Ayano Aishi

'Ayano Aishi, also known as Yandere-chan, is the protagonist and the main character of Yandere Simulator''. Her goal in the game is to eliminate 10 rivals who have a special interest in her Senpai.'''

Name
YandereDev wanted her name to include "yan" in it somewhere. He leant towards Ayano because there are fewer Google searches for that name.

Aishi is nicknamed "Yan-chan" by other students (probably by the "yan" in "Ayano" and not because of the "Yandere-chan"), but teachers will refer to her by Ayano's surname or full name.

The name ”Ayano” in Japanese is written as あやの in hiragana (アヤノ in katakana). In kanji, is either 彩乃 or 綾乃, 彩 (aya; colourful), or 綾 (aya; designful; decorative) along with 乃 (no), which is a possessive particle.

Intros

 * Main Article: Intros

First Intro
At the beginning of the first intro, after expressing how disappointed she is with her current love life, Ayano has a dream about her ideal lover 'Senpai' the night before her second year of high school. That morning, she loses track of the time and leaves for school late. She crashes into someone who looks perfectly identical to the person she saw in her dreams. When she sees him, she instantly falls in love with him, concluding to herself that their meeting is fate. She then sees him being scolded by his childhood friend, Osana Najimi, and plans to get rid of her.

Ayano then meets a mysterious girl named Info-chan, who asked by phone to meet her in Classroom 3-3. Info-chan tells her about the panty shot system and asks her to kill others around the school so that her newspaper will sell better. Ayano has serious doubts about this, not wanting to do anything that horrible, but considers the idea after being told that Osana will confess her love for Senpai that Friday. Even so, it will still be up to the player to decide her fate.

This cut scene is no longer in the present game and is outdated. However, as of the August 15th, 2015 Build, there is a visionary scene.

Second Intro
In the second intro, Ayano talks to herself about Senpai, Taro Yamada. She says she had felt no emotions at all until she met him, and now feels envy and rage towards someone who is apparently trying to take him from her. Ayano says she wants to kill this person, and that there is not a single thing she would not do for him.

Info-chan then sends our protagonist a text message, having seen her stalking Senpai. She informs Ayano that the girl's name is Osana Najimi, when she plans to confess to Taro, and about the panty shot system. The two form a client-provider relationship afterwards.

Appearance

 * Main Article: Customization

Ayano Aishi has light skin, medium length black hair that is tied into a high ponytail with a bang swept to the right with two strands of hair reaching her shoulders. She has grey eyes. She is 165 cm tall (5 feet, 4.96 inches), weighs 43.5 kg (95.90 lbs), and has average-sized breasts. She's seen wearing a white and navy blue uniform shirt with a red mini scarf, a matching navy blue skirt, black stockings, and black shoes. Her uniform can be customized. In all uniforms, she wears her signature black stockings. In artwork, she wears thigh-highs. In the future, she may gain a new ponytail which will be very similar to her current hairstyle, but is an original asset. If she has murdered a student, her uniform and the rest of her body will become bloody. When visibly insane, Ayano will become hunched over, twitch erratically, have dilated pupils and the top half of her face will cast a dark shadow.

There used to be an Easter Egg where if she ran behind the Confession Tree located at the back of the school, she would be wearing a red and black version of the default uniform. This, however, was removed, after being reported countless times as a "bug".

There are several other Easter Eggs that alter her appearance, those being 47 Mode, Bad Time Mode, Bancho Mode, Blade Hair Mode, Cirno Mode, Cyborg Mode, DK Mode, Ebola Mode, Falcon Mode, Galo Mode, Hateful Mode, Punch Mode, Huntress Mode, Punished Mode, Slender Mode, Titan Mode, Tornado Mode, Witch Mode, X Mode, Hunger Mode, Medusa Mode, Gazer Mode, Yandere-kun, and Ship Girl Mode. The Easter Eggs that don't alter her appearance are Bad Romance Mode, a mode where a Stand from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure follows the player around, and Spooky Mode, a mode where every female NPC turns into a skeleton.

