Saki Konishi

Saki Konishi is a character in Persona 4. She is the sister of Naoki Konishi and the second victim of the bizarre murders surrounding Inaba.
== Appearances ==
*Persona 4 / Golden: Minor Character
**Persona 4 Manga: Minor Character
**Persona 4 The Animation: Minor Character
**Persona 4 The Magician: Major Character
**Persona 4 The Golden Animation: Cameo
**Persona 4 Visualive: Minor Character
**Persona 4: Kiri no Amnesia: Major Character
*Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth - Side:P4: Cameo
== Design ==
Saki has thick, long, wavy light-brown hair and brown eyes. At school she wears a standard school uniform with black stockings and brown shoes, yet with white knee-length socks in the anime. When she works at Junes, she wears a long-sleeved white shirt, faded navy jeans, navy sneakers, and an employee apron.
In the first Golden anime opening, she is briefly seen wearing a pink blazer and dark gray shirt with gray blue jeans and black shoes.
== Personality ==
Since Saki dies quite early into the game, most of her personality and daily behavior is unknown, and she was unable to provide any first-hand accounts herself. The only information that the protagonist gets about her is from Yosuke Hanamura and Naoki Konishi, the former being her co-worker and the latter being her brother. Yosuke notes that she was nosy around him yet worked hard at Junes, despite not appearing to have. Naoki sees her as a playful yet surprisingly mature individual, and after coming to terms with his feelings, realizes that he misses her dearly.
At first, she seemed like a kind person who was nice and supportive to Yosuke. However, it is revealed that she was actually quite stressed about her life, with a lot of pent-up angst and a desire to get away from it all. It is also revealed that the pressure led her to believe her family, friends, and neighbors had resented her all along because she worked at Junes, the giant store that was slowly driving her family's liquor shop out of business. If the protagonist speaks to Yasogami High students the day after her death, one female student will reveal there have been bad rumors circulating throughout school about her, and she herself cannot feel sorry about Saki's death.
== Profile ==
===Persona 4===
A senior to the protagonist and Yosuke Hanamura, she works as a part-time worker at Junes. She is the eldest daughter of a family who owns the local liquor store Konishi Liquors, who failed to compete with the nearby Junes Department Store and lost sales nearly to the point of getting shut down like many other stores. Her brother Naoki is the protagonist's underclassman.
She was first seen talking with her brother Naoki about some leftovers of his that she ate on the first day the protagonist came to Inaba.
The protagonist meets her as she takes a break from her part-time job at Junes. She informs the protagonist that Yosuke's father is the manager of Junes and that she is Yosuke's co-worker. She sees Yosuke as a nosy little brother and calls him "Hana-chan" as a way of playfully teasing him. Yosuke harbors romantic feelings for Saki, but fails to confess to her and this love is unrequited as a result. Saki is later revealed to be the person who first found Mayumi Yamano's body, making her nervous and scared.
Later, when the protagonist, Chie Satonaka, and Yosuke watch the Midnight Channel, the trio observes a blurred image of a female student resembling Saki Konishi, who appears to be writhing in pain. Two days later, the Yasogami High students are tragically informed that Saki was found murdered. Her corpse was hung upside-down on a telephone pole. Coroners estimated her time of death was at around 1 in the morning on April 15. Devastated by her death, Yosuke requests the protagonist take him into the Midnight Channel, as the protagonist is the only one capable of entering the TV.
Saki's inner thoughts are later revealed when the protagonist and Yosuke investigate the Midnight Channel's Twisted Shopping District. In reality, Saki was under immense pressure due to her family's liquor store falling over to the opening of Junes' Inaba branch. Furthermore, her decision to take a job as a part-timer at Junes greatly irritated her family, and as such, her father would often scold her for her decisions. This would be proven by the manifestation of the voices in the Shopping District. After becoming a witness to the murder case, her dilemma grew worse as her classmates and friends talked behind her back. It is also unknown if she encountered her Shadow Self, although Persona 4 The Animation implies it with two figures seen on the Midnight Channel. After dealing with Shadow Yosuke, Yosuke accepts his inner feelings.
Regardless, the protagonist and Yosuke would hear Saki's voice who would claim she despised Yosuke for his enthusiasm towards her, and only befriended him because he is the son of the manager of Junes. She also hates Junes especially because it ruined her relationship with her family, the town and their business as a whole.
There would be many rumors circulating Saki, but several people would vouch for her and insist she's being misunderstood, Yosuke himself being one of the most prominent instances: Yosuke considers her a good person at heart, and gets angry when people disparage her. Despite her distaste towards Yosuke, which Yosuke himself is forced to acknowledge, Saki is arguably the main motivation Yosuke has for venturing into the Midnight Channel and solving its mysteries.
