Just here I guess

So, I’m going to start with the point the game shoves in your face. Sara reminds Kanna of her sister. Though, that can be complicated. Since we learn in Kannas backstory that Kugie wasn’t always perfect. And Sara is not perfect to Kanna.

I am not trying to condemn Sara or Kanna with this. But I think Kugie taught Kanna an important lesson: people are always capable of becoming more kind. And sure enough, after this interaction, Sara treats Kanna with kindness.

… Though you still have the option to be mean.

We’ll put a pin in why I think these options exist, but for now let’s focus on Kanna.

Kanna still cares about Sara regardless of your choices. She still thinks of her as a sister. And regardless of her choices… she takes the sacrifice from Sara and she says this.

Now this is not the truth of the situation. Sara was not reluctant to give away the sacrifice because of kindness. If you have the tokens for it, she’ll immediately rush to find her wallet for a trade, and if not, she’ll try to loot the corpse of her dead friend. But Kanna has this idea because… put simply she idolizes Sara.

Kanna has been working with Sou, and Kanna isn’t stupid. She knows he’s the groups villain. But Sara is different. Sara is the kind leader of the group, and she’s helped Kanna explore, she’s held Kanna’s hand, and she’s so protective! Just like her big sister…

In the end, Kanna has Sara high up on a pedestal marked “Kugie” and doesn’t even realize it. While Sara and Kanna want to reach out and connect to each other, it’s something that (at least until emotion route) is strained by the hole in Kanna that Kugie left. Even Mishima in the beginning asked Sara to fulfill this role and it was yet another thing she felt she had to live up to while Joe was given the role of younger brother. It’s played as a joke but it speaks a lot to how these two are treated in the story. Joe is underestimated in his intelligence and Sara is given the responsibility

And if you play logic route… that’s it. Kanna goes out with a hug for Sara, accepting that she’s deemed her life useless. The sister who she’s fine with killing her. A twisted reflection of Kugie.

Anyways I’m gonna talk about Sara and Kannas parallels now.

So, Sara and Kanna both feel a sense of duty and responsibility towards the others. We see Kannas need to be useful to others as far back as her backstory, where she never let herself act sad for the sake of her adoptive family. Though it echoes within the game as well.

Sara’s backstory is something the player is given a lot more pieces to put together for themselves at this stage of the game, but we do know things. We know she gets anxious when she isn’t studying for school, and that bad grades make her nervous, that she wanted to change the way she acted before she met Joe because it wasn’t like how most teens acted, that she’s avoidant of conflict, and that even before the death game, she had a sense of duty to others that was magnified

From this we can glean Sara, like Kanna, has a sense of responsibility that’s followed her for a lot of her life (most likely exacerbated by Meister but besides the point, I guess you could add points that Meister is not her biological dad, but I feel like that’s paper thin and I don’t think Kannas parents were the problem in her life, I think most likely she came from the Asunaro orphanage and that’s where the issues came from side tangent over.) she’s afraid of stepping on others toes, she doesn’t want to make herself a nuisance, she has to be strong hardworking and useful, a normal good kid, the best kid in the world, and she has to be capable enough to make others like her.

It echoes startlingly close to Kannas ideology. The two of them are awfully alike. Now let’s go back to that screenshot from earlier. When Kanna is berating herself for not being useful, Sara tells her to reflect. The option there, appears to be Sara reflecting her own thoughts about herself onto Kanna (and possibly echoing her dads words… I hate Mr Chidouin.)

We also have another parallel in these two with… the men they stick around

Keiji and Sara and Shin and Kannas relationship has been pointed to as a parallel constantly and I’m nowhere close to the first person to make this observation.

Many people point to the parallels Keiji and Shin have with each other. They took a girl under their wing for the sake of manipulation but began to grow a familial relationship and grew as a person but let’s look at Kanna and Sara’s parallels.

In ways, Keiji and Shin were both “Teachers” to Kanna and Sara in negative ways. Although they did come to care about them, there were things passed down that did the damage by the time it was too late.

Keiji’s is obvious. Sara’s role as leader and hallucinations. Keiji trying to prop her up as one led to her crippling guilt over Joe, and that lead to hallucinations and a need to keep going. Keiji asked to make her leader and now she is one, and he can’t stop it.

Shin also passed down things to Kanna. If you need any proof whatsoever look at the second main game. Shin calls her useless the entire time, and she ends it trying to sacrifice herself for being useless. Not only does she use that argument, but one of logic vs emotion. Shin, despite being an emotional person, has been using logic this game. Despite his breakdown in chapter 1 being fueled by emotion he is making arguments that appeal to a sense of logic: “don’t you doubt when others are kind?” Etc. etc. and he emotionally distances himself from her seen post dream sequence in 2-2. Kanna at the end of the main game is a more cynical person, thanks to Shin.

Despite the harm caused, both girls are willing to die for these people, Kanna in the main game, and Sara when she signs the Asunaro vow on the vaguest chance she could save Keiji. Their self sacrificial tendencies come in fourfold for these two, even when they, by all accounts shouldn’t.

I’m going to close off this analysis with a scene from emotion route.