The player can also change her appearance by altering the streaming assets folder. The player can give her different hairstyles by pressing the H key. The player can give her eye-wear accessories using the P key. They can also give her random miscellaneous accessories using the O key. The < and > keys decrease/increase her bust size.

In the final game, Ayano's hair will not be customizable during gameplay.

When Yandere Vision is active, Ayano's body will be outlined in black, and her eyes will be red.

Description
"Ayano Aishi is the protagonist of Yandere Simulator. She is known as "Yandere-chan" to players of the game, and has been given the cute nickname "Yan-chan" by her classmates.

Since early childhood, Ayano has suffered from an inexplicable, incurable condition. In short, this condition leaves her with a perpetual sense of being empty, hollow, and incomplete. As a result, she has never been able to experience satisfaction, fulfillment, or happiness, and has not been able to experience emotions in the same capacity as other people. As she grew older, she learned to pretend to be a normal person in order to avoid drawing negative attention from others, but was never able to feel any degree of empathy towards other human beings.

On the first day of her second year of high school, Ayano came into physical contact with "Senpai". In that moment, she gained the ability to experience everything that had been missing from her life; she felt complete, she felt fulfilled, she felt powerful emotions. Meeting Senpai was like seeing color for the first time, hearing music for the first time, and feeling warmth for the first time. In his presence, she felt overwhelmed with euphoria...but as soon as they were apart, the feelings of emptiness returned.

Within a very short span of time, she quickly became absolutely addicted to him and came to rely on him in order to feel alive. Then, Ayano saw something horrible...something that terrified her and infuriated her at the same time. It was a young woman who clearly had deep feelings for Senpai. If Senpai entered a relationship with this girl, then Ayano might lose him forever...

Without a moment's hesitation, Ayano knew exactly what had to be done. This girl - her rival - had to be eliminated as soon as possible, by any means necessary, no matter what the cost."

Personality
Ayano is called "Yandere-chan" but still, she can not be considered one, there differences between Ayano and the definition of "Yandere". Yanderes are described as "a character, most often female and in anime, who become violently possessive of a love interest" and are sometimes sweet and kind, but otherwise deranged. It is a portmanteau of the Japanese words "deredere", meaning lovestruck, and "yanderu", sick. Ayano doesn't have feelings -- so she is not lovestruck, nor deranged. She is also capable of nonviolent elimination methods.

She suffers from a fictional type of insanity. Her behavior does not perfectly match the definition of either a sociopath or psychopath, but she is capable of actions that only a psychopath would consider taking.

In the first intro cutscene, Ayano seemed to have feelings, and wasn't such a potential criminal; she was coaxed into it by Info-chan and was apprehensive of the idea of killing another person. She was simply a lovesick schoolgirl who wanted a boyfriend. She didn't even seem to consider killing Osana before Info-chan brought it up. This personality, however, is outdated and is stated by YandereDev himself that it does not correctly characterize her true nature.

In the second intro, Ayano is instead very emotionless, apathetic, and speaks with a deadpan expression. She had been this way since as far back as she could remember, before meeting Taro Yamada, Senpai, for the first time. She would do anything to prevent people from obtaining Senpai, even if it meant killing them; Ayano does not have the ability to feel emotions, empathy, or remorse. She does not feel guilt or shame for harming others. She knows what the general people consider to be "wrong", but she just doesn't care.

Overall, Ayano is a blank slate whose personality is determined by the player's actions and choices, but all players have the capacity to commit each of the possible actions in the game.

Ayano's "hobby" is trying to convince everyone around her that she's just a normal girl with feelings. She buys manga, plays video games, and rides a bike to project the image of a normal girl. However, she does not enjoy any of it. She isn't incredibly talkative by default and will only speak when necessary.

There may be differences between Yandere-kun's and Ayano's characterizations. Yandere-kun would be characterized as sadistic and possessive. His life would be given meaning through his obsession with Senpai. Yandere-kun would view eliminating his rivals as a game, with each rival being an enemy that must be eliminated.

Abilities
At the start of the game, Ayano is very weak, as she has not honed any skills. However, Ayano has a great amount of stamina, as she can run indefinitely and is quicker than other students. She also has the strength to take down a student in one hit and move heavy dumpsters, which can be filled with trash and a corpse, without getting tired.

