(Touhou 9) Dark blue eyes, silver hair, has a long braid on each side of the face, carries many knives. Wears a pink and dark blue French maid's outfit with long sleeves, and a white bonnet on her head. The Roman numerals for 1 through 12 line the bottom of her apron.
(Touhou 9, alternative outfit) Same as above, but her outfit is mainly dark red instead of dark blue.
(Touhou 7.5, 8, 10.5) Same as Touhou 9 outfit, except her apron has no text and is wearing short sleeves.
(Touhou 7.5 and 10.5, alternative outfit) Same as above, but her outfit is mainly light blue with a white apron and her hair is light green.
(Touhou 7) Same as Touhou 9 outfit, except her apron has no text and is wearing blue colored long sleeves and a red scarf.
(Touhou 6) Same as Touhou 9 outfit, except she had bright red eyes, short sleeves, and the phrase "Red Magic" embroidered on her left sleeve.
Easily one of the most enigmatic characters, despite appearing in so many games, Sakuya is the Chief Maid at the Scarlet Devil Mansion. She works for her mistress, Remilia Scarlet, and is apparently the only human working at or living within the mansion. She has the power to stop time. She is known to then place knives in midair and resume time to allow these knives to fly towards her targets. Stopping time is also a handy way of doing large amounts of maid work in a short time. Because nearly everyone living or working at the mansion are maids, being the chief of them all means there are few people there with more authority within the mansion than Sakuya.
During Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Sakuya attempts to prevent the heroine from reaching her mistress to whom she is very loyal, but fails. Later, during Perfect Cherry Blossom, Sakuya is able to show more of her true character, even if her main reason for trying to solve the problem is that the delayed Spring will affect her too.
Fun Facts
The characters for Izayoi literally mean "Sixteenth night" (after the new moon - i.e., the night of the full moon), and Sakuya "Blossoming night."
Sakuya Izayoi is apparently not her real name, according to Perfect Memento, and is only a name given to her by Remilia. Her real name is unknown.
Since Sakuya has tremendous skill with handling knives, she is extremely good at cooking.
According to Sakuya, if she happens to run out of knives, she can freeze time and pick up the ones she threw previously.
According to ZUN, "Manipulation of Time" is synonymous to "Manipulation of Space". She takes advantage of this fact in several ways, from enlarging the space inside Scarlet Devil Mansion, to probably storing an immense amount of knives around. Maybe it's general relativity?
Sakuya can also use her powers to accelerate time, such as making bamboo flowers bloom instantly, even though this would normally take sixty years.
Sakuya may be a homage to Dio Brando, the main villain of the manga series "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure," a vampire who is known for stopping time and being skilled at throwing knives. (ZUN has also referenced JoJo's Bizarre Adventure in Remilia's dialogue, and Shoot the Bullet Scene 65. Sakuya also takes the same pose as Dio with one of her moves in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody )
Sakuya "prepares" food for Remilia and Flandre Scarlet. It's a mystery how this is done exactly, although she mentions in Phantasmagoria of Flower View that with so many flowers around, she can make as much tea and as many pastries as she wants. (Flowers have, especially in the past, often been used to provide flavoring for tea - which is still the basis of jasmine tea.)
In some fan-produced works, Sakuya is depicted with dog ears and a tail, probably a reflection of various characters referring to her as Remilia's dog. For example, in Sakuya's scenario of Perfect Cherry Blossom the three Prismriver Sisters offer to make her a part of the banquet by eating her. Lyrica starts singing "dog meat dog meat," implying that Sakuya is a dog. Sakuya is the only one of the three heroines available that the Prismrivers threaten to eat. In that game Yuyuko names Sakuya "devil's dog".
Another recurring joke with fans is the idea that Sakuya pads her chest to make it seem bigger than it is, and goes to great lengths to hide this secret, even from Remilia herself.
There have been several clues spread across the Touhou series that suggest that Sakuya may not actually be human. Most of these occur in Imperishable Night, where Eirin Yagokoro is surprised to see her (according to ZUN). In another scene, she survives staring at the full moon (which should drive humans insane), and she has silver hair just like Eirin. In Perfect Memento, Hieda no Akyu agrees that Sakuya probably does not come from Gensokyo, and the description of Kaguya Houraisan's powers are quite similar to Sakuya's time manipulation. These all seem to point to the possibility that Sakuya may in fact be Lunarian. (Some doujin artists have attempted to explain the relationship between Eirin and Sakuya in their stories. These range from the ideas that Eirin created Sakuya's Lunar Dial, but prolonged usage erased Sakuya's memory, to the two of them even being sisters.)
5th stage boss. Plays the role of a human maid about 10~20 years old.
That power of hers distances her from the human race. She has given up trying to relate to ordinary people.
She does not care about honor or power; she thinks so long as it earns her dinner, being the Scarlet Devil Mansion's maid is fine.
She is the chief of the Scarlet Devil Mansion's maids and cleaning staff, and always takes advantage of her ability to stop time when working.
(If she cleans when time stopped, it won't raise dust.)
Due to the nature of the mistress of the house, it is arguable whether she serves the role of maid or babysitter, but in any case, she is in charge of most of the affairs of the household.
