Sae Niijima

**Sae Niijima** is a character in *Persona 5*.

## Design

Sae is a tall woman with long ashen brown hair asymmetrically parted on her right side and brown eyes, sometimes depicted with a hint of mauve red.

She wears a black business suit with a black turtleneck. Her blazer's cuffs and the lower part have clamshell-like designs. Accessory-wise, she wears a necklace of a section sign (§) which references her judicial occupation (it also appears in the top right of Shujin Academy's emblem), earrings and a few dark hair clips can be seen above her right ear. She has violet fingernails and wears black or dark gray high heels. She is sometimes seen with a smartphone and a black bag slung over her shoulder.

Shadow Sae has yellow eyes, extremely thick black eyeliner and black lipstick. She still wears her earrings, but she now has a black choker with spikes, and a hat that resembles an American flapper from the 1920s, with playing cards stashed behind a golden rose. She wears a revealing black dress with purple laces which exposes the center of her torso and her right leg. Her right leg is decorated with fishnet stockings and a derringer pistol and she wears purple high heels. She wears long black gloves. She seems to have tattoos on her shoulders and back; the tattoo on her back is a black dog's head wearing a choker surrounded by yellow roses.

While she does not initially transform into a demon form during her boss fight, she becomes Leviathan after the Phantom Thieves break a giant roulette wheel she was using to toy with them, a giant knight in black spiked plate armor, a helmet resembling a horned demon, several large firearms (such as a rocket launcher) mounted on her right hand and wielding a large red sword in her left hand.

## Personality

"You don't have to do a single thing, and you're provided with food, clothes, a home... I've had no time to think on such ridiculous thoughts. Would Dad have been happy with them? I don't care. He died upholding some lofty sense of righteousness, leaving all his responsibilities on us. Isn't it about time you grew up and acknowledged our situation!? Right now, you're useless to me. All you do is eat away at my life!"
—Sae Niijima lashing out at Makoto Niijima, *Persona 5*
Sae is intelligent, professional and serious, although her actual maturity is debatable. A workaholic, Sae is very strict in both her work as prosecutor and guardian for her younger sister, Makoto, constantly telling her to focus on her studies and such. With many responsibilities, Sae is always working due to Japan's work pressure, and is very stressed and exhausted. She must care for Makoto, almost putting her in a single mother's role. Her father's ideals, who died in the line of duty, is her sore spot. She resents him for throwing his life away in the name of justice, to the point that when Makoto asks for her opinion on whether he would think the Phantom Thieves of Hearts were just, Sae snaps and says a bunch of cruel things that she instantly regrets, up to and including that she views Makoto as a burden.

Because of her father's death, Sae views the concept of justice as meaningless. This has made her hyper-competitive and obsessed with getting ahead, to the point of telling Makoto that success is all that matters in life. This is to her detriment, as it clouds her judgement and leads to her trusting all of the wrong people; throughout the investigation of the Phantom Thieves, she remains completely unaware that her boss is taking her for a complete fool and while she doesn't get along with Goro Akechi, she nevertheless trusts his judgement regarding the Phantom Thieves. She also gets angry at the public for not caring about the death of Principal Kobayakawa, a man who covered up the acts of a sex criminal just to protect his school's reputation. It goes both ways, as she's easily willing to believe that Sojiro Sakura, the manager of a cafe she frequents, is abusing his daughter (though Makoto suspects the same thing for a time) and completely refuses to change her mind about the Phantom Thieves no matter what good deeds they do, to the point that she's willing to believe the worst of them at any time.

Sae's most consistent flaw is her hypocrisy. For all her supposed disgust of the Phantom Thieves, she's perfectly willing to resort to methods similar to theirs in order to catch them, claiming that they "can't be caught by following the rules." Akechi even points out to her that, in doing so, she is no different from the very people she claims to hate. This trait of hers is especially prominent in her Shadow, who repeatedly states that she wishes to do things "fair and square" despite constantly cheating.

