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Character Analysis Yaps
Part 1: Sae
Aka just some rambles about Sae and his personality, not really proof read
I think Sae as a character is sort of convoluted, but not necessarily for the reasons most people would think. In terms of soccer when you view him he seems sort of unreachable, after all, he is a prodigy and he’s got a great brain. But who is Sae outside of that bubble of soccer?
Well, he’s a blunt, singularly focused, asshole type of guy… but I think he’s also someone who values domesticity and comfort, and that he’s someone who deeply cherishes his close ones.
I think a great example of this is apparent with his brother. But he’s been shown to take the fall for Rin consistently when he messed up (ex. Rin breaking his toys) and even being there to comfort Rin when Rin wonders if no one will like him due to his more off putting personality traits. Sae doesn’t offer false comfort by saying that people will like Rin, instead he says that even if no one likes him, his older brother will always be there for him.
Even later on, when Rin and Sae have their confrontation, Sae’s choices of words are harsh, but underneath it, there’s honest advice. That advice being that Rin, if he really wants to be a pro player, should stop seeing football as a way to bond with his brother and find his own appreciation for the game untethered by other people. Even when Sae says that he’s never seen Rin as anything but an eyesore, he’s pushing Rin away, not to further his own goals, but to further Rin’s goals by helping Rin move away from depending on Sae. Obviously, that doesn’t exactly work due to Rin’s obsessive tendencies, but it’s clear that Sae has been doing two things: one, really testing if Rin wants to play soccer and two, making sure that Rin knows what lies ahead on his path to become a pro.
I think these reasons show some insight into his childhood and his personality. Once again, two main points, one, that some part of Sae mourns his childhood/ a loss of the sense of normalcy and two that Sae is a deeply considerate person.
Obviously, daily interactions aren’t exactly shown in the manga, but there are a few key hints to the fact that Sae does crave this comfort and most of these come from the Egoist Bible.
The first thing that stood out to me is that his favorite anime is Crayon Shin-Chan, which is targeted towards children, which I think furthers my point for his sense of longing for those unburdened childhood days. This is also interesting to me because his favorite movie is Taxi Driver which is a drastic leap in genre change and could serve as a contradiction to what I said before about him craving comfort. However, despite the somewhat violent and unsettling nature of Taxi Driver, the director himself stated that the movie “…arose from my feeling that movies are really a kind of dream-state…”, which I believe serves to show the type of comfort that Sae seeks out. The movie also is largely about male loneliness which could serve to reflect Sae’s mental state being both isolated in his own country as a prodigy and in Spain as an outsider.
The second thing that stood out to me was that Sae’s least favorite food was French fries. Now normally this wouldn’t mean much, but I think it’s interesting to note that Sae doesn’t hate French Fries, he actually thinks that they’re “addictive”, and that the only reason he doesn’t like them is that they’re unhealthy. I think it’s interesting that his least favorite food wasn’t something he disliked, but rather something that he craved but wouldn’t allow himself to have because he’s so committed to football. It makes you think about what other things Sae must have given up, what average everyday things he found solace in that he felt like he needed to remove, that he now finds distaste in, simply because he can no longer enjoy them unburdened.
Finally, the last and the most heart wrenching piece from the Egoist Bible is the question of what he would do if he didn’t play football, and he finds that he can’t even provide an answer. Because for Sae, his whole life, since he was one, has been focused on honing one talent, and everything else has seemed to fall second, only becoming important when he needs it to further that one skill. Perhaps that’s why he values the simple things outside of football, because he never even got a chance to develop a taste for anything outside of that bubble. And maybe that’s why he was so harsh towards his brother, someone who he saw as unburdened by his talent, slowly growing into someone like him.