If the protagonist levels up the Magician Social Link to rank six, it is revealed that Saki was rumored to be having a relationship with a college student, and planned to leave Inaba with him until she backed out with the decision to save up for leaving Inaba on her own, presumably part of the reason she decided to work at Junes. Naoki, however, suggests in rank seven of the Hanged Man Social Link that Saki believed her work for Junes would one day be of some benefit to her family's business.
In the final stages of their investigation, the group is able to hear Taro Namatame's story and Saki's involvement in it: they would also debunk a certain misconception that Namatame approached Saki to hit on her. After he observed Yamano die following her appearance on the Midnight Channel, he then saw Saki on the channel. Fearing that a similar fate awaited Saki, Namatame attempted to warn her to be careful, but this failed to keep her from dying, thus instigating his efforts to save people by forcibly throwing them into the TV under the impression that what he was doing was not dangerous.
Shortly afterwards, the group is able to hear the account of the true culprit, Tohru Adachi, about what really happened to Saki. He questioned Saki as a witness much more than was normal for a person with such a strong alibi. The night they saw her on the Midnight Channel, Saki was questioned by Adachi at the police station. Adachi aggressively tried to flirt with her and she slapped him, causing him to react violently by picking her up and throwing her into the TV, causing Shadows to kill her the next day, which Adachi justifies by calling her a "gold digger" trying to get Namatame's attention. Unlike the previous case with Yamano, Adachi deliberately threw Saki into the TV knowing full well not only that he could but that she would be in mortal danger.
===Persona 4 The Animation===
In the animated adaptation of Persona 4, when she was cast into the Midnight Channel, she did not panic nor get afraid when her "other self" appeared. The only reactions she experienced were confusion and disorientation. Then in Namatame's flashback, she is last seen with her Shadow about to transform into the black smoke and finally killing her through suffocation.
=== Persona 4 The Magician ===
At the Yasogami Culture Festival of 2010, Saki overhears gossip about Yosuke as the local Junes manager's son while seeing him walk by to the school rooftop, so she follows him to start a short conversation and advise him not to listen to people talking behind his back. About two weeks later, she begins her part-time job at Junes and tells this to a surprised Yosuke while working.
When Yosuke sees Saki on the job at Junes on Valentine's Day, he hears customers gossiping about her which prompts him to grab her without warning and pull her away. After listening to him complain about these people talking negatively without shame, Saki gives him chocolate for what she reasoned as out of sympathy before going back to work.
Yosuke later gives Saki a picture of them and other workers at Junes. Following this are the events of the game where Saki introduces herself at Junes and gets killed by her Shadow. Her remaining thoughts of despising Yosuke remain in the Midnight Channel's version of her family's liquor store.
===Persona 4 The Golden Animation===
In the opening intro, Saki is seen going to her part-time job at Junes. The scene where Adachi gets slapped by her and throws her into the TV is recapped in Episode 6.
=== Persona 4: Kiri no Amnesia ===
Yosuke meets Amnesia, a character that takes on the form of Saki's Shadow. Her Shadow was created out of a desire to forget and escape the hardships of her reality.
== Etymology ==
* The name Saki means "already, now, fast, early" (早) (sa) and "chronicle" (紀) (ki).
* Saki's surname Konishi means "small" (小) (ko) and "west" (西) (nishi)
==Gallery==
===Persona 4===
Saki-Concept.jpg|Concept artwork of Saki
===Persona 4 The Animation===
Persona 4 The Animation Saki.png|Saki Konishi on a foggy day
Saki spoted and found corspe of Mayumi Yamato.png|Saki discovering Mayumi Yamano's corpse
Persona 4 saki.jpg|Saki talks to Yosuke Hanamura at the Junes food court
Saki being interview by the media.jpg|Saki being interviewed by the media
Saki in the midnight channel.png|A blurry image of Saki seen on the Midnight Channel
SakiChannel.gif|A blurry image of Saki seen on the Midnight Channel
SakiAntenna.gif|Saki's body hung on a telephone pole
Saki's Death.png|Saki's body hung on a telephone pole
P4A_Saki_photo.jpg|A photo of Saki in Yosuke's phone
===Persona Q (Manga)===
Persona Q Side P4 Saki Konishi cameo.jpg|Saki appears in a flashback during Side:P4
==References==
Category:Persona 4 Characters
Category:Persona 4 The Animation Characters
Category:Persona 4 Golden Characters
Category:Persona 4 Allies