Contains: Tazuru's backstory, desperate frantic crying by the author, I can't fucking do this, the torture chair, the beginning of the end, sleepyhead Sae again, second saddest anime death
Volume nineWe're still in classics territory, and truthfully for a time I considered volume 9 to be the best Sae-ism volume of all, which is a really, really big thing for me to say. When I finished reading Tazuru's backstory I stopped and stared at the void for some time and then I went to pick up my phone and put Sweet Sixteen by Billy Idol. It hit me really hard okay. That is the main reason why this volume is great, like, 90% of why I say that. Basically, as a child Tazuru got into a car crash that BOTH disfigured her (and this is why she wears the mask), and orphaned her from her shitty father. She got into an orphanage, but ran away shortly after, and one day while starving she entered the Maki household to steal food and got caught. From that moment, Sae the sixth - the Sae of that generation - basically adopted her, against the wishes of everyone else in the Maki family. ADOPTED HER. Even though Sae isn't much older than her, she acts as a mother figure towards her, which goes to show how much Sae has to prematurely grow up to shoulder her burdens. AND.... I have a really soft spot for depictions of mother-daughter relationships so this absolutely broke me 
but it's not just that. It's kind of a mindfuck to see a Sae being actually sane and a sound person mentally, which can't be said about her descendants that we have read about. This does away with the notion, that one might have had, that the Saes are somehow genetically insane. Some scrote on twitter genuinely believes this I swear I can't find the screenshot anymore but that's something that someone actually believes. No, they just have different breaking points and different ways to cope. Compared to the other two, the fact that Sae the sixth is able to stay sane while living through the same conditions makes her a deeply sympathetic character, and it's almost a shame that we don't get to see more of her - "almost" because, in the end, she's not as interesting as her drama queen granddaughters that we know and love, but that's precisely the point: Sae the sixth is just a regular ass person. A regular girl crushed by the cogs of a machine she can't control. Let me take another moment to say fuck the opps who DON'T UNDERSTAND SAE-ISM OR SAE!!!!! dni stupid people 😡😡😡😡😡
And when Sae ends up pregnant, she begs Tazuru to be the midwife (even though the poor girl is like 13), which means that she gets to witness Sae's horrible bloody gory death.
And when I first read this whole backstory. I was like 😨😨😨😨😨😨😨😨. Because I was thinking. Tohru really did it. He didn't just mention it, he actually wrote about it, showed it. Because it's one thing to tell me (I am the only real Sae-ism reader) "basically uh Sae's life is really sad :((((" and another thing is to fucking crush me with it. Tohru really went there, he went the full mile. And I can take what he's done and RUN WITH IT. I'm about to get really annoying.
Because. Sae-ism is not feminist literature, far from it. But with my SCHIZO EYES LET ME OVERANALYZE STUFF OKAY I can definitely see the matter being explored in this volume. Throughout the whole series it's obvious but under-emphasized that the Saes' struggle is pretty much sex-based. Arranged marriage and forced birthing are women's problems only, so the entire series, with the whole overarching Nazo corp/Maki family thing, wouldn't have worked at all if Sae was a bloke. So, again, this is a fundamental but sorta unstressed part of the series - just like the whole Nazo corp affair. When this overarching stuff is focused on, like now, Sae's dynamic and role inside comes way more to light, too. It's very different being told about it, and seeing it firsthand: seeing how, inside of this construct, Sae is basically a broodmare dressed in pretty clothes destined to carry on male legacy and boost male ego, which is, familiar. Even more glaring is the fact that everyone in the Maki family and everyone associated with the Nazo corp - Sae's oppressors - is a man. Who doesn't seem to consider the possibility that Sae might have feelings and a desire to live properly like the rest of them - all they see is their traditions, built by them to soothe their own ego. Surrounded by unempathetic men and being oppressed on the basis of her sex, of course Sae, searching for empathy, would seek out the company of other women: of course Tazuru is a girl. And their relationship is the thing that lends itself the most to this type of analysis. It is, again, a mother-daughter type of relationship - the primary bond of love and trust not only for women, but for humans in general; of course in this case it's not biological, but for the two of them it's really the only true bond of affection they have, especially as the only women in a male-dominated world. But the mother-daughter bond in such a world is never allowed to just exist untainted, as both parties must watch each other suffer, especially the daughter in her loss of innocence. What's more is that, yes, Tazuru herself becomes like a mother for the Saes, but she also becomes an enforcer of their oppression, by supporting the Maki family's survival; but in her circumstances it would have been difficult for her to do otherwise. It reminds me of what Mary Daly said about women being set up as "token torturers" of one another, specifically mothers with their daughters. THEY ARE SO MOTHER-DAUGHTER CODED what Sae passes onto Tazuru is a huge amount of love but also the knowledge of the unbearable burden of living in a hostile society that will tear you apart for the sole crime of being born, the duty to contribute to the survival of said society, and the obligation to witness loved ones getting caught up as cogs in the machine while being powerless to stop it fuck DO YOU GET IT????
