YMMV / Usotsuki Satsuki wa Shi ga Mieru

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Kai justified in seeking the greater good with his extremist bully hunting due to how he's actively improved the state of the school by removing bad apples, or is he just a deluded, self-important serial killer appointing himself judge, jury and executioner, killing people who have committed relatively minor crimes in the grand scheme of things?
  • Did Seo truly want to repent for what she did in the past, or was she just looking for an easy path to reinvent herself as a good person via the excuse of amnesia? Furthermore, is she a genuinely troubled girl who only descends into villainy because she had no choice in the face of people trying to kill her, or has she always been an irredeemable psychopath looking for an excuse to kill people?
  • Is Komachi truly a lonely girl with No Social Skills stuck with a power she can't understand or control and seeks to die because of it, or is she an emotionally-detached sociopath unaffected by other people's losses who lets people die because she feels there's no point defying the natural order of life and death?
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Komachi has a lot of strange quirks, but one that stands out a lot is that she seems utterly incapable of discerning the feelings of others, to the point that she will take anything said at face value. She legitimately thought Miho and Satsuki had become friends simply because they talk to one another, and seemed to fully believe Miho when she said all her bullying was an accident. Chapter 81 parallels many autistics' experience, with her masking her own feelings like her own empathy for the villains and feeling deeply lonely as a result.
  • Satsuki herself has poor social skills (including, ironically, an apparent inability to tell a lie, nor to recognize one, no matter how blatant), is gifted with numbers, shows a very strong interest in one particular thing and struggles to understand even basic literary metaphors and figurative language. For these reasons some readers, both jokingly and seriously, view her as likely having some form of autism but nothing has been said about it in the story.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Not a character but a stick dubbed Stick-san. Specifically, it was a stick that Satsuki used for writing in the dirt the names of people who would want Miho dead. This stems from the promo image for the chapter being a panel where Satsuki is holding it. Kai carelessly stepping on and breaking it was, for readers, proof that he was irredeemably evil.
  • Itou Ami, a.k.a. the Bug Girl, is a classmate of Satsuki's has endeared herself to readers with her geeky enthusiasm about insects of all kinds and her cheerful acceptance of the fact that almost everyone else finds her hobby weird. She may be a one-note character but one hilarious to watch whenever she is featured.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Mikami Kai, being the student council president, is usually just referred to as Prez.
  • 4Chan users have a habit of playfully referring to Satsuki as 'the gorilla' due to her exceptional strength and one-track mind in using it to solve murders.
• Ho Yay: Despite the series having very little explicit romance and only one canonically gay character (Michiru), it puts so much focus on Satsuki's feelings and developing relationships with the girls around her (particularly Komachi and Akira) that the manga is tagged as a Yuri Genre series on quite a few sites. And then there's chapter 82 where Satsuki proposes to Komachi that if she is the source of all the death incidents, they could live together so Satsuki can prevent all the deaths. Complete with a hug in a spread page and Intertwined Fingers.
• Iron Woobie: Satsuki most definitely. She's a sweet girl who, seemingly motivated by the failure to prevent her mother's death, truly values life and often puts herself in harm's way in order to save the lives of others. But her poor social skills and rash, seemingly insane actions cause most others to view her as a weirdo, a liar and insane. Most other students call her the insulting nickname "Usotsuki" to her face and there are times where she's even thought that dying would finally free her from her burden. But despite all that, she pushes on and will continue to save any lives she can regardless of whether or not anyone will actually appreciate her efforts.
• Memetic Mutation: The cute puppy dog pattern used frequently for Komachi. A common joke is to insert it into panels where Komachi or other characters are acting in a disturbing manner.
  • The page at the end of volume 1 where Satsuki vows to keep moving ahead no matter what. Specifically, using the last panel as a Shrine to the Fallen with the addition of characters in the black space above Satsuki after they've died. Some are serious such as Michiru or Satsuki's mother... and then there's Satsuki's writing stick, Michiru's stuffed shark, and the hornet that stung Ami.
• Tear Jerker: Chapter 57. We get to see Satsuki's backstory why she refuses to let anyone die, and it's a doozy. As she manifests her vision, she has not fully understood how it works, and she ignores a vision of her mother dying in their doorstep. Then she hears a commotion as her father stands next to the corpse, calling an ambulance. She asks how come her father can see it too, and her father gives her a Death Glare, asking why she didn't do anything. Her face as she realizes what just happened, crying in shock, is absolutely heartbreaking.