Regardless of her many flaws, Sae isn't without standards or moments of compassion, a prominent example being when the protagonist was feeling fatigued over the drug injections making her feel concerned for him despite him being labeled a criminal. There were even times when she would be worried the protagonist would pass out. She is also genuinely disgusted and even disturbed at the cops for inflicting such pain on the protagonist. Despite Sae's hard demeanor and strict relationship with Makoto, she loves her sister deeply and has even shown consolation for her, as it's indicated that some of her stricter attitude is born out of a desire to keep Makoto out of trouble and ensure that she succeeds.

Envious of her sister and colleagues, Sae feels they have freedom to do whatever they want, while she is stuck in a dead-end slave job. This envy, combined with her growing disillusionment and frustration with her profession as a concept due to being regularly strung along by political corruption, manifests as a Palace resembling a casino and a hypercompetitive and dishonest Shadow Self hellbent on winning, desiring everyone to feel as helpless as she does while stuck in an unfair and corrupt system. She forces the Phantom Thieves into rigged gambling games that are impossible to win fairly. Her distorted and pitiful worldview is shown during her battle quotes, claiming that a society must have rules and order to operate, and those who do not follow society's rules must be punished and penalized but also that it is natural and right to alter the rules to favor one side, then call the rigged victory "justice." After being caught cheating in her supposedly "fair" game, this is her final straw as she goes berserk and attempts to kill everyone-offhandedly revealing that she didn't think it was possible to be fair until she gave up on the game. Unlike other Shadow Selves of Palaces, Sae is open to listen to reason; after defeat, the Phantom Thieves convince her to let go of her jealousy without stealing Sae's Treasure. As a result, Sae has an epiphany about how pointless her grudges and overcompensation are without fundamentally changing her personality by using her feelings in a more proactive way.

## TMNT X Pokemon

Sae is a vehement critic of the Ninja Turtles and the Thieves, wanting to put them behind bars for illegal vigilantism.

## Trivia

* A possible reference of Sae's name could be Yae Niijima (新島 八重), a fierce woman from the late Edo period who fought with firearm in a siege and later worked as an army nurse during war-time. For a long time Yae was criticized for her proud attitude over her second husband (which was the male spouse's idea to demonstrate gender equality) and westernized wardrobe, these led to Yae's isolation by her late husband's allies.
* The prominent yellow roses in Shadow Sae's design and her tattoo of a dog head both represent her envy; yellow roses symbolize jealousy in Japanese flower language, and envy is often associated with dogs.
* The dog tattoo may also symbolize guardianship, ritual, loyalty, and spirit. Wolf has the ability to make quick and firm emotional attachments, and often need to trust their own instincts. This ties in with her undying loyalty to the Phantom Thieves.
* Sae's unused voice lines imply that her Confidant ranking originally might have allowed the protagonist to more readily interact and possibly even engage in a romantic relationship with her akin to other female Confidants in the game.
* If the protagonist fights Sae alone, Futaba insults Sae, telling her she is supposed to be an adult and should be ashamed of herself.
* Sae is the only Palace owner who does not have her treasure revealed. However, it was theorized by Makoto to be their father's police journal.
* Sae enjoys motorcycling and kickboxing.
* Unused dialogue from the game's files indicate that Sae was initially designed to play poker with the Thieves at some point before her boss fight.
	+ While some may construe this dialogue as a replacement for her roulette-based boss fight, Shadow Sae's line at the end "Let's take this elsewhere! I'll beat you at a different game!" suggests that she would then flee to the roulette wheel.
* Sae has a habit, especially when a flashforward occurs during a Confidant meeting, of using some variant of "Explain yourself!", "Answer me!", "Isn't that right?", "Spill it!" or "What do you have to say to that?"
* In the original script for Persona 5, Sae was going to be the guardian of the protagonist during his probation.

* Penalty is ineffective in the event that a party member is at 1 HP.
* In Dancing in Starlight during Makoto's Social, a few details about Sae are referred to outside of Persona 5:
	+ Ann mentions how she passed the bar exam while she was still in high school. Additionally, her looks also garnered enough attention to be featured on a TV interview when she first became a prosecutor. Makoto, however, says that Sae was upset with the story when it broke out, due to the attention and rumors that were brought up.