The elegant maid of a certain mansion. Has the ability to control time.
Sharp and able, she has no real weak points but can't eat hot (temperature) foods.
Since the art of knife throwing requires similar skills to cooking, Sakuya is incredibly good at cooking.
Her current hobby is creating Chinese delicacies using exquisite ingredients.
In order to save money and the planet, she reuses knives she's already thrown.
If she were to run out of knives during a battle, she'd just stop time and pick them up again.
Throwing knives are her weapon. Deceitless sleight-of-hand is her pride.
In any case, she starts out with 4 bombs. It makes it easier to clear the game.
"Jack the Ripper" locks onto enemies at certain angles in front of you.
It's low power, but it's a very easy to use weapon.
On the other hand, all of the "Time Sign" weapons have very unusual movement.
"Misdirection" angles its shots in the direction you're moving. If you switch to "Power Direction" when it's
angled, the shot direction will lock in its current position.
The bombs, "Perfect Square" and "Private Square" are both very weak, but they have the longest invincibility
time in the game. Also, these are the only bombs that make you move faster when you use them.
The biggest distinguishing point is: enemy bullets stop during bombs, so the fact that you can graze them
like this + the fact that they become bonus items when the bomb is finished (and normal point items then get the bonus item value)
mean that the more you graze, the higher you will score with her weapons.
On the edge of a lake in Gensokyo is a scarlet mansion. She is a maid working there, with no salary.
In this mansion, she's pretty busy, cleaning, ordering, cooking and taking care of her mistress.
The mansion is unnecessarily large and has monotonous colors, so it's hard to grasp the details. If an uninvited guest strayed or was abandoned somewhere, nobody wouldn't notice it; if the guest was found or vanished, nobody wouldn't notice, too.
The scarlet building somehow has no strange atmosphere even in the Gensokyo surrounded by huge amount of green. It stands there as if it insisted its naturalness.
Living here, Sakuya also feels as if time stopped. Of course, it's not the reason Sakuya stops time.
A maid who works in Scarlet Devil Mansion and lives there. She does a maid's duty perfectly: cooking, cleaning, washing, nursing, throwing her knives, etc. Her position is chief maid.
She looks elegant and perfect, though sometimes does odd acts. She works perfectly and quickly. It's because she stops time and work, perhaps...
She's also good at physical attack, which is better than that of suspicious trick like danmaku. That's why she throws knives as danmaku. Also, she loves a trickless magic, so she adapts them in a battle. I can't help feeling this point is the odd acts.
A maid who serves a devil.
She lives in Scarlet Devil Mansion. She can manipulate time.
In there, she works as a chief maid and represents the mansion because her mistress is what you would hesitate to introduce.
She has loyalty to her mistress from the bottom of her heart, but there's no dirty atmosphere from the word "serving". Their relationship is so good that you cannot help liking them.
She sometimes does odd acts. It's hard to understand whether it's an intentionally act or serious one.
Needless to say, she's serious.
Her weapon is knives to throw. She considers changing another material for her knives because of the lack of silver.
Life as a maid is quite comfortable for her since she doesn't have to worry about clothing, food, or housing even though she lives very deep in the mountains.
She is sometimes hated by both humans and youkai because she lives and works for the Scarlet Devil. Nevertheless, she has friends who don't mind her employer and she doesn't need to worry about her living conditions. She can't imagine a life better than this.
A maid who serves a devil.
She's a human who lives in the Scarlet Devil Mansion. She has the ability to control time.
Though her character is refined, sometimes she acts like she's being careless or
just spacing out.
She doesn't think the flower incident is anything terribly dangerous.
There's a scarlet mansion on the edge of a lake in Gensokyo. She's a maid working there.
She heard something was going on, so she just thought she'd go out and have a look; she didn't particularly think something dangerous was happening. This is also why nobody in the Scarlet Devil Mansion was particularly upset about the flower incident.
The other maids have many perks to their jobs and rarely choose to leave, but are not payed or given vacations.
The maids are nearly useless though and most of the work is done by Sakuya alone, which would be impossible if she didn't stop or slow time.
Sakuya's power to manipulate time is not something that could normally be learned.
Although she can speed or slow time it's difficult to change things that have already occurred, such as undoing damage.
She can also manipulate space, conjure things, and is a skilled knife thrower.
Sakuya joined the Scarlet Devil Mansion before it moved to Gensokyo, and since she had never been seen there before it's unlikely that she's from Gensokyo at all.
Her origins are mysterious and she may be from the world outside Gensokyo, some other world, or even the Moon's capital.
One theory is that she may have originally been a vampire hunter who tried to defeat Remilia Scarlet with her trademark silver knives and lost.
She works for Remilia willingly and it is not known what her motivations are or why Remilia has chosen to trust her so much.
Sakuya Izayoi is not her real name, and was supposedly the name Remilia gave to her after she lost to Remilia as way of controlling Sakuya's fate.
She shops at the Human Village, but she is cold toward other humans and has no friends there.
However, ever since Remilia was beaten by the heroine of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Sakuya has begun opening herself up more.
Remilia may have fated this to happen.
Although Sakuya claims to be in her late teens, many things about her suggest she may be much older and possibly even hundreds of years old.