Sayla Mass

Sayla Mass
Mobile Suit Gundam character
File:Sayla Mass happy.jpg Sayla Mass, as seen in Mobile Suit Gundam
First appearance	Episode 1, Gundam Rising (MSG)
Last appearance	Episode 47, Warrior, Again... (MSG-ZZ)
Created by	Yoshiyuki Tomino
In-universe information
Alias	Artesia Som Deikun (real name)
Relatives	Zeon Zum Deikun (father, deceased) Char Aznable (brother)
Nationality	Republic of Zeon

Sayla Mass (セイラ・マス, Seira Masu) is a fictional character from the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam. At the beginning of the Mobile Suit Gundam TV series, Sayla is a civilian of Side 7, who comes abroad the mobile suit carrier White Base along with other civilians like Amuro Ray, Fraw Bow, Hayato Kobayashi, Kai Shiden and Mirai Yashima. Sayla is a Newtype much like her brother Char Aznable.

Aboard White Base

Originally a medical student on Side 7, Sayla is almost immediately recruited as an enlisted soldier, and set to the task of watching over the civilian refugees. With the near total lack of experienced personnels to defend White Base (most original regular officers were KIA in Zeon's Side 7 attack), Bright Noa assigns Sayla to the multiple positions of communications officer, medical officer, navigator, and finally combat pilot.

Soon after joining the ship, she begins to repeatedly look for her brother Casval, and takes every opportunity to learn information about him and make contact. When Bright picks up a suspicious briefcase (later revealed to be full of gold bars) intended for Sayla, he confronted her and she admits that her true identity is Artesia Som Deikun, sister to Casval Rem Deikun (better known as Char Aznable), and the only daughter of Zeon Zum Deikun, the founder of the Republic of Zeon.

Relationship With Amuro

At the beginning of the series, Sayla and Amuro share little common screen time, as Amuro is nominally paired with Fraw, and later develops a crush on Lt. Matilda Ajan. But during a battle against Ramba Ral, Sayla steals the Gundam in order to make contact with Char, and is heavily battered in combat against Ramba's troops. Reaching the battle area in time with Guncannon, Amuro immediately rescues her from the assault. Though Sayla is disciplined for the incident, Bright and Mirai both recognize Sayla's latent abilities and she is assigned as Amuro's co-pilot with G-Fighters (Corebooster in the movie). This pairing affords the two time to interact alone and learn to trust one another. Despite other male characters' attempts to make advances upon Sayla (such as the playboyish Sleggar Law), she seems to confide in Amuro, and the two grow very close emotionally.

During the battle at Solomon space, Sayla sensed her brother's presence and interfered in Char and Amuro's duel, and was almost killed by her unknowing brother. This indirectly resulted in Lalah Sune's death.

During the battle of A Baoa Qu at the end of the original series, Sayla finds Char and Amuro dueling in a fierce sword fight. Worried over the safety of both of them, she breaks the two apart. A series of explosions then separates the three of them. Sayla returns to Char, who wishes to find and kill Amuro. But upon seeing the pain in her eyes over his attacking Amuro, Char asks Sayla to leave the battlefield and go to the young pilot. Sayla (through Amuro's telepathic guidance) escapes A Baoa Qu and is reunited with the White Base crew. But to her horror she finds Amuro missing. Trying to convince herself that he isn't dead, she cries tears of sadness and regret at his apparent loss. Luckily Amuro flies out of A Baoa Qu safe and unharmed. After he ejects from his Core Fighter, it is Sayla who welcomes him back with open arms.

Given the somewhat intimate scenes in the series between Sayla and Amuro, the fact that Fraw is soon to be married to Hayato, and that in the novel series (penned by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino) Sayla and Amuro are romantically and sexually involved, Sayla may have originally been intended to be Amuro's soulmate and future girlfriend/wife. However, this was not to be so. In the novelization, Amuro is killed while battling Char out in space, and Sayla accused Char of killing "her most beloved person". And in subsequent Gundam series, Amuro is paired with other leading women, effectively reducing Sayla to secondary character status, generally because either the story didn't involve Amuro as in ZZ Gundam or because You Inoue was unavailable as with Zeta Gundam or ultimately because of Inoue's untimely death in 2003.

Follow-up Appearances

Because of her voice actress You Inoue being on safari in Africa while Zeta Gundam was produced, Sayla only appeared in non-speaking cameos in this series. Amuro Ray was then paired to be romantically involved with fellow Karaba officer Beltorchika Irma, but a conversation between Amuro and Fraw Bow indicates that Amuro and Sayla had spent some time together after the One Year War. Fraw even urges Amuro to consider proposing marriage to Sayla, but Amuro does not act upon this advice. Sayla was later shown sitting outside a beachside villa in Episode 37, quietly listening to Char's Dakar speech on the news.

Sayla's silent cameo does not happen in the Zeta Gundam compilation movies, as Karaba's seizing of the Federation assembly and Char's Dakar speech is removed from the script. However, at the end of the movie, Sayla is seen relaxing on a leisure chair in her bathing suit, watching news updates and conversing with Kai. The voicing is stock footage, due to You Inoue's death due to lung cancer in 2003, thus explaining why her role was not expanded.

In Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam, Sayla showed up mid-way through the series with Judau Ashta's (presumed dead) younger sister, Leina. Within the last 3 episodes, she appears again, bringing Leina to see Bright Noa, where she passes him a letter from his family. She also asks Bright whether he's heard of Char, and commented that Char has distorted their father's ideal, implying Char's future action in the Second Neo-Zeon War. She later took Leina to a lunar spaceport to reunite with Judau, who was to join the Jupiter Energy Fleet.

Finally, in Char's Counterattack, Sayla doesn't make a single appearance. However in a flashback of the One Year War, Char comments that if his sister hadn't been there when he was fighting Amuro in space, Lalah Sune may have not been killed. Char also kept a family photo of him and Sayla, which he often looked at in his private times.

Trivia

• In the manga/anime Great Teacher Onizuka, Urumi Kanzaki is called "Sayla Mass" by the Gundam otaku due to her fair complexion and blonde hair. However, Urumi and Sayla are near opposites in personality.
• In the Playstation strategy game Gihren's Greed: Blood of Zeon, an alternate scenario involving the Anti Earth Union Group features a playable regiment including surviving members of White Base, as well as Sayla. If the unit she is deployed in joins with Amuro's, there is a dialogue between the two which serves as a subtle reference to what Sayla might have been thinking about during the events of Zeta Gundam and onward, requesting Amuro that if her brother (Char, now Quattro) ever tried to do anything dangerous, she pleads for Amuro to kill him, because she knows her brother to be a dangerous man. On the other hand, if she were to encounter her brother, she begs for him not to do anything reckless, despite his objections to her fighting the war.(This dialogue is similar to a conversation that Amuro and Sayla have in the second volume of the original book, penned by Yoshiyuki Tomino. After they make love, Sayla asks Amuro to kill Char, and Amuro tells her that her request is unthinkable. The two then agree to drop the subject, and they go to sleep.)