If Ayano reads enough manga volumes, then she is able to seduce males and females, or become numb enough that her sanity hardly decreases when killing students. She can also take classes to learn how to tranquilize a student, become stronger, run even faster, take down a teacher, and more upcoming abilities when the rest of the classes are implemented. Ayano knows how to torture a student to the breaking point in at least 40 hours.

By the end of the game, she will be extremely strong, as she has unlocked all skills available. Because of this, only a Yandere girl with supernatural powers could defeat her at this point.

Ayano will be able to kill almost any NPC she comes across. However, there may be some exceptions to this. When police are added, she can't kill them, because if they started dying the school would have to be closed.

Like other video game characters, this protagonist currently has an unrealistically large inventory. Although she can only conceal three weapons, she can still simultaneously carry around fifteen manga novels, twelve cassette tapes, a bottle of tranquilizer, an answer sheet, a bottle of poison, Saki Miyu's bra, Ryuto Ippongo's headband, a modified uniform, a pack of cigarettes, her phone, and notes. YandereDev has stated that it's just one of those video game instances where some items take up space and others don't really matter. The player will eventually be able to view her inventory.

She will not have any supernatural powers other than Yandere Vision, but even then her Yandere Vision is essentially just keen senses.

As of the April 15th, 2016 Build, Ayano's giggle now attracts the attention of other students, causing them to follow the noise to its source.

As of the August 15th, 2016 Build, Ayano can now kill teachers. In the same build, YandereDev implemented the "Sanity-based Killing Animation" for her, which allows her to stealth kill students.

As of the March 6th, 2018 Build, she can use a mirror to adopt several different outward personas that will allow her to gain benefits from students she fits in with.

In June 2016, YandereDev pitched the idea of adding Yakuza-style hand-to-hand combat with the rivals in the future and final game, but the idea was scrapped. However, he still thinks that a hand-to-hand combat system could have an appropriate place in Yandere Simulator if the player pursues an elimination method that would result in a one-on-one duel with a rival.

Background
In the original intro cutscene, Info-chan says "So, history is repeating itself, huh? Time to test a theory..." after Ayano rushes to school after running into Taro Yamada, and "I'm sure you could. It's in your blood, after all," after Info-chan asks Ayano to murder a fellow student, suggesting that Info-chan knows about the true nature of Yandere-chan's family. According to Basement Tape #1, our protagonist's mother and grandmother were just like her, without any emotions, as well and kept their obsessions tied to the same chair. When her parents were in high school together, her father was her mother's senpai. Her mother was a murderer girl in school, she killed a girl in 1989. YandereDev explains this in his blog post "Halloween and DLC". Ayano has no siblings.

In fact, the line of the persons with this weird condition goes back very far. YandereDev imagines that Ayano Aishi's great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother wore a bloody kimono and wielded a knife. Most women in Ayano's family want to give birth at a young age, such as 19. Yandere-chan's great-great-great grandmother was born in 1910, 107 years old in-game. It has also been a family tradition for several centuries that when an Aishi woman marries a man, the man adopts the wife's surname. There were likely no males with the "Emotionless Condition" in the family. When a member with that condition is born, there are always slight differences between each generation; they're are not all clones. Their tendencies are not more or less strong either.

It is known that when Ayano was a baby, she never showed much emotion and was an extremely quiet child. While the father was worried, the mother assured him that the baby was fine.

Ayano was an emotionless baby. She was mainly driven by biological impulses, such as crying when hungry. Growing up, she did not enjoy playing with toys. Her father was worried about her, but her mother insisted she was fine.

As a toddler, the little girl did not enjoy the doctor visits; once she realized that "acting normal" would cause her father to stop worrying about her and stop taking her to doctors, she began acting like a normal child. She kept up the act throughout the rest of her childhood. She always found it to be beneficial to pretend to be normal, so she accepted that she would have to keep up an act for her entire life.

When she was young, her mother would subtly teach her skills she would need in the future, such as how to properly clean up blood.

