Anzu in her fanservice costume as drawn by diseasedbear
Name: Anzu Sakamoto
Gender: Female
Age: 18
School: Whittree Secondary School
Hobbies and Interests: Playing the bass, music in general, crime procedurals, swim team
Appearance: Anzu is quite tall at 5'10", weighing a healthy 141 pounds. She is rather slender, but fit from her time on the swim team. Anzu has brown eyes. Her black hair is straight and long, extending several inches past the base of her neck.
Anzu tends to dress rather simply, as she prefers to avoid standing out. She favors dark-colored blouses and long skirts on most days, and t-shirts and jeans when she needs to participate in physical activity. Anzu takes care to only apply light amounts of makeup; enough to make her look nice without its presence being obvious. She often wears earrings, preferring small, unobtrusive studs. Anzu is nearsighted, so she wears a pair of small, black-framed, round glasses. On Casting Day, Anzu was wearing a black blouse, a long black skirt and black sneakers.
Biography: Anzu was born on January 13, 2002 to Akira and Yuzu Sakamoto, second generation Japanese, Asian-Americans, Akira being the CEO of a fairly successful technology company. Though Anzu was born into a very wealthy family, her parents took great pains not to spoil her, and thus she has had a fairly normal upbringing, with Yuzu staying home to take care of Anzu full time.
As a child Anzu was very temperamental, often throwing tantrums over very small things. Yuzu became stricter, not hesitating to take away her daughter's television and game privileges, and though this did eventually stop Anzu's misbehavior, she still remained irritable as ever; merely learning to avoid letting it show.
Near the beginning of primary school, Yuzu became worried about her daughter's lack of any major physical activity, thus enlisting her in swimming classes. Anzu was initially resentful of being forced into it, but eventually came to like the classes, enjoying swimming enough to join the swim team once she reached middle school, sticking with it into high school. While not a star member of the team, Anzu still does rather well.
Throughout her early years in school Anzu was mostly left alone, being a quiet girl who got mostly good grades. She only had a handful of close friends; which suited Anzu just fine, finding large crowds of people annoying.
From an early age, from hearing what played on the radio along with her mother's sizable collection, Anzu has had a keen interest in music; fascinated by the many different genres, techniques, instruments and styles used. While she is willing to listen to anything from any genre, Anzu still has a few preferences, namely Rock and Trance, also favoring heavily lyrical songs. Anzu often spends hours on the internet searching for new things to listen to.
This passion evolved early on into a desire to create her own music. The perfect opportunity to pursue this was presented to her near the end of primary school, where she met and befriended Valerie Fitzroy and Sarah Bourne, two long-time friends who were interested in starting a band. Eventually it was decided that Anzu would play the bass, a role she was perfectly happy with. She liked the idea of being the quiet, unobtrusive one who nevertheless provided the foundation of their music.
After the middle school graduation party where Caroline Leveson was persuaded to join their band as a singer, Anzu has met regularly with the other three members to practice or just hang out, considering Valerie, Sarah, and Carloine her best friends.
While Anzu doesn't normally watch much television, the one genre she makes an exception for is crime procedural. Her mother is a large fan of shows such as Castle and NCIS, and once Anzu was deemed mature enough to handle the depicted content, she often watched them with her, quickly growing to love the mysteries and likable casts of characters. Anzu still catches the reruns when they appear on television, and if there's nothing else for her to do, she will gladly crack open her sizable collection of DvDs and marathon her way through a season or two.
Anzu does quite well in school, usually obtaining a straight A average, though she occasionally drops down to a B in Math, a class which she hates and often "forgets" to study for as she doesn't want to deal with the hassle of trying to figure things out. She doesn't particularly like any of her classes, merely finding some less trouble to deal with than others. After graduating, Anzu plans to continue working with her band, along with attending college to further study music.
Anzu dislikes a large portion of the student body, and indeed, humanity in general, hating their obsession with what she views to be pointless things such as fashion and gossiping, lacking any sort of passion or drive. Anzu is also rather over-sensitive, often taking issue with what others would view to be incredibly minor things. She takes great pains to not let this show, doing her best to act cordial at the very least towards others.
While she may appear calm and collected on the surface, this is an image Anzu deliberately tries to uphold. In reality, she is incredibly irritable and easily stressed, often turning minor setbacks into huge, insurmountable obstacles. Anzu thus tries to remain quiet and in the background as much as possible, not out of shyness, but out of a desire to avoid accidentally revealing her true self to the world. This is not due to Anzu caring about the opinions of others, but because she finds the consequences of voicing her true thoughts too much of a pain to deal with.
