"No tears, now... remember this. A person will experience two deaths. The first is when their soul leaves their body, and the second is when the memories of that person fade from everyone's hearts. As long as you keep me in your heart, I'll be with you forever."
Sayoko Robbins, née Kitazato (キタザト), is Ashley's mother and Richard's wife. She was an aspiring scientist who worked on Another. Sayoko was the victim of a tragic incident when Ashley was only three years old in 1994.
Background[]
Sayoko was born and raised in Japan at a quiet village with her family. During her teenage years, she moved to America to become a scientist which is a profession she was passionate about. While living there, Sayoko worked at M.J. Labs, a company made for Judd Fitzgerald. According to Ryan Gray, Sayoko did scientific research at the age of 16 and met him at this age as well. Ryan even said that she was already a scientist when she was 18.
It is unclear where she first met Richard, it was either at a café (mentioned in the European (English) version of Another Code: Two Memories) or in M.J. Labs (stated in the Japanese Another Code: R website). However, she had met Bill and Rex Alfred while at M.J. Labs. Sayoko was considered by Judd to be one of his successors, and she developed the True Another System (TAS). She left an audio message for an older Ashley to listen to someday. Sayoko was one of the few people who knew Ryan was secretly Judd's son.
She also spent time with Richard, despite his awkwardness. They gradually formed a intimate relationship and the two of them went on dates. She even mentioned he showed her the blue sky and green trees, when all she had known was grey offices. He also showed her how amazing it was to love, and to be loved. Richard eventually proposed to Sayoko at Lake Juliet and the two of them traveled to Haneda, Japan (a district in Ōta, Tokyo) to inform her parents about their marriage. She felt nervous and was occupied with thoughts of what she'd say to them. He held her hand and talked about her hometown in an attempt to calm her nerves. The couple possibly got their blessing from her parents afterwards. Richard and Sayoko soon had their said marriage.
Afterwards, she gave birth to Ashley around her mid-20s. She also wanted to quit her job and return to her family so she could spend time with Ashley considering that she wanted to dedicate her life to her child. She went to Lake Juliet to tell her boss, Judd, she was leaving. He was displeased when he heard this and he thought that favoring family over research was a waste of her brilliance. To leave, she had to make a deal with him which involved giving up six years worth of memories of developing Another (from 1988 to the end of 1993), and so she entered Another 0. When she came out, she was slightly dazed and tears fell out of her eyes, remarking she felt like she lost something very important; not her memories of a scientist but her memories of being a mother.
She was later given some of those memories back by Rex Alfred using mnemonic fluid (liquid memory in Another Code: Recollection), in front of the clock tower, specifically ones about Ashley's birth. She and Richard eventually hid the research on Another in their house (due to the feeling that it would fall into the wrong hands and be used for evil), also feeling that Another wasn't just hers or Richard's. In order to stop Another from completion, Sayoko lied by claiming there was a false report that there was an error in the Another theory. They presumably chose to live in a then forever home in the suburbs of Seattle and looked after their daughter. Sayoko seemingly took care of the home when her husband was at work as well.
On Ashley's third birthday in 1994, Sayoko came back from Lake Juliet with her daughter. The presents and cake were prepared and she was presumably waiting for her husband to arrive home to celebrate too. However, upon hearing sudden footsteps, she hid Ashley in the closet for safety, placed her pendant inside and told her daughter to be quiet as a mouse. Then, Bill entered the room and demanded Sayoko to give him the research on Another. When she refused, he shot her for ignoring his pleas then fled without getting caught. Richard came in and found her laying on the floor with blood on her chest. Still alive, she told him to protect Another before passing on.
Richard encouraged Jessica to lie to Ashley about him and Sayoko; she was misled to believe that both of her parents were killed in a car crash when she was three.
Another Code: Two Memories[]
Throughout the game, Sayoko is occasionally discussed and Ashley is not entirely certain if her mother is alive or not, but clings onto the hope that she is. However, Ashley gets a horrible mood whiplash upon finding a newspaper from the 1990s mentioning not only that her mother is deceased, but that her father was a suspect in her death. The shock of the discovery emotionally devastates Ashley so much that she considers quitting everything and going home (but this discovery didn't make Ashley want to go home in Another Code: Recollection).
Richard eventually finds out that Bill murdered Sayoko when he and Ashley were in the cave talking with him while at Blood Edward Island. In the ending, Ashley has a brief vision of her smiling mother in the night sky (however, Ashley doesn't have this vision in the remake).
Another Code: R - A Journey into Lost Memories[]
Ashley visits Lake Juliet and recovers memories of her time with Sayoko at the lake.
Near the end of the game, Ashley discovers Ryan Gray manipulated Bill to kill Sayoko.