When she started school, Ayano was bullied by other students, however, she only saw it an inconvenience, because she did not have any feelings, so she couldn't feel sadness, anger or fear no matter how much they bullied her. Due to this, she chose to maintain the facade of a normal girl to fit in. However, she always had the desire to feel complete like other children her age. Her mother once told that she would one day meet an individual who would complete her, she thought about it constantly, considering it the only important thing in her life, even considering it her one reason to continue living.

YandereDev has stated that Ayano is a person who has never taken a life or harmed another person before meeting Senpai. For example, Ayano tried to determine if she could experience any kind of enjoyment or sadness. She experimented by killing insects. When she discovered that killing insects brought her no joy nor made her feel guilty, she decided to not experiment on other animals. This backstory was later slightly altered to suggest the possibility of Ayano killing an animal instead of some insects, but this backstory ended with similar results. Thus, Ayano Aishi does not kill for fun.

A few days before the game begins, Ayano meets Taro Yamada and her principles become completely guided by the goal of obtaining him for herself by any means necessary.

Taro Yamada

 * Main Article: Senpai

Before meeting Senpai, Ayano was just drifting through life without any purpose. She only met Senpai a few days before the beginning of the game. She changes because she no longer cares about right or wrong like she did before the encounter.

Before she met Senpai, Ayano only ate to avoid an emaciated appearance, however, after she met him, she experienced a heightened sense of taste, which she uses to try meals that she saw Senpai eating, to feel close to him.

Ayano acts perverted toward Senpai, wanting to go into the Boys' Shower Room to admire him. Even so, what she feels isn't lust, but more like seeing color in a grey world. In fact, it might not even be romantic, since Senpai just seems to give Ayano new sensations.

If she ever accidentally hurt Senpai, she would feel a mixture of depressed emotions. However, she is okay with traumatizing Senpai in order to eliminate a rival.

If Senpai died in an accident or due to a disease, Ayano would fall into a deep, deep depression. She would be in a coma-like state. She would refuse to eat, and would eventually starve to death. Also if Senpai died due to murder, Ayano wouldn't rest until she was 100% sure she had killed Senpai's murderer in the most painful way possible. Then, she would gradually fall into the depression-coma.

Ayano would not object to anything that would make Senpai happy, so long as it isn't another girl. Because of that, Senpai could use her if he wanted. However, if he ever insulted her, she would punish him and might even break him to fit her ideals.

If Ayano ever lost Senpai's love, or if she got rejected by Senpai, YandereDev could imagine her crying over it. If Senpai was ever killed and Ayano knew who did the deed, she would feel a cross between deep hatred and total, hollow emptiness. If Senpai ever committed suicide because of Yandere-chan, she would do the same.

She would love to one day confess to Senpai under the Confession Tree.

She might mind-break him in an ending.

Info-chan

 * Main Article: Info-chan

Ayano's only current ally is Info-chan. They have a strictly professional client-provider relationship.

It's a huge spoiler to say what would happen if Ayano didn't take panty shots nor kill students, which would help Info-chan. YandereDev wants it to influence some events near the end of the story.

Info-chan's attitude towards or beliefs about Ayano may be affected by the player's actions.

Ayano works 100% solo, excluding her co-operation with Info-chan.

Rivals

 * Main Article: Rivals

The rivals will never know that Ayano exists (aside from Megami Saikou) and that they have a competition. She is seemingly fine with eliminating them so long as she gets her crush.

Ayano believes herself more worthy of Senpai's love than the rivals because when she saw Osana Najimi, she believed that Osana could never love Senpai as she can.

Ryoba Aishi

 * Main Article: Ryoba Aishi

Ayano is indifferent to both her parents. She believes that her mother is a kind, pure, warm, gentle, and innocent lady. Ayano's mother loves her daughter dearly because Ayano is the physical manifestation of the love between herself and her husband. Ryoba knows about her daughter's nonexistent emotions, and heeds it no mind. She told her daughter that someone would complete her one day.

If she saw Ayano in a relationship, she would be happy to see her daughter had found love.

