i love the kisaragi bunch so much oh my godddddddd

TLDR; I sincerely believe that Morishige was NOT a necrophile or interested in dead bodies/gore prior to Heavenly Host. I’ve honestly seen no convincing evidence for him being into that stuff beforehand.

If you ask me, Sachiko took a liking to Morishige because he was emotionally vulnerable and therefore easy to manipulate, not because he already liked gore. He was already quite insecure and took to the sidelines a lot (see the scene in chapter 5 where he insists to Mayu that he couldn’t take a lead role in the play despite his talents/knowledge, also how he took the iconic photo of Class 2-9 together and isn’t featured.) It really seems like taking pictures was what helped him feel connected to people even if he was on the sideline; we see him sitting by himself flipping through his photo album on his phone in the Missing Footage OVA; cats, plants, Mayu. Incredibly innocent, beautiful things. Photography was like his social lifeline; it had nothing to do with gore or violence.

Heavenly Host/Sachiko perverted this innocent source of comfort into something disgusting. She literally targets people’s comforts and takes them away — Yuka and Satoshi consistently get separated, Naomi was manipulated to kill Seiko and can’t save her in any timeline, Yui is crippled by injuries and can’t be there for her students for 99% of the story. These all target their specific weaknesses by taking away their “lifelines.” By extension, Morishige’s source of comfort was twisted into something he could no longer find real comfort in. It’s framed like an addiction. “Just one more look” so he can convince himself that someone else is suffering more than him, someone else is lonelier than him (…right?)

I honestly was never a huge Morishige fan but I do find him interesting to analyze. I think it’s kind of boring and reductive to his character to insinuate that he was already into gore and that’s why Sachiko targeted him so hard. He and Kizami are also foils in my opinion, with the latter pushing him to be paranoid about his sanity/morality even further. I don’t think they’re actually “cut from the same cloth,” or at least weren’t prior to HH, which is what makes them really compelling foils.

I’ve been here for over 10 years but it honestly wasn’t until maybe the past year(?) that it became somewhat common to see people implying that he was always into gore. Which is so… interesting? Strange? Idk. It’s been intriguing to watch. And maybe a little annoying lol.

i've been in the fandom for 12 years and i have seen mayu get called all kinds of things, and it keeps happening even in big 2025. whether it's that she's "boring" or "vain and shallow" or "conceited" or "one dimensional" or "too perfect" or "overly obsessed with morishige" (what a crazy accusation to make by the way, when you can take one look at morishige and see he is arguably even more obsessed with her.)

how you can come away with these takes on mayu is beyond me. oh yeah, she barely gets any screentime in BC and dies immediately, and some complain about having to play more of the games (like BoS) to get to know her character better like it's bad character writing, when it's actually pretty natural character building, and happens all the time.

they literally did this with morishige too, and i love him to Death, he is my favorite character of all time (alongside mayu) and caught my attention immediately, but to act like he was written sooo damn deep in comparison to mayu (when he also has very minimal screentime) is quite literally an illusion that happens when you hate women and automatically see every male character as superior and having more depth. or even just equate moral grayness or "edginess" with complexity.

it's like you are not even TRYING to see what mayu's character is about from the clues left in the minimal screentime she has (that they build up on BoS!) and yes, i too wish more than anything that mayu got more screentime in BC, she deserved it, but to imply she had NO character because of lack of screentime is quite literally just a you problem, and you not paying attention. and yes, misogyny.

and while we are on this topic, there are most definitely cases in all kinds of media and literature where a female character IS written to revolve around a male character in a shallow way, while the male character gets to be fleshed out and independent, but that is not the case with mayu and morishige.

mayu's and morishige's characters revolve around each other equally (seriously, a guy whose defining moment in BC is the whole "you were saving my life" monologue about mayu???? who has an entire extra chapter in blood drive professing his love to said girl?? give me a damn break) and if you fail to see that, you have completely failed to understand the entire point of their relationship and the tropes they represent and explore.

to quote a friend of mine because she summarized this well "they’re written specifically to be a pair and them being a pair is central to the story the writers wanted to get across", and i could write an entire post on this alone but that is for another time.

but yes, both of them do still have character outside of their relationship with one another! so, what IS mayu's core character about? and WHY is she "so damn obsessed with morishige"?

even with limited screentime, we establish pretty early on even back in bloodcovered, that a core characteristic of mayu's is indeed her being a people pleaser. she will do anything so that people around her are happy. she will do anything to uphold harmony and peace around her.

this is made obvious in the flashback with her mother. not only is she brushing off any negative, uncomfortable comments yukie makes about the situation and about her dad, yukie mentions mayu "not objecting" to her father's (and consequently her own) transfer. after the conversation is over, mayu thinks to herself (in japanese, literally translated): "as long as it stops my parents from fighting, it's fine...", strongly implying mayu is willing to do just about anything to uphold any semblance of peace between her parents who are always fighting.

