Saya Otonashi

''This article is not about a character from BLOOD+. For the original movie, see BLOOD: The Last Vampire (Anime).''

The main protagonist of the series, Saya Otonashi is a seemingly ordinary teenage girl who was adopted a year before the start of the series by a Okinawan-American veteran who fought in the Vietnam War. She suffers from amnesia and has to receive regular blood transfusions to remain healthy.

The Zoo
In 1833, the first Joel Goldschmidt and Amshel find a chiropteran mummy they call "Saya" and cut two cocoon-like objects from its body. The cocoons cannot be opened by force but "hatch" once they are bled upon, revealing two seemingly human infants. Intrigued, Joel and Amshel devise a social experiment: they separate the babies and confine one of the infants to a tower to perform tests upon, while Joel names her sister Saya after their mummified mother and raises her as if she were his daughter.

Saya is routinely given "medicine" to drink (secretly, blood) and is unknowingly studied by her adopted father, who makes notes about her and her sister in his diary and is the first to discover that the sisters' blood crystallize when mixed, which would later become the primary method of killing chiropteran.

In 1863, Saya follows the sound of her sister's song and finds her locked at the top of a tower, but does not realize that they are sisters. Because the other girl does not have a name Saya names her Diva for her amazing ability to sing and they become friends, with Saya secretly paying visits to Diva and talking to her in the following years. When she learns that Diva wants to get out of the tower, Saya promises to free her.

In 1870, Amshel purchases a twelve-year-old boy named Haji from his parents. Though Saya believes it is to be her friend, Amshel's true intentions are to see if she will mate with Haji and produce children. Due to her self-centered personality and Haji's unhappiness at being taken from his family, they are antagonistic towards each other. Eventually Saya recognizes his grief and comforts him, which allows them to become friends. At around this time, she first teaches him how to play the cello, which he uses to soothe her in the future.

Saya overhears a conversation Haji has with Joel in which her father reveals that her "medicine" is actually blood and that she requires it to survive.

On Joel's birthday in 1883, Saya finally finds the key to Diva's tower and releases her so that she can sing for Joel. She leaves to accompany Haji, who is searching for her, to go find Joel's favorite flower as a birthday present. While Haji is trying to get the flower, he falls off a cliff and is mortally injured. A horrified Saya tries to help him. Remembering Haji's earlier conversation with Joel and misunderstanding it, she feeds Haji some of her own blood, which triggers his transformation into a chevalier. Saya returns to the Goldschmidt house for help and finds instead that Diva has slaughtered everyone, including Saya's father. Recognizing her mistake in freeing Diva, Saya and Haji devote themselves to hunting Diva down and exterminating chiropterans, with that mission becoming Saya's only reason for living. They are aided in their goal by the Red Shield, an organization formed by Joel's surviving descendents.

Russian Revolution
In the 1920s, Saya and Haji are tracking Diva, who is masquerading as Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, in Russia. They encounter Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, whom Diva has turned into a chevalier, in the guise of a local village girl named Sonia and eventually manage to kill him/her.

The Vietnam incident
On December 25, 1972, Red Shield operatives attempt to prematurely awaken Saya when chiropterans are set loose in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Their efforts go tragically wrong when she awakes in a frenzied, mindless state and kills the operatives.

Saya hears Diva singing and follows the sound to an empty container which Diva had presumably resided within previously. Now joined by Haji, she fights Karl and almost kills him, but he cuts off his crystallizing arm to save himself by preventing it from spreading. Karl flees to a small village. When Haji tries to stop her, Saya cuts off his arm and slaughters humans and chiropteran alike without distinction, in the process fatally injuring David's father. This rampage is witnessed by both American soldier George Miyagusuku and Akihiro Okamura's father (who takes pictures of Saya's attack).

Once she exhausts herself, Saya finally returns to hibernation. With his men lying dead, David's father, dying, entrusts her safety to George, who stores her in the Miyagusuku crypt when he later moves to Okinawa, Japan. After George's family is killed in a car accident, he almost commits suicide but the sound of Saya's heartbeat inspires him to keep living. As a result, he adopts Kai and Riku, two orphaned boys.

