Some thoughts on the Roselia Valentine event
Warning - this post is somewhat ranty. I have to done my best to keep my tone moderate, but if you don't want to have the event spoiled or your perspective pre-emptively skewed by mine then please stop here and wait until you've read the event yourself.
So the event has released on bestdori and because I was too excited to help myself, I ended up reading it. I had some fairly reasonable and warranted expectations from this event, to be honest. It's been over 5.5 years since Sayo and Lisa were last a focus together (if you can even call NR:BF that). Sayo and Lisa's relationship has been deliberately and systemically neglected (if not outright undermined) since 2021. Yet Sayo and Lisa also have one of the closest relationships out of any two characters in Bandori (despite not knowing each other beforehand) and have been a major part of each other's growth. This is essentially a perfect opportunity to make up for all the poor decisions and give Sayo and Lisa's relationship a bit of TLC and the celebration it deserves. So I expect to see a good proportion of tender moments between the two of them, and I want to see some kind forward movement in how they see and value each other. Maybe even some acknowledgement of the strong feelings they hold for each other, as it's a Valentine event.
I thought "there's no possible way they can screw this up, it's a slamdunk opportunity to progress Sayo and Lisa's relationship after years of virtually nothing".
Boy, was I wrong.
Like many Roselia events, the story itself isn't actually bad. It's cute and wholesome, the thought and concept is good and makes sense. Appraised holistically, the writing is generally good and the narrative is carried out mostly well. Roselia want to make sweets for Valentine's Day to give to the people that have always helped them, which is a typical enough concept. But... Sayo and Lisa are the max rarities, so I assumed they would have something significant. Spoilers below because I'm going to talk a bit about the details of the event.
The event is generally very good. Roselia go shopping for supplies because they plan to bake muffins as a group and decorate them with little chocolate bars. Sayo and Lisa fawn over all the cooking supplies etc and it's generally very wholesome. When they get to Lisa's house, they start baking. And this is where I first started getting miffed. Sayo and Lisa are the most experienced members in terms of baking, so they decide to split up and have Sayo help Yukina, while Lisa helps the other two. Sounds pretty reasonable in theory, but it's once again explicitly going out of its way to separate Sayo and Lisa, meaning that they can hardly interact for about 1-2 chapters of the 7 story chapters (though they generally don't get much direct interaction when the whole of Roselia is there anyway). Not exactly what I was hoping for from a SayoLisa event. The group then plays a special NFO card game that Ako sneakily bought, which was pretty cool, but then I realised that this event is entirely band-based up to Chapter 5. It's hardly a SayoLisa event at all, it's just Roselia. This isn't that uncommon when it comes to Roselia, but there are absolutely some Roselia events that go out of their way to isolate the high-rarity members and make the event explicitly about them. Such as the Yukina and Ako event where they get lost, or the Yukina and Lisa event last year.
This changed (sort of?) during the penultimate chapter, which is the part we see in Lisa's card art. Sayo helps Lisa to wash the dishes after everyone has finished cooking. But it suffers from a serious flaw that has been happening consistently to Sayo's story for far too long now.
Nothing. Actually. Happens.
Sayo and Lisa talk primarily about supporting the band, Lisa's struggles in the previous events, and Lisa talking about Yukina and how the others were helpful. Sayo praises Lisa for bouncing back and comments on how grateful she seems to be. The scene then ends with Sayo at home pondering about what she should tell Lisa, lamenting that it's so hard for her to convey her true feelings to Lisa, and regretting not doing more to help her.
This is where I start to get very irritated. This is what I would describe as a wheelspin moment, or maybe even a regressive piece of storytelling. Sayo has done this song and dance already. She has already gotten over her ability to convey her feelings to Lisa, because of how effusive and genuine she has been in her praise and gratitude to Lisa (multiple times) after all the help Lisa provided when Sayo was trying to reconnect with Hina. This is not a progressive moment in their story. Additionally, the writers are the ones who screwed the story by making Sayo vanish into nowhere during the last two years of Roselia story. They chose to make Sayo not help Lisa despite the extreme disparity between that behaviour and her previous development. They have made an entirely artificial, arbitrary, and incongruent piece of storytelling that is jarringly out of character for Sayo, by making her suddenly not support Lisa adequately, and now they are suddenly making Sayo feel guilty over this somehow inexplicable inability to do something she has already done in the past? Sayo has been more than supportive for both Yukina and Rinko. Lisa should not have been any different, Sayo is closer to Lisa.
Why is this so bad? Because in the final chapter the feelings that Sayo is struggling so hard to communicate to Lisa is that she's grateful for the example that Lisa has provided for her, and that she wants to be someone that can support and be there for the other members of the band when they stumble. And that's... kind of it. Lisa thanks Sayo fairly plainly, and the event ends.