The fact of women being pitted against each other is also visible in Sae the tenth's hatred and consequent murder of Tazuru: she's seen as the embodiment of the Nazo corp (which, as we've seen, is a condensed version of patriarchal society) and thus the enemy. While this is true because Tazuru effectively was turned into a tool to uphold the status quo, Sae the tenth is also very much - to use another Daly-esque expression - father-identified, acting under the all-pervasive influence of her father, who was also the perfect example of the sexist man. I think that this time, his story hints at the Madonna/whore complex: first he fixates onto Sae as the ultimate object of desire until he ends up ruining both of their lives (and literally ending hers) over his attraction to her, at which point he does a complete 180 and turns her into a dull, abject symbol of purity, unsexed and asexual, unsullied by the outside world and always kept in a physically and emotionally sterile environment: pure as in absolutely void. So, even though Sae the tenth kills Tazuru who was a perpetrator of oppression (and secretly a victim of that same oppression), she can never do away with sexism, which always creeps in the background of her life with her father's looming shadow and lasting influence (as we'll see, she reenacts it). By hating and getting rid of a fellow woman, who was victimized into enforcing the status quo of male domination, she misses her real targets - her real oppressors - and doesn't manage to break free. SEE THIS IS FUCKING GENIUS!!!!!! She even burns down the Maki household as a showy act of defiance, but this ultimately changes nothing.
And the fact that Tohru has been so WOKE (positive term) massively surprises me??? This is a very welcome surprise. Tazuru's backstory is not just a (well-written) sad boohoo anime backstory for the sake of having one, but a piece on how mother-daughter relationships, and female friendship/mentorship in general, get turned by patriarchy into a procession and relay race where physical and emotional pain and burdens are passed on; and Sae and Tazuru's rivalry can be read as a case of women being pitted against each other by their oppressors. I feel like this sort of stuff will... SHOULD!!... be addressed more and again, as we OBVIOUSLY get more insight into the history and workings of the Nazo corp/Maki family and previous generations of Saes. It's sort of inevitable to avoid addressing women's issues, when the entire existence of the Nazo corp relies on exploiting a woman (Sae), and the Nazo corp is the Big Enemy, the DEEPEST ELEMENT OF THE STORY, THE BACKGROUND UPON WHICH EVERYTHING ELSE MOVES, SO IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE WE GET OTHER DEEP STUFF........ RIGHT????? Because seriously no matter how much Tohru tries to divert attention onto goofy ahh side characters, the backdrop of the entire series is the Nazo corporation along with the Maki family, so addressing it is inevitable and will inevitably warrant some serious discussions, above the usual psycho yuri (not complaining). So I'm fucking WAITING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Overall it's a very good volume, Tohru hasn't stopped delivering... yet.
Fav parts: take a guess it's not that hard...
Awards: made me really sad
Verdict:10/10
Volume tenGirl let me be honest I... have historically considered volume 10 to be a Classic (albeit the last Classic, because from volume 11 onwards the series takes a nosedive in quality, as you will see if you choose to follow me in this wonderful adventure). There surely are reasons why I used to think that, but, in hindsight, rereading this after knowing how bad the series is as of late, I can see in this volume the germ of everything that's wrong with modern Sae-ism.
What I hate about modern Sae-ism: boredom. Repetitiveness. Occasional extreme, out-of-context absurdity. Overly polished, soulless artstyle. Meaningless Misao torture porn. Well-beloved, established characters getting turned into background props or getting killed off. Very interesting things being there but not being expanded upon. Most of these things are in volume 10, to a much lesser extent than they are present in later volumes, but you can definitely see where they started...
"Misao torture porn" is LITERAL like half of this volume is Misao being strapped (I wish this sentence would end here) (28/07/25 future cellula here rereading this after volume 16: be careful what you wish for) to the Maki family's iconic heirloom torture chair, which is honestly too on-the-nose for me. Sae-ism being "too much" is one of its core characteristics and the one that makes me love it so dearly, but, incredibly, even Sae-ism can be too "too much". Like after 30 pages it gets so fucking corny. And also it makes no sense because Sae wants Misao in prime physical condition so that they'll be able to fuck (look I didn't understand this either the explanation is... complicated) so why would she torture her, it's counterproductive. Though I guess it goes to show that Sae the tenth's approach towards violence is different from Sae the ninth's in that she uses it for "educational" purposes in what she thinks are the appropriate contexts instead of beating people up and ripping shit apart all the time just because she's pissed off okay but can we be a little less edgy about it?? Jeez. This is the bad kind of edgy, the kind that takes itself too seriously, it's like a Sonic the Hedgehog angst fanfiction from the 2010s (my sister used to force me to read them when we were kids don't ask me anything about it).
