Sayu

"Oh my! Welcome, friends! Are you here to receive the sweet honey bubbles of my angelic voice?"

- Sayu's introduction.

Sayu is the digital idol mermaid from the game No Straight Roads. She is the 2nd boss in the game and a representation of cutecore music.

Biography
Sayu is one of the megastars in NSR, a record label empire that only accepts music of the EDM genre (Electronic Dance Music). She is one of the NSR megastars that the protagonists have to face first in order to bring back rock to the city.

In-game, she is created, programmed, designed, and animated by a group of four adolescents named Remi, Tila, Dodo and Sofa.

Appearance
Sayu has five forms that appear during her battle, each for every phase of the fight, a result of her in-game creators trying to repair the damage made by the protagonists and redesign her to make her stronger against them. In all of these forms, included her main form, she is portrayed as a mermaid except for the last phase, where she transforms into an inverted mermaid instead. Sayu's malfunctions and her final form, a reverse mermaid, is a visualization of her team of young artists clashing against each other when seeing that they are losing the fight.

In her original design, Sayu has pink skin, cyan heart-shaped eyes and dotted eyebrows. She has short and wavy platinum white hair with pink and yellow streaks, with cyan pearls floating at the ends. One of her prominent features is her ahoge, which is shared by her lead artist, Remi. She wears a white tube top and wrist bands with cyan highlights. Her tail has cyan, fuchsia, and yellow scales, with two smaller fins beside her hips, and her fin at the end of her tail is pink. Her torso, fins and tail are not connected, with her tail tapering to a point and her upper body floating just above it.

In the second phase of her battle, she has fuchsia heart-shaped irises outlined with cyan with white pupils in the center. Her eyebrows are replaced with two cyan dots, with another set of dots under her eyes. Her hair has gained more volume, with streaks in magenta and cyan colors. She has one wavy strand that is yellow at the roots and grades to cyan. In this form, her wrist bands are slightly longer, with cyan and periwinkle gradients in her clothes and tail.

Her third form is bigger and taller, even her face becomes slightly longer, featuring yellow dots, two above and below each of her eyes. Her hair is longer and nearly waist length, with cyan, yellow, and pink streaks, while seven pale yellow orbs float around her head. She also wears a headband around her forehead with three cyan decorations, with the center one being bigger than the other two. Her wrist bands are blue and yellow, while her top is predominantly magenta with cyan and yellow accents. Her torso is slimmer and her tail forms from a spiral, now more disconnected from her torso. Her tail grades from cyan to yellow to pink, adorned with a scale pattern. Her side fins become pink and now have small orbs around it, while her tail is split into six large ribbon fins with a marbled pattern of cyan, yellow, and pink. Her fins become largely exaggerated and are disconnected from the body.

Her deep sea version is similar to her third stage, albeit with dripping makeup and glowing chip wires. In this version, her body gains a more digital and robotic aspect, with a black light effect and a colour scheme that has more pink and navy blues. This form is filled with digital lines, especially in her now magenta hair. She now has a glowing power button at the center of her chest.

In her reverse mermaid figure, her head and torso are replaced with a titanic head and small fins of a pink fish, but her heart-shaped eyes and her ahoge remain. Her tail is removed by a pair of human legs with short ankle cuffs that share the color palette of her handcuffs.

Personality
She has a really cheerful, bubbly and friendly personality, and she acts adorably and with a lot of energy during all her first interactions. She has a strong belief in the power of love, stating that "Love is the most powerful power in the world!".

She is also against hate and violence at first. However, at the end of her battle, she starts to glitch, and Sayu begins to develop a split personality, becoming more hostile and unpredictable.

She tends to make a lot of references and puns related to the ocean during her speech and even in her singing. She frequently repeats the catchphrase "Love Love Sayu Pyun!", as well as the onomatopoeia "Pyun".

Powers and Abilities
Sayu is a great singer, knowing how to sing in English and Japanese. This makes her quite popular between younger people.

She has a trident called "Pyun Pyun Trident" that resemble the USB symbol. She uses it to attack the protagonists and fire redfish arrows at them. Apart from this, she doesn't usually attack the protagonists herself, fleeing from them and letting the elements of the stage and even her own creators deal with them instead.

Her stronger and more aggressive version is her reverse mermaid form. Sayu will slam her new legs at them, creating tidal waves, kick pink pixalated orb at the player, and fire beams at them.

Being a digital being, her creators can repair and redesign her as they please, adding new abilities and strengths every time they do.

Trivia

 * Her name means "pretty" or "hot water" in Japanese.
 * Sayu was originally planned to be a digital rabbit girl idol with legs. However, in further concept artwork, she is created as a mermaid by Ellie Yong, who is most noticeable for her mermaid illustrations.
 * This would explain her "pyun" catchphrase, as this is the Japanese onomatopoeia of the sound a rabbit does.
 * Based on the digital idol concept, she was inspired by Hatsune Miku, a vocal synthesizer software personified as a digital idol.
 * Her design and role is also reminiscent of the anime Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, specifically the mermaid protagonist named Lucia Nanami.
 * Sayu's final phase form is based off of a reverse mermaid, a mythical creature with the form of a human from the waist down and fish from the waist up.
 * While exploring Akusuka District, the player can discover more about Sayu's past. Her first appearance was in a game called "Doki Doki Mermaid Club", based on the game "Doki Doki Literature Club". In the cover of the game, she can be seen beside four other mermaid characters. However, these characters are not mentioned and don't appear anywhere else in the game. The protagonist even comments that "I never knew Sayu was part of a group! I wonder whatever happened to them..." upon inspecting the item.

Links
Sayu's page Metronomik Archives Wiki.