Japan
In 2004, Saya awakens and is found by George after she crawls out of the crypt. He almost shoots her before she smiles at him; afterwards, he takes her home and gives her a much-needed haircut and a name to live with: Saya Otonashi (音無 小夜, Otonashi Saya). George legally adopts Saya, making her his daughter and Kai and Riku her brothers. She also befriends a fellow high school girl named Kaori Kinjo. Without Haji giving her his blood, Saya remains amnesiac, with no memory of her identity or past, for a year. She receives blood transfusions and is watched over by a doctor named Julia, who is actually a secret Red Shield operative who monitors Saya's health and amnesia.

In 2005, a chiropteran attacks her school and kills a teacher in front of a terrified Saya, who has returned late at night to reclaim her track shoes. She flees and is followed by both the chiropteran and Haji, who mysteriously reappears to defend and protect her though she doesn't remember him. He feeds her his blood to trigger her abilities and memories, which causes Saya to slay the attacking chiropteran in front of Kai. His shocked reaction snaps her out of her trance; she scream and faint when she sees her reflection. She is hospitalized as a result. After leaving her bed, she overhears George and David discussing her purpose as a weapon against chiropterans as she is the only one who can kill them, and runs off. She is later brought back home by Kai after another encounter with Haji, who will not tell her the truth about her past, telling her she must remember on her own. Though at first Saya is reluctant to fight and afraid of who she might be, after George is abducted and turned into a chiropteran and she is forced to kill him in order to let him die as a human, she finds resolve and motive for battling the chiropterans.

After Riku's Death
After Riku's death, Saya confronts Diva in a final duel at the Metropolitan Opera House, which ends as they simultaneously pierce each other with their blood-coated swords. Saya is unaffected by Diva's blood, because it lost its potency when she became pregnant. Diva, however, begins to crystallize, and Saya cries for her and tries to hold her shattering pieces together. With Diva dead, Saya turns to kill the babies and herself fearing that if they lived, they would be forced to become military weapons. Kai pleads with her to live, promising to protect her and the babies and make anyone afraid of her understand. Haji disobeys Saya for the only time in his life, taking her sword and confessing he has loved her from the moment they met. Saya tearfully admits she wishes to live as she kisses Haji. She and Kai escape the opera house with the babies as Haji battles a returned Amshel and the US military begins bombing the building.

A month later, back in Okinawa, Saya finally goes into her next thirty-year hibernation period. At her request, Kai puts her back in the Miyagusuku family crypt to sleep, and he watches over her with Diva's children. Several years later, a fresh pink rose with Haji's blue ribbon is left at the crypt.

Appearance
Black-haired, small, and lithe, Saya is about 5'2" (157 cm) and 89 lbs (40.4 kg), having the appearance of a teenage girl. She looks very similar to Diva, though Saya is slightly tanner and has a different hairstyle and eye color.

Though Saya has long hair while staying at the Zoo, she has a very short, boyish haircut by the time of the Russian Revolution, which she retains as a school-girl in Japan. Through the series her hair slowly grows out to her chin. In the last episode, Kai trims her hair to resemble her Season 1 appearance.

Saya's eyes are a dull shade of red that appear brown and which glow intensely when her chiropteran instincts are triggered or when she feeds on blood.

Personality
Saya's personality changes drastically throughout her life. At the Zoo, she is spoiled by the original Joel, and therefore becomes very immature, self-centered, and rude. She herself realizes this as a result of her friendships with Diva and Haji, which help reveal and nurture her compassion for others. Overall, however, Saya is a bright, cheerful, and innocent person. After she unwittingly releases the vengeful, bloodthirsty Diva upon her foster family and friends and accidentally turns Haji into her chevalier, coupled with learning the truth about her life and her own inhuman nature, Saya loses her happy demeanor and becomes much more serious and plagued with doubts and guilt. She dedicates her life solely to correcting the mistake she made in releasing Diva by killing her, then forever ending the chiropteran threat by killing herself; however, in the last episode, Saya tries to save Diva after having dealt her a fatal wound and is persuaded from not killing herself or Diva's daughters, leading to her tearfully confessing that she wants to live.

