Name:Sakuya Kumishiro/Yugi
Occupation: Idiot shadow (of mutant Juraian child)
REVIEW
Sakuya is Tenchi's love interest in Tenchi in Tokyo, although she is really little more than an illusion, an extension of Yugi as she plots and schemes to split Tenchi up from the people he really cares about.
Sakuya is your average school girl, although she has no memory of her parents or her family, she spends a lot of time sitting by the phone waiting for Tenchi to call her, and there's something distinctly different about her when you look at her face on - her eyes and the funny pallor of her skin compared to her classmates gives away right from the start that she's not quite all she seems.
And yet Sakuya is unaware even of her own origins. That she has been created simply to fall in love with Tenchi and more importantly, to make him fall in love with her is completely beyond her knowledge. It is this love she has for him that allows her to break free of Yugi's will at the end and release Tenchi to do what's right for the planet, even though it means she will no longer exist.
Yugi's own origins are somewhat more sinister. She is a child experiment from the planet Jurai, a six year old girl whose mutated magic got out of hand and who singlehandedly managed to almost destroy Jurai in it's entirety. (A message for the future, folks. Genetic engineering is a dangerous business!). Because of her destructive capabilities and lack of magical control, Yugi was imprisoned in a cryogenic vault and sent out into space, landing on the earth. She rested there for 3500 years, before an earthquake in the centre of Tokyo released her to do more mischief.
Yugi wants to create a
world of her own and she decides that the Earth will do nicely for her
empire - but unfortunately she is stopped by the power of the Masaki
crystals, so she sets about doing her best to divide up the whole
family.
PERSONALITY
Honestly, it's hard not to feel just a little bit sorry for Yugi. A
scared child imprisoned because she could not control her powers, it's
easy to see why she felt so vengeful and why she wanted so much to
create her own world where she might be accepted rather than ridiculed.
In some ways she is a little girl, but in others she is very adult -
giving orders to her servants and making high powered decisions over
the fate of the people on the planet below. She creates and manipulates
Sakuya, who is a character pitched eleven years older than she is, but
nobody suspects anything suspicious about Sakuya until nearly the end
of the series. Even the voice artist chosen for Yugi is an adult voice, rather than that of a child. And she makes deep observations from time to time - when playing with Sasami, she comments on how depressing a music box is because the music always winds down...a metaphor for her play date with Sasami ending, or for Sakuya's heart being broken by Tenchi in the square not far away.
Yugi does have a nice side to her - the little girl who is desperate for
a friend to love her. This side of her we see when she first meets
Sasami inside the Antique store and it gives a hint as to how lonely
Yugi really is. Think of her as the ultimate neglected child only with
super powers, and you get a feel for who she is. I don't think she is
genuinely evil - she's just looking for someone to love her.
Sakuya's personality, on the other hand, is practically non-existant.
Maybe it's because she's nothing more than Yugi's shadow, but I have
seen her called a 'Mary Sue' character and I would have to agree.
Sliding another love interest into the Tenchi Muyo love triangle is
always going to be difficult, but to create one who is there for the
whole series is even more of a challenge. Sakuya can't cook, but
obsesses about making lunch for Tenchi and about spending all the time
she can with him. When he goes home, she stalks him there, even though he tells her he doesn't want her there. When Washu
tries to call him home, she throws a fit. When she sees him with Ryoko,
she oddly disappears for a few days - and then reappears as if nothing
had happened. She drags Tenchi to a love goddess and tries to marry him all in the first few episodes. She's also a bit dense - she'll believe whatever Tenchi tells her, even that Ryoko and Ayeka are 'Monster Busters' and that's why they have special powers. As Ayeka ironically says - "Tenchi finds the strange ones." (I guess she doesn't realise that applies to her and Ryoko as well!).
Because she is Yugi's puppet, I suppose that Sakuya's personality is
also an extension of Yugi - the part of her looking for love. But even
Yugi admits that she doesn't understand Sakuya any more by the end of
the series. Either Sakuya has been genuinely smitten by the attraction
Tenchi seems to hold for so many women, or she's just become something
of a stalker. I'm not quite sure...