quite often this means completely ignoring her own feelings and her own needs. after all, this transfer was going to be horribly devastating for her, leaving her dearest friends (and her closest, morishige) behind. the lengths she will go to make others happy cannot be understated. bos fanbook even says mayu felt like this transfer was "the worst thing that could have ever happened to her", until, well, HH happened.

in the same vein, even her empathy for the ghost kids reflects her self-sacrificing nature. she was scared out of her mind, shaking and crying when ayumi and yoshiki found her with the ghost kids, but because those kids were lonely and had gone through something as painful as they had (mayu learning about their past from the newspaper clipping), she could not let them be.

she would stay with them, if that made them feel better. they just needed someone to listen to them, right? it is clear mayu sees her biggest worth as someone who is there for others, as the mood maker, who will cheer up those around her no matter how she herself is feeling. i always felt like her saying "i'm going to stay with them" was in some way the darkening getting to her, convincing her to abandon all for what her low self worth (seeing her only true value as someone who's there for others) has her believe is her "true purpose".

moving on from bloodcovered, her entire chapter in book of shadows basically revolves around her deepest fears and insecurities. it is the first time we get in mayu's "head", and see things from her perspective.

one of the first things we see is mayu helping cover up a random girl's corpse so that she doesn't have to feel embarrassed. so someone doesn't see her in that gross, unsightly, humiliating, upsetting state. mayu deeply empathizes with that sentiment--(very ironic considering what morishige does is quite the opposite.. but that parallel is a thread for another day)--for she too feels she has to always be pleasant, Perfect in the eyes of others.

at home, mayu has become the mediator for her parents. it is stated that mayu is "the apple of (yukie's) eye", by definition this means her most cherished, most beloved person, whom she is extremely proud of. in my mind yukie likely desires nothing more than for mayu to be happy. on the other hand, kenichi, her husband, is a bit of a people pleaser (like his daughter), a doormat so to say, which has led to this pattern of the suzumoto family having to continuously uproot their entire lives and move to another place whenever kenichi seemingly "can't stand up for himself" and ends up getting transferred when they're cutting staff etc.

this has led to yukie resenting him for the situation, and blaming him for not only her own, but for mayu's unhappiness, having to always leave her friends behind and live a very unstable life for a child, where everything is constantly changing.

this in turn has led to mayu identifying herself as the problem. the reason her parents fight seems to be her unhappiness... but this fighting really stresses her out, (for obvious reasons) but also, she loves both of her parents, and really doesn't want her father to have to take all the heat directed at him either when he really doesn't deserve it.

and so this has led to a pattern of suppressing her own needs, learning to act like everything is fine, feigning positivity, basically becoming this toxically positive person when it comes to herself. she is incredibly sensitive, and her empathy is much too high, she can't take all this sadness and anger around her, and so she suppresses her own, and she tries to always be cheerful.

i could even imagine yukie, misguided, further reinforcing this pattern by telling mayu just how proud she is of her, just how happy she is to have such a lovely, perfect, kind, sweet daughter, when everything else is so horrible. she means well, but horribly enough she ends up worsening her own daughter's complex about only inspiring positivity and peace, and in turn only being loved (as in the focus actually being on her, and not on the fighting and how miserable everything is) when she's this "Good Girl", this mood maker, who isn't sad and keeps things positive for the sake of others.

growing up in an environment like this, mayu was shaped into someone who always knows how to brighten someone else's day, how to always make others feel good, how to always be pleasing and inspire good feelings, (and this starts to extend into her physical appearance as well, after all, very often girls/women especially are only really well-liked when they are physically attractive as well).

she's very likable, and although a lot of her positivity is a facade, she has this strength of somehow still being extremely genuine about the way she pleases and takes care of others and their feelings. people take notice, and they end up really liking her, so much so that she becomes extremely popular, even to the point where she gains this status as an idol of sorts. this popularity, this likability she has seemingly gained herself with this "fake" strong and cheerful persona obviously strengthens her belief further, that she is only lovable when she shows no negativity, no weakness, no insecurities, no flaws. everyone puts her on a pedestal when she is this perfect idol persona, and she must uphold this perfect image.

now, morishige is stated to have become the only person who she can let this facade down around, who knows her flaws, weaknesses and insecurities, which is also why mayu is so incredibly dependent on him. he's her solace from that constant pretending and serving of others, someone she can lean on. the only person. that's how terminal this complex of hers is, how deep it goes.

it seems to be a popular take these days that mayu's character is there only to serve morishige's somehow and that makes her a bad character. that her writing is inherently misogynistic in that way. and while i agree that her writing suffers from some misogyny, especially in the form of the gratuitous violence inflicted on her and screentime crimes, ironically enough, in actual story writing, morishige is that one person mayu in fact does NOT "serve"!

for he is literally the only one she can be herself with even when it's negative, only one she can truly rely on, show her weaknesses to, just lean on as much as she needs to and she knows he still accepts her when she's not the perfect and positive moodmaker everyone expects her to be. sure, she still acts as his biggest cheerleader as well but it is always from a genuine place. she never has to sacrifice her own needs or fake it and put a mask on.

