Sakura Matou

Sakura Matou (間桐 桜) is one of the three main heroines of Fate/stay night.

Sakura is the younger, adopted sister of Shinji Matou and biological sister of Rin Tohsaka. Sakura has a long standing and obvious crush on Shirou Emiya, who sees her as family. After Shirou's father died, Sakura would often visit Shirou's home to help him with his daily chores.

Appearance
Sakura is a beautiful young woman with violet hair, which she styles with a pink ribbon on the left side, and violet eyes. The ribbon she wears in her hair was given to her by Rin when they were children and is the first ribbon Rin ever made. Physically, she's noted to have very "large breasts". During school, she wears the standard Homurahara uniform. Her casual clothing consists of a pink cardigan, a white top and long cream-coloured skirt.

In the Heaven's Feel route, her appearance changes when she becomes Dark Sakura. Her hair turns white and her eyes turn red. She retains her trademark ribbon, though it turns purple. She wears a long black dress made of black ribbons, that are trimmed in red. The length of the dress and the length of the ribbons it is composed of vary. In this form, her face, dress and legs are covered in red markings.

Before Sakura was adopted in to the Matou family, she resembled her sister, having had short black hair and aqua eyes. Shortly after her adoption, her hair and eyes take on their violet color, which is a direct result of being implanted with Zouken's parasitic worms. Her clothing at this time consists of a purple dress, purple socks and black shoes.

Personality
While Sakura is outwardly shy, soft-spoken and eager to please, she possesses a great inner strength. As noted by Shirou, she can also be openly stubborn at times. However, she is prone to feeling resentment towards others. When she awakens as Dark Sakura under the influence of Angra Mainyu, her personality changes drastically; she becomes a devilish, evil, and cruel person. She loves and cares for Shirou Emiya and her foster uncle Kariya Matou because they care about her and desire to help her. She was devastated when Kariya was killed during the Forth Holy Grail War. She began to feel all alone when he died and when Shirou was spending time with Rin.

Background
Born as Sakura Tohsaka, she is the biological sister of Tohsaka Rin and daughter of Tokiomi Tohsaka and Aoi Tohsaka. Like most magi, her father chose only one daughter to carry on his family's tradition as he believed raising an additional child would introduce competition. Zouken Matou, an ancient ally of the Tohsaka House, offered to adopt Sakura with the intention of training her as the successor of the Matou's magecraft as his own heir, Matou Shinji, was incapable of sorcery.

In Fate/Zero, it is revealed that Kariya made a deal with Zouke] to win the Holy Grail in exchange for Sakura's freedom to return to the Tohsaka family. Having been a childhood friend of Aoi, he had become well-acquainted with Sakura and her sister. Kariya was the only member of the Matou family to love Sakura. Unfortunately, he lost the 4th Grail War and Sakura was left with the Matou family.

As a result of her natural abilities, Zouken sought to use Sakura as one of his future vessels, empowered by the Angra Mainyu. After gathering the tainted fragments of the shattered grail from the last war, Zouken hybridized the collected black ichor with several of his crest worm familiars. He implanted these parasitic worms into Sakura's body, which drain her Mana but feed on her carnal impulses. To curb her sexual frustration, Zouken frequently instructed Shinji to rape Sakura. Jealous of the fact his adopted sister usurped his birthright as heir to the Matou House, Shinji brutally raped her of his own volition.

Although castigated and humiliated on a daily basis, Sakura maintained her bearings with great stoicism. For the eleven years after her adoption, Sakura grew to resent Zouken for his cruelty, Tokiomi for sending her away, and finally Rin, for never coming to save her, she is also very sad and depressed over the death of her uncle Kariya. She drew her strength to endure such hardships from Shirou, whom she admired for his dedication. The inspiration she found came from watching him never give up in an attempt to jump a bar during a track-and-field practice session. A year before the events of Fate/Stay Night, after Shirou was injured in an accident, Sakura gathered enough courage to approach and help him; she has visited him ever since, day and night, to assist with daily activities. As Rin and Shirou became closer, Sakura began to feel contempt for her sister, which was intensified by her belief that Rin was the cause of all her suffering.

Sakura is the principal Master of Rider, who was summoned several days prior to the start of the 5th Holy Grail War. However, under pressure from Shinji and the desire not to fight either Shirou or Rin, Sakura yielded her Master's right to him, although Sakura retains her original Command Mantra.

