went to hell.
  • To say nothing of the fact that seeing the world as a horrific meat moss hellscape....really doesn't excuse anything Fuminori does to the people who once were close to him. Yeah, all his former friends look disgusting to him now, but he can still communicate with them. He still knows they're the same people despite how they look and he has no reason to doubt that. The fact that he incensed not by their actually changing as people but merely by their appearances changing leads to some gives you more to wonder about.
  • Yosuke, however, is far less sympathetic. Killing his wife and daughter after just being inflicted with the same mental condition as Fuminori and having no idea what's going on is understandable. Meeting Saya in her humanoid form and immediately trying to rape her? Not so much.
• Vindicated by History: As stated above, Nitro+ CEO Takaki Kosaka was surprised about both the game's American fans and the fact that despite initial bad sales, it went up to become one of the best-selling Visual Novels in the company's history.
• The Woobie:
  • Yoh probably takes the cake: the poor girl undergoes heartbreak by her now-jerkass crush, loss of a very close friend that she becomes convinced is her fault, brutal rape, hideous torture and body horror, unending pain thanks to her new body, and becoming a sex slave to two sociopaths before being brutally beaten to death by another close friend.
  • Fuminori's situation is pretty depressing, even if he is quite monstrous himself. He was an ordinary medical student before an accident wherein he lost both his parents and his sanity. Hit with a horrifying case of agnosia that turns his perception of the entire world into an Eldritch Location, his only solace and comfort is the company of a beautiful girl... who is in fact an Eldritch Abomination. Before he even has the opportunity to correct his condition, he has already eaten his former friend and murdered his neighbor.
  • Yosuke. Has a loving wife and a daughter, and paints in his spare time. He's practically the ideal family man. All seems right and blissful with his life... until Saya comes in.
  • Koji. He just wants to help his friend become normal again and he pretty much saves the world in one of the endings. His thanks? His friends are all dead and he can't sleep, suffering from nightmares and hallucinations.

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