these two are both extremely dependent on each other for their own reasons, and because mayu finds security and solace in morishige's presence, does it not make sense for her to obsess over finding him while in HH, just like he obsesses over her safety and finding her?

in the bos fanbook it is even stated that although mayu obviously preferred yoshiki's and ayumi's (and nana's) company to being alone, she was never truly satisfied even with them around (instead of morishige), as it meant that she still had to keep her facade up.

and so, when mayu starts to notice her bruises in book of shadows, not only are they an unsightly physical flaw that she must hide (for the reasons stated previously, not out of vanity!), she also hides them from ayumi and yoshiki to not burden them with fear and worry. she does this consistently, the entire time during her chapter, never telling yoshiki when she notices that there is something wrong with her. even worse, earlier in the chapter upon first meeting up with him, it is yoshiki who ends up reinforcing mayu's toxic positivity with his comment about her being back to the cheerful "suzumoto (they) all know and love!" when mayu hides her sadness and tears from him.

with such obvious clues as to the reason she ends up behaving the way she does at the end of her chapter, doing anything in her power to appear normal, even sacrificing her own safety by running away rather than letting ayumi and yoshiki see the mysterious, concerning bruise on her face (for which i've seen many people call mayu "stupid" for and basically claim she deserved her consequent death thanks to her "stupid" actions here) i cannot understand how you can come away from her character calling her vain, conceited, shallow or one-dimensional. 

not only that, before this scene, mayu witnessed nana having her legs chopped off and dragged away right before her eyes, a sight so terrifying that instead of doing something to help her (even though she initially tried, but the closed spaces wouldn't let her get to nana and her primal fear, plus i believe the spiraling thoughts from the effects of the darkening debilitating her), she eventually ends up running away in absolute horror. and like i’ve said before, mayu has made her entire value to be about serving and helping others, and now basically her biggest fear, the worst thing that could happen, her abandoning someone in need had just come true, and she was feeling incredibly weak, horrible, selfish and flawed for it.

mayu, who frequently seems to think even worrying about herself for a split second is horribly selfish. adding to why she could not confront yoshiki and ayumi, letting them know what just happened, what she “just did”, as if it was her fault.

besides all this, all this time, mayu has tried to escape, to run away from her inevitable fate (one she has acknowledged through weird deja vu flashbacks among other things) with denial. out of sight, out of mind. ayumi and yoshiki worrying for her led to mayu having to acknowledge that something was indeed wrong with her, when she was trying everything in her power (like covering her bruises up) to ignore and run away from it all. with them around, she could not live in denial that everything would turn out all right for her, leading to despair.

there is also horror in the voyeuristic way mayu's uncoming is portrayed to the viewer. we see everything, it's all too intimate, so uncomfortable, while she wants her privacy and she wants to hide these unsightly, upsetting and weird things happening with her. then, the way that she ends up getting ripped apart, and the way that her original death in bloodcovered was her turning into something so horrible, nauseating, upsetting and unsightly; not only is her facade torn away, she is quite literally torn into pieces, becoming something that surely inspires only disgust, sadness and other negative feelings, her biggest fear.

mayu does not want to be loved, looked at and admired out of some selfish, conceited and vain desire to be idolized as a way to have some kind of influence over others, for some kind of ego boost. much more than that, she is simply a girl with a horrible complex, having been "acting" around other people basically all her life as a coping mechanism born out of her fear of being a burden to others, someone struggling to feel self worth as a human with a range of emotions (including negative ones), someone struggling to not see even an ounce of selfishness (or even a healthy amount of concern for herself) as a moral failing and something dirty and unsightly. 

to claim that this is somehow a girl who is simply stupidly vain and superficial and one-dimensional and to then judge her for finding security and comfort in the one person (who just so happens to be morishige!) who she can be her true self with all her weaknesses with is one of the most media illiterate ((and sexist, i'm sorry)) takes you could come away from her character with. 

it’s good to acknowledge that her fears are definitely mostly unfounded as well--even if others keep accidentally reinforcing them--as i genuinely believe, even know, that her friends would love her just as much as before if she let her facade down and let others see all of her. but that only adds to the tragedy of her character. someone having such an irrational fear be so all-encompassing and overpowering that it leads to her demise; her "perfection" somehow ironically becoming …her literal Fatal Flaw.

there's even more to mayu that i wish i could discuss here, like her absolutely beautiful big sisterly moments with nana and what it says about her character and her true strength. her creativity, her talents, her unique interests, how absolutely funny and witty she can be when she's not out here just suffering in a cursed school. there is also a lot to be said about her complex over being seen as overly dependent on others (namely morishige), and being "little sisterly" to him while harboring feelings for him and wanting rather to be seen as beautiful by him (which are very valid feelings for someone in love with another person, this also does not make her a shallow character!!!!), but these are posts for another time. i wanted to talk about her core complex, and this post is already getting too long.