What do you like about Sayaka?
I think I've answered this before, but the reason Sayaka's my favorite character pretty much ever is that I see her as probably the most heroic character of all time. She was an idealistic girl who found out that the world was horrible, and that her notions of morality, love, and justice meant nothing. Yet, after making this discovery, she made the conscious choice to stick to her ideals and become a hero. She was punished for this over and over again, punished for not to letting familiars kill people to become large enough to harvest grief seeds form them, punished by Kyouske for her sacrifice and unrequited love, punished by her own lack of power, but she never stopped trying to be the knight of love and justice she idealized. She even refused to take help from Homura, who she saw as evil at the time.
In the end, her refusal to change destroyed her, and she fell to despair and became a witch. Despite it all though, even after she had died, she still made the choice to sacrifice herself for Kyouske at the end of the story, consciously sealing her fate and dying for someone she loved, despite getting nothing but death for it. Sayaka, to me, is probably the most heroic character of all. She decided to become a hero like Superman in a world that punished her for her actions, and she stuck to her ideals to the very end, even though it killed her. This resonated with me more powerfully than pretty much any other arc in fiction ever has, and she's my favorite character of all time for it.
Also, her tomboyish enthusiasm is kind of adorable.
In the end, her refusal to change destroyed her, and she fell to despair and became a witch. Despite it all though, even after she had died, she still made the choice to sacrifice herself for Kyouske at the end of the story, consciously sealing her fate and dying for someone she loved, despite getting nothing but death for it. Sayaka, to me, is probably the most heroic character of all. She decided to become a hero like Superman in a world that punished her for her actions, and she stuck to her ideals to the very end, even though it killed her. This resonated with me more powerfully than pretty much any other arc in fiction ever has, and she's my favorite character of all time for it.
Also, her tomboyish enthusiasm is kind of adorable.