When with friends, Anzu is much more relaxed and genuinely friendly, though she still remains quiet unless she feels she has something to say.
During her early teens Anzu discovered that, while most other girls had started becoming interested in boys, she instead started developing crushes on girls. As both of her parents were rather traditional and had spoken in disdain about homosexuality in the past, Anzu remained in denial about this for several years. It took until her Sophomore year of high school, when she came to the realization that she was infatuated with one of her close female friends for Anzu to fully accept that she was a lesbian. Anzu has not yet confessed, too frightened of both rejection and her parents' reaction if they found out.
Despite that, Anzu still gets along rather well with her parents. Her father is distant but supportive, while Yuzu is incredibly loving of her only child, and though she occasionally approaches smothering territory Anzu still loves her.
Anzu is a casual viewer of SOTF-TV. Her mother is a fan of the show, so Anzu has been exposed to a lot of it second-hand, but she only really takes care to track down seasons with stories or settings she finds especially interesting.
Advantages: Anzu is in shape due to her time on the swim team, giving her an advantage in physical activities or confrontations. As Anzu does not let her true attitude towards her fellow students show, she should not have an especially difficult time making alliances.
Disadvantages: Anzu is easily irritated and does not deal with stress well. While she can handle this in everyday life, the increased pressure of SOTF-TV may be more than she can deal with, causing an explosion at best, a complete breakdown at worst. Anzu is nearsighted, so losing her glasses would greatly reduce her eyesight.
Designated Number: Amber Eagles 5 (AE5).
----
Designated Weapon: Kendama Cup-and-Ball game
Mentor Comment: "Well, that's a hilariously awful weapon from a pretty angry young lady. Still, physically fit so long as she doesn't go and fuck it up. Maybe her and AE4 can link up and go the distance."
Evaluations[]
Anzu Bebinator style
Handled By: delayedMirth
Kills: None
Killed By: Suicide by shooting her collar
Collected Weapons: Kendama Cup-and-Ball game (designated weapon, discarded), Flintlock Axe Pistol (from Sarah Bourne), Mateba Model 1 Unica Autorevolver (from Ashley Namath)
Allies: Ashley Namath, Sarah Bourne, Caroline Leveson, Corin Albanesi
Enemies: Zoe Walker, Michael Robinson
Mid-game Evaluation:
Post-Game Evaluation:
Memorable Quotes:
Other/Trivia[]
Threads[]
Below is a list of threads that contain Anzu, in chronological order
The Past
Sandbox:
SOTF-TV:
- We Are Not Your Kind of People
- Zoom, Kick, Persuasion, Tech
- Take That Money, Watch It Burn
- Crescendolls
- It's Bad. We're Hit, Man, We Are Hit.
- A Failure Played in Stereo
- ...And in Her Self-Loathing and Despair, She Found Wrath
- Listening to Ghosts
- and the wind died, too
- I (Don't) Remember
Your Thoughts[]
Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Anzu. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!
Anzu was a good read and one I would recommend.
For strengths, Anzu stands out as being a rather angry character even prior to being put on SOTF-TV, but it generally makes sense, isn’t too over the top, and most importantly, the way it’s portrayed improves over the course of sandbox and her early in-version posts. Sandbox also does a good job of setting up her important in-game relationships. The relationships Anzu has with Ashley, Sarah, and Caroline are huge here, and they’re all strong enough that the first half of Anzu’s story is likely the stronger one for it. Her strong dislike of Zoe and their eventual confrontation is also well set up from sandbox and is probably the highlight of the second half of her story. She’s also one of the few characters I’ll give the distinction of having a break from reality that I think makes sense and is well handled. It also benefits from not overstaying its welcome, with Anzu having to face reality after a relatively short period of time.
Anzu’s main weakness, as small as it is, mainly relates to one of her strengths. The relationships developed in sandbox really define Anzu to such an extent that she’s weaker when none of them are present. This becomes most obvious from the point she meets Corin until the end of her story. With everyone else she spent decent amounts of time with, you have a good idea of what their relationship is like and how she feels about them. That’s less evident with Corin and I feel it weakens the end of her story a bit. I also think the moment where she discovers Ashley and Sarah’s bodies had its potential cut short by how resigned Anzu is to the situation by that point. -bacon