For what feels like fifty pages there is also a random ass old man's account of seeing the Saes buy wood planks... okay???? I DON'T CAARRRREEEEEE she has a truck omg that's soooo cool can we talk about anything else? Half the time it seems like the volume doesn't know what it wants to do, one minute it fills literal pages with NOTHINGNESS, and the next it wants to turn up the volume but it ends up sounding like earrape. Just.... I don't know, maybe it's because I'm rereading it after experiencing the slop that modern Sae-ism has become, so I see things with a more critical eye. When I first read this volume I actually liked it, so maybe I've just become jaded, but right now I can definitely see the start of some big issues here. I can also see the characters and their dialogues becoming more and more one-dimensional, and also the artstyle holy shit I hate this fucking artstyle. I think that by this volume Tohru had fully switched from analog to digital drawing and THAT'S THE PROBLEM. It looks... over-polished and sterile and disgusting... like it'd fall on you and just slide over your skin with no friction... while the analog art was GRITTY it was grey and rough like asphalt and you could feel the warmth radiating off of it like a road on a hot day and like the heart of daddy TOHRU putting his whole soul into the pen..... This is soulless like Corporate Memphis. It isn't the most important issue but I still feel it. NOOOO NOOOOO SAE-ISM IS NOT MODERN NOOOOOO IT'S SOMETHING YOU'D FIND YEARS AFTER MOVING OUT IN A BOX AT YOUR PARENT'S HOUSE NEXT TO T.A.T.U AND PLACEBO CDS, IT'S SOMETHING YOU'D FIND IN THE WORST BOOKSTORE OF THE CITY WHEN IT'S POURING OUTSIDE AND THE OWNER OF THE PLACE IS IN THE BACK SMOKING, SAE-ISM IS A WORD SPRUNG FROM THE DARK RASPY THROAT OF THE SPHYNX OF TIME HERSELF AND SAFEKEPT ONLY BY EDGY PRETENTIOUS GAY TEENAGERS AND SELLERS OF THE WORST MANGA SLOP YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE IT'S NOT FUCKING MODERN IT DOESN'T FUCKING LOOK LIKE... this. I don't like it at all
It isn't all bad though 💖💖💖💖 iconicness ensues because SLEEPYHEAD SAE IS BACK AFTER SEVEN FUCKING VOLUMES I came on the spot when I saw her. I think that Tohru could put her in any situation, even now that Sae-ism is past the point of no return in regards to shittiness, literally doing anything, and I would still cheer like a neapolitan ultra when he sees a Maradona memorial video. Go and break shit queen. The other best thing about this volume is Madoka going off the deep end and going against Sae, and dying of course. No I'm not saying I'm happy she died I LOVED HER I WAS FUCKING SAD WHEN IT HAPPENED it's just that her arc couldn't have ended any other way, with all that she did to Misao and that she couldn't atone for except with her death. Madoka... you were a piece of shit but you were my girl & I'll miss you. One thing that's regrettable though, is that her backstory was never really explained?? In these volumes we got the confirmation that her parents neglected her, but it's literally said in one panel and never expanded upon. Why????? And this is another of the problems that will become worse and worse as the series progresses past this point, but I think that here is when it actually pissed me off the most. It's MADOKA!!!! She's important we gotta know things about her. You can't just drop the "uhhh like family issues and shit" justification for part of her hostility towards Misao, you have to explain??? Ugh. Bring her back to life and let her explain herself.
I think Madoka is the last spark of brilliance, character-wise, to ever grace this series. One of my worst grievances with modern Sae-ism, as I've mentioned earlier, is that old lovable characters become flat background props and instead new characters are introduced that are about as endearing as a pilonidal cyst. I'm not saying I'm happy she died, not at all, but maybe it's better this way because she didn't have to endure that treatment. Madoka is the last good character introduced in Sae-ism, with the exception of Tendo but, spoiler alert, he fucking dies, and WAY TOO SOON at that (but we'll get to it later). The manga's irreversible decline starts next volume, just after her death..... you tell me if that's coincidence or not. Without our girl to ward off misfortune and evil spirits from Tohru's intellectual property, disaster will soon ensue...
Fav parts: sleepyhead Sae comeback goooo girl
Awards: last good Sae-ism volume.
Verdict: 7/10? kinda
Goodbye, Sae-ism.