I'm sorry, but... what? What year is this? 2019? Why are the writers suddenly acting as if Sayo hasn't been going out of her way to support the rest of her band for years already? Yukina in Neo Aspect and beyond? Rinko since Blossoming in Largo (this is especially egregious because Sayo asked Lisa herself about supporting Rinko, so she already acknowledged Lisa as a role model to help others by this point)? Lisa during Noble Rose? Why are they acting like this is some kind of revelation that Sayo didn't already begin formulating when Lisa was unable to join practice that one time? You know, back in 2017.
This isn't a revelation. It isn't even progress. This is an old and finished narrative being rehashed into something supposedly new, while pretending like it means something. It does not. As a Sayo and Lisa fan, I did not feel 'seen' by the writing in this story. I did not feel like my support and appreciation for their past relationship was validated or rewarded. This feels like an event where Sayo and Lisa are made an obligatory 'pair' by chance, or because it has been so long since they were last the event pair, and the event story was lazily cobbled together with that in mind. No thought has been given to what actually transpired between the two prior to the Orpheus storyline. The writing here is extremely weak and I expected far better.
Oh and if you're wondering what happens in Sayo's card story, she visits Tsugumi and Tsukushi to give them Valentine gifts. Yes, that's right, the 'people who have helped' Sayo are the cafe crew, apparently. Not Hina or anyone else. They aren't important enough to get a mention. Sayo doesn't even think about or mention Hina once in the entire event, despite it being about thanking those who have helped her. Ako gets to talk to Tomoe in her card story though :) (it's almost like the writers are doing it on purpose). So essentially, they managed to miss every single possible victory and took every worst possible decision.
My hopes/standards were set at a reasonable level, personally speaking, and my expectations were... somewhat low considering the current trajectory laid out by the writers, but... holy fuck. It's basically just more of the same. A great Roselia event, and an empty Sayo event. An event where Sayo is not given any kind of meaningful development in terms of her character, because it reuses already finished narratives, and no progress is made in any of her relationships at all whatsoever while her main narrative partner (Hina) is once again completely absent despite having a legitimate connection to the theme.
Don't get me wrong, I think the event can definitely be enjoyed from the perspective of the girls having a great time and Sayo getting to relax etc., and if you don't care much about the overarching storyline then it serves it purpose. But I think most of us fans, particularly those who like Sayo and Lisa's story, were expecting something substantially more significant. Considering the kind of strings the writers are willing to pull for other relationships, it is really quite disgraceful to see Sayo's relationships and story be squandered for no reason.
I get the feeling more now than ever that the current writers do not have any sort of familiarity with Sayo's story and do not know how to progress it forward. Which is frightening considering how keeping a record of these narrative points should be pretty standard for professional storytellers. But it's getting to the point where I'm not even sure if I want them to make another Hikawa Twin event. I don't trust them to not implode that storyline. I don't trust them to do something like removing Lisa as the de facto wingman and sticking Tsugumi in there for no reason instead. I don't trust them to not have Sayo mull over another already-solved mental roadblock just for the sake of kicking the can down the road for the next 4+ years and pretending like that's progress. I just don't trust them to not undermine all the effort, progress, and hard work that went into their story up to 2021. I would rather they never make another Hikawa event again, than release something as bad as their current quality level. Simply put, it makes me care less and less about the story, which was supposed to be one of Bandori's strengths. And yet, they cannot seem to claim these extremely easy victories by just telling Sayo's story properly.
Most of all, I don't really understand how this so difficult, haha. These really aren't complex storylines to navigate. They do not require deep and arcane knowledge of the Bandori archives or something like that. This is something that anyone familiar with the Roselia stories can recognise. The writers have shown that they are willing to do gratuitous and emphatic stories for other relationships. Yukina and Lisa just got one last summer. It really should not be this challenging to do the same for Sayo and her important relationships.
I should probably stop here before it gets any worse. The TLDR is that the story is overall good from a Roselia perspective, and bad from a Sayo perspective. It reuses an old narrative and pretends like it makes progress, but is in actuality ignoring a significant amount of previous storytelling and is wheelspinning Sayo's progression once again. Sayo and Lisa barely talk about each other and spend most of their short time together thinking of others or discussing the Orpheus situation. Hina is entirely absent despite fitting the criteria of being someone that helped Sayo, while Tsugumi is forced in despite not really meeting that criteria (certainly not in comparison to others) and already getting her disastrous Valentine moment a few years ago. I would say this is a status quo event. Nothing meaningful happens for Sayo, again, and the current drought of development and progress is maintained. It's fun to read and finally see Sayo and Lisa being allowed to talk each other more substantially again, but does not live up to the narrative-level expectations warranted by their fans after years of story neglect. Now we will likely have to wait years for another Sayo and Lisa event, with no guarantee it will be any better.
2025 is not off to a good start for Sayo, it seems. And I'm starting to doubt if things will ever get better from here. I don't know. I really thought we would get something, anything, from this event. I guess I just hoped for more.