Another Code: Recollection[]
In the remake, Ryan attempts to revive Sayoko within Ashley's body by using the ANOTHER prototype to rewrite Ashley's memories with Sayoko's, so he can interact with her again. While Ashley is unconscious and connected to the ANOTHER, she encounters a memory backup of her mother's consciousness. Sayoko who knows that this attempt is unjust, tells Ashley that her RAS will protect her from Ryan's experiment. Sayoko then informed her that she implemented a secret built-in function. This function is shown to prevent select memories from being rewritten and thus stopping Sayoko's resurrection.
Sayoko's message to Ashley (Another Code: R; Wii version)[]
- Ashley... Let me say your name again...
- Ashley. My sweet daughter.
- Ashley, do you recognize my voice? It's your mother.
- If you're hearing this message through the TAS,
- it means that I'm not with you any more.
- Ashley, please listen to me. Let me explain why I created the TAS,
- and why I left you this message.
- Before you were born, I worked at a place called MJ Labs.
- And I was on a team assigned to a project called the EC Project.
- We were researching human memory. The director of MJ Labs was
- a great scientist called Judd Fitzgerald. I became his assistant
- and learned so much from him...
- I discovered what it really means to study memory.
- While I was at MJ Labs, I developed a number of theories,
- and created several prototype units.
- One of my theses was on a memory control unit called Another.
- Ashley, what do you know about memory control?
- A person's memory is their own creation, holding both past and present data.
- Good things and bad, joy and sorrow, these are all stored in this memory data.
- As the person lives on, these memories become the foundation
- of their decisions and choices.
- Another is a unit that allows total control over memory.
- It can implant false memories into human subjects.
- I wanted it to be used on victims of traumatic events, to heal their pain.
- There are so many people in this world with terrible memories that they can't escape.
- They live only in the past and cannot conceive of any future. Another was meant for them.
- But some people wanted to use Another for very different reasons.
- They wanted to use it to mold people's minds as they pleased.
- They wanted to create their own brand of human being.
- I knew that if this happened, Another would become a terrible weapon.
- So even as I worked on my thesis for Another,
- I implanted a security system in the control unit
- that had been developed based on my theories.
- And I created this device to unlock the function described in my thesis.
- I called it the TAS, short for True Another System.
- Then I coded it so that only you could use it
- and left it in the materials relating to the EC Project...
- in case Another was ever developed and used for the wrong reasons.
- Ashley, when I was a teenager, I knew, without a doubt,
- that I wanted to be a scientist. I left Japan for America,
- and embarked on the path of research.
- The pursuit of knowledge alone made me so happy.
- I wanted to go out and change the world.
- Such an arrogant mindset, on reflection.
- So I think it was fate that brought your father and I together at MJ Labs.
- He was always so awkward at everything, but his heart was in the right place.
- He showed me the blue sky and green trees, when all I had known was grey offices.
- He showed me how amazing it was to love, and to be loved.
- He was the first person to ever show me that.
- And then he gave me the greatest gift of all. You, Ashley.
- You smile when you look up at my face.
- You cry loudly and sleep peacefully in my arms.
- The first time I held you, I made my decision.
- I would dedicate my life to you.
- So to me, the day you were born is the most important day of my whole life.
- I wish this happiness could last forever.
- But there are people who want Sayoko the scientist back.
- They don't want me to live as a mother.
- And as long as they're around, I don't think we can ever truly be at peace.
- I think that's why I decided to leave you this message.
- Ashley, everyone dies two deaths.
- The first is when their soul leaves their body.
- The second is when they no longer live on in people's memories.
- Ashley... do you still remember me?
Trivia[]
- In Ashley's Diary, Ashley mentions she remembers Sayoko wearing a red sweater. However, Sayoko is never seen wearing a red sweater, only white. One disturbing theory is that the image of Ashley seeing her mother's sweater soaked with blood seared into Ashley's mind and made her misremember Sayoko's sweater as being red.
- Another theory is that Sayoko became a ghost somehow, as ghosts canonically exist in the series. Two major pieces of evidence support this; Ashley claims to see a vision of her mother watching over her in the ending of Another Code, while Another Code: R has a photograph of a ghostly Sayoko near Ashley. She may have been able to move on when her two killers, Ryan and Bill were discovered.
- Her maiden name, Kitazato, isn't an actual Japanese surname. It's actually the name of a corporation founded in Japan in 1996, involved in the research, the development and the manufacturing of biotechnological medical devices for assisted reproduction. It's unclear if the developers/localizers were aware of this or if they were trying to make an adult joke.
- Sayoko's interest in memory represents Rika Suzuki's way of storytelling, considering that she even commented: "one thing that is reflected in my work is the idea of memories as a device for moving the story along. One of the things I try to acknowledge is the difference between a recollection and a memory. When my father was very young he lived in Shanghai, and because of the disease he became able to draw very detailed maps of the area, which he couldn't before. That stimulated me to think a lot more about memory".
Gallery[]
Another Code: Two Memories[]
Another Code: R - A Journey into Lost Memories[]
Another Code: Recollection[]
Characters in Another Code series |
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Major characters Major characters |