Fate/stay night
Sakura only plays a minor supporting role in both Fate and Unlimited Blade Works, but she is the main female to the third arc, Heaven's Feel. Zouken, disgusted at the ineptitude of Shinji as a Master, begins a genocide against the other Servants with help from True Assassin and Sakura. Berserker, Lancer, Saber, and Archer are all felled by this unholy trinity, and Sakura regurgitates Dark Saber and Dark Berserker as assistants. At night, she goes on a rampage throughout Fuyuki City, ingesting large numbers of innocents for Mana. Gilgamesh eventually confronts and impales Sakura's body with several Noble Phantasms from within his Gate of Babylon, but she regenerates at an impossibly fast rate and consumes him as well.

Recognizing the devastation she has wrought, Sakura seeks out her grandfather to force him into ending her life. Along the way, Shinji attempts to blackmail her into sex, threatening to tell Shirou of his history of raping her. Horrified at this prospect, Sakura kills Shinji and gives up to her internal evil. She then becomes Dark Sakura and abducts Ilya, hoping to use her as the core for a new Holy Grail.

After Shirou and Kotomine rescue Ilya, Dark Sakura kills True Assassin and purges her body of Zouken's worms. She is confronted by Rin in the chamber of the Greater Holy Grail beneath Mount Enzō, her power equally matched by The Jeweled Sword of Zelretch. Rendering Sakura's shadows useless, Rin makes her way to Sakura, but is unable to give the finishing blow due to her love of her sister. Rin embraces Sakura even after Sakura has stabbed her in panic. Realizing Rin's love, Sakura again starts resisting her evil long enough for Shirou to dispel Angra Mainyu's grip on her soul with Rule Breaker. Shirou then attempts to trace Excalibur but in True ending, Ilya intervenes, closes the gate, and performs the Heaven's Feel on Shirou to keep him alive (in Normal ending, Shirou does trace Excalibur and destroys the Grail, but his life extinguishes soon after. Sakura, refusing to accept Shirou's death, continues to live in Emiya house, forever waiting for Shirou).

After her dark self is destroyed, Sakura's body is left containing vast amounts of mana. She ends up living with Shirou and Rider, with the servant's existence sustained by Sakura's mana pool.

Fate/hollow ataraxia
In Fate/hollow ataraxia, Sakura lives a peaceful life in Fuyuki City, which Rin has left in Sakura's care while she is at the Mage's Association, and Rider comments that Sakura is now the popular new captain of the school archery club. Sakura's dark side still exists, but appears only for comic relief. In Eclipse, the bonus episode of Ataraxia, Rider and Sakura seem to work together to seduce Shirou and engage in a threesome with him. Actually this is all Rider's doing, trying to get Shirou to pursue Sakura more aggressively. Yet in the middle, Shirou realizes the truth and reverses her spell on her, in the end revealing to viewers that Rider herself has deep feelings for Shirou. Sakura appearing in this episode is only a conjecture by Rider's spell, a representation of Rider's true intentions of her actions.

Abilities
Sakura has inherited tremendous sorcerous potential from her Tohsaka pedigree, although she has little knowledge of established incantations and her Mana supply is limited by Zouken's worms. As a child, her father Tohsaka Tokiomi recognized that while Sakura lacked all five elements, she extraordinarily possessed the rare potential as a mage with only Imaginary Numbers. While Sakura is capable of mastering the Matou family's style of magecraft, Matou Kariya notes that Sakura is actually best suited to the magecraft of her birth family, the Tohsaka.

On a whim, Zouken can twist Sakura into a premature form of Angra Mainyu, referred to as "the shadow". In this state, Sakura's actions are below her threshold of awareness and are primarily directed by Zouken. However, once Sakura rejects Zouken's control and regains her central consciousness, she becomes Dark Sakura, a rancorous and psychotic distortion of her normal self. In this form, her reasoning and emotions are severely impaired and she is indiscriminately destructive to everything around her.

Dark Sakura has an unlimited supply of Mana, but the amount she can expel at any derivative is limited by her number of magic circuits. Her touch is highly corrosive, dissolving organic matter and converting the base elements into pure Mana. When an astral being, such as a Servant, comes into contract with Dark Sakura's shadows, that Servant's mentality is corrupted by her evil influence, while their offensive power is considerably augmented. She is also capable of forming tentacle appendages from her body, as well as birthing shadow monstrosities that follow her general intent but otherwise operate independently. Finally, Dark Sakura can spontaneously regenerate, allowing her to recover from mortal wounds within minutes of receiving them.