Herring

the lion does not concern himself with what his art looks like when the canvas is flipped

During my childhood, there is a famous local comic book series about a girl with magical powers who goes on adventures with her friends. In one of the books, they meet a rat capable of speech, claiming to have his soul cursed into this animal, and that he was really a prince whose human body was locked up elsewhere by evildoers. They find his empty vessel in a glided coffin, head down and unresponsive. When he returns to his body, his face is still never shown, and his personality was completely different from how he was when he was a tiny rat. He went from a verbal and good-humoured voice to a mysterious and quiet individual who saved them and then disappeared. In this vein, I often think that Sayaka and ‘Sayaka’s corpse’ is a similar concept.

Right, about the so-called concept. I was thinking that it’s ominous how Sayaka refusing to clean her gem and eventually witching out is perceived as an act of suicide, but specifically that she died at a train station — a location associated with death via jumping in front of an incoming train.