Yandere-chan's Father

 * Main Article: Yandere-chan's Father

Ayano is indifferent to both her parents. Her father has suspicions about Ayano but does not know her true nature. When Ayano noticed that her father was worried about her, she started pretending to be normal. Afterwards, there was no longer a reason for her father to worry about her. Ayano's father eventually realized she was faking her normality but kept it to himself. She started to pity her father during this time.

Aishi Family

 * Main Article: Aishi Family

Her family is not very close, as once the women have found a male they don't usually spend time with others. Ayano may not have even met most of her relatives. No one is on bad terms.

Students

 * Main Article: Students

If a student sees Ayano murder too many times, they will see her as a villain that needs to be defeated. They will continue to go to school in an attempt to catch Ayano in the middle of a crime so that she can finally go to jail.

Ayano seemingly doesn't care about the fates of the students and will get rid of them if they get in the way.

Students will not develop crushes on her. Hypothetically, if a boy developed a crush on Yandere-chan, she would not be affected. She would reject him while trying to "stay in character". On the outside, she would act like a shy schoolgirl who cannot accept the boy's feelings. On the inside, however, she would think of the boy as an insect who needs to be swatted.

If Ayano becomes very popular, it's possible that in the future, students will stalk her, thus making it difficult to murder without witnesses.

If she had to pick some classmates to be her friends in order to be "normal", she wouldn't make friends with popular girls in order to not be noticed by too many people. On the other hand, she wouldn't want to become an outcast either, so she wouldn't make friends with delinquents or outcasts. She would make friends with the "in-between": girls who aren't popular, aren't bullied, aren't outcasts. In other words, she would become friends with normal, plain students and/or wallflowers.

According to YandereDev, Ayano's motivations for befriending students are purely manipulative. She most likely has never had any real friends.

YandereDev is considering having Ayano be able to join a group of delinquents, an idea that he wanted since way back in 2014.

Trivia

 * Ayano's birthday is April 1st. This makes her an Aries.
 * Michaela Laws is the current voice actress for Yandere-chan. YandereDev stated that one of the voice actress' games was called "Seduce Me".
 * Ayano's last name, Aishi, is a play on words. "Ai (愛)"means love and "Shi (死)" means death.
 * Ayano's model, Aoi Kiryu, can be bought in the Unity Asset store.
 * Ayano will eventually share the same base model as other female NPCs.
 * Motoba Kirie from the manga and anime "Himouto! Umaru-chan" reminds YandereDev of her.
 * After meeting Senpai and finding something to protect, she may play Hitman as a "virtual training tool."
 * Ayano has no preferred tastes regarding food, but if she was asked to name her "favorite" food, she would name Senpai's favorite food, because any food that brings Senpai happiness is a food she appreciates.
 * On that note, Ayano's favorite color is the color that Senpai enjoys the most. However, her signature color is black.
 * Ayano has never sung a song outside of school anthems.
 * If Ayano and Senpai grew old and Senpai died first, Ayano would kill herself.
 * If Ayano is 17 years old and she appears nude, the game suddenly becomes a bit more lewd. Therefore, everyone's age is "????".
 * If Ayano had a cat and learned that Senpai was allergic to cats, she would kill the cat immediately.
 * YandereDev has imagined that there are very few circumstances where Ayano might be murdered, but the chances are very slim.
 * Ayano would most likely never become a club leader.
 * Ayano would most likely never deface the Confession Tree, as she would love to confess to Senpai underneath it one day.
 * YandereDev thinks she should eventually be able to swim and drown students in the swimming pool.
 * YandereDev may implement hallucinations if her sanity is at a low enough level.
 * Yandere-chan was not meant to resemble Yuno Gasai from Mirai Nikki.
 * Ayano doesn't see the point of fighting students non-lethally, (besides the delinquents) because they will just report her to the teachers.
 * Ayano appears as a guest character in the video game Crush Crush.
 * YandereDev thinks that if she had a time machine, she'd go back to her first year and try romancing Senpai 'normally', fixing any mistakes she made.
 * Ayano would not sacrifice Senpai if it was between him and her parents.

Quotes