As a result of losing her memories and spending a year in Okinawa as an ordinary girl, with family and friends, Saya develops a sweet and caring albeit somewhat reserved personality. Kai refers to her as being "a crybaby and a glutton". At this time, she is troubled by her amnesia, but only becomes increasingly insecure and worried as she learns more about her true identity and experiences more loss because of the chiropterans.

A year after Riku's death, Saya exhibits an extremely dark and embittered disposition, having fully regained her memories but in the process lost hope, as Moses and Lulu both note. She is unwilling to associate or work with others, particularly Kai and the rest of the Red Shield, not wanting to have to experience losing more loved ones. During the last half of the series, she slowly comes to accept their help.

Powers and abilities
As a chiropteran, Saya naturally has enhanced strength, speed, and agility, as well as heightened senses, but because she chooses not to feed freely on humans and refrains from drinking Haji's blood as often as she can, her abilities are barely above those of a human's and she is compelled to consume a great deal of human food and calories to supplant her natural diet. Any injuries she sustains heal almost instantly. She is also long-lived (and possibly immortal), being almost 200 years old yet maintaining the appearance of a teenage girl; however, after she turns Haji into her chevalier, she spends only a few years awake from periodically entering a 30-year hibernation cycle, before which she experiences a slow in her regenerative abilities and bouts of fainting spells.

As a queen, Saya's blood is capable of crystallizing and killing any chiropteran of Diva's bloodline, including Diva herself, when it enters their bloodstream. When it enters the bloodstream of a human who has lost most of their blood, however, it has the effect of turning them into Saya's chevalier, as demonstrated with Haji and Riku.

Due to her upbringing at the Zoo, Saya is both a skilled swordfighter and an accomplished cello player; however, she rarely plays the cello in modern times because of her focus on hunting chiropterans. At the start of the series, Saya has largely forgotten both of these abilities and must relearn how to fight with a sword.

Saya possibly possesses a telepathic connection to Diva and vice-versa. She is able to hear Diva's song when normal humans cannot, could verbally communicate with Diva when the latter did not know how to speak, and can sense Diva's presence and possibly that of other chiropterans.

In the first half of the series, Saya sometimes slips into a "berserker" trance in which she becomes much more aggressive and violent, which is mainly how she defeats enemies before she regains her memories. She tends to enter this mode from feeding from Haji. Due to similarities it has to her frenzy during the Vietnam War, it is possible that this "berserker" trance is a consequence of her being prematurely awakened during the Vietnam War and the subsequent year-long delay in receiving Haji's blood.

Weaponry
See also Saya's Sword

Saya's trademark weapon is a katana with a groove that branches out throughout the blade. Thus, when Saya cuts her thumb on the top of the katana, it allows her blood to flow into the channel and become distributed throughout the katana.

After Saya's first sword is broken in a fight with Amshel, David gives her a new one that has a red crystal at the base of its blade, symbolizing her membership in the Red Shield organization. The crystal is a piece of George's body, which crystallized when she killed him with her own blood in order to spare him the fate of turning into a chiropteran.

Family

 * Unnamed mother (deceased)
 * Diva (twin sister, deceased)
 * Joel Goldschmidt I (adopted father, deceased)
 * George Miyagusuku (adopted father, deceased
 * Kai Miyagusuku (adopted brother)
 * Riku Miyagusuku (adopted brother, deceased)
 * Kanade (niece)
 * Hibiki (niece)

Chevaliers

 * Haji
 * Riku Miyagusuku (deceased)
 * Solomon Goldsmith (defected from Diva, deceased)

Manga
In the Volume 4, she has a new hair style.