Emily Roxie Pyro aka Red. She/Her. Local streamer demon girl. Twitch partner. Here for good times. Twitch / Bluesky / YouTube / VODs / Carrd / Reference Sheet
OKAY RIGHT I promised I'd post about Satsuki.
So Satsuki Kiryuin is so interesting to me. Because she's impressively charismatic, and powerful, and authoritative. And she's wrong.
She's presented as perfection. Pure white dress, long jet black hair. A beautiful swordswoman. A traditional Japanese beauty. Noble, strong, and perfect. Everything about her is "pure." Her appearance, her motivations, her mannerisms. Even her kamui's name means "Purity." Though her methods are cruel, she believes wholeheartedly that she's right, and that everything she does is for the greater good. If it leads to defeating Ragyo, then she is in the right.
Except she's wrong.
You can't dismantle fascism from within the system. She herself taught that lesson to Ryuko and Mako once, in the Fight Club episode, but she failed to see the bigger picture: that by using Ragyo's methods, she was doing the exact same thing. For all her willpower, all her training, all her charisma, all of her uncompromising strength of character, she cannot overcome this. Because her perspective is limited by what she knows. What she has experienced. And what she has experienced is force. She only knows pain, and manipulation, and pressure to be perfect. And she thought these were sources of strength. But they were just the abuse of an unloving mother.
By making Satsuki a protagonist in the back half of the show, the writers almost flub the message by justifying her actions. But they save it by making her fail, and when she reconciles with Ryuko, she makes the point of it all very clear. In her own words:
In the end, she throws it all away. She doesn't need to be perfect. She doesn't need to be powerful or beautiful or intimidating or larger than life. She's just a girl. A young woman, just 18 years old. She cuts her hair short, distancing herself from that symbol of traditional Japanese purity. And she just lets herself be a person. A loving sister to Ryuko, and a close friend to the elite four.
She's one of my favorite characters in the show.