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YES. Strongly agree. Sato made Ajin an absolute treat to read. Instead of giving him more and more powers, they just made him push the limits of his powers. It makes him such a competent villain. When that shredder scene happened I let out an audible "oh sheeeeeeet"

Sato is the real definition of "you cannot have a PTSD if you're the traumatic event".

Gamer old man exploiting the unique quirks of his immortality. Like chopping his arm to be used as a respawn point is truly a gamer move right there

12:46 sato handing his IBM a gun:
“Go, commit crimes.”

I love how the author never gave them any crazier power ups and powers, he just pushed the limits of their power to the fullest. Now that's a good writing

Crazy how the plot of Ajin can be boiled down to “fucked up kid trying to stop old man from having a gamer moment” 😂 Sato is one of my absolute favorite antagonists across any form of media, on par with the likes of Griffith, Funny Valentine, Emperor Shaddam IV, Joker (Arkham games) and The Prophet of Truth

"Beam me up" throws self into wood chipper something about that is just so dark and hilarious

Sato dismembering himself, cooking those parts into fried chicken, having his lackey pretend to be a ubereats guy to deliver said chicken into a secure location, and then throwing himself into a woodchipper to regenerate from the fried chicken

I can barely remember how ajin ends, but i remember that sequence vividly.  Sato is a villain written like someone who is reading a manga and thinking up all the ways HE would beat the antagonist because the main character/mangaka refuses to fully embrace the magic system in their own series.

Ah yes Sato. A inhuman monster even before he was a Demi-Human. The Gamer all media sources believe all gamers to be like. Unbothered. Unstoppable. Unnatural.

I didn’t know that fact about Sakurai and how he basically wrote the story himself from scratch after already being 5 chapters in. What a legendary writer. Also, I don’t think Kei is that bad of a protagonist at all; he fits the role that he’s supposed to serve very well, and his character is incredibly fleshed out and fun to watch. He is the foil to Sato.

literally sato was the draw for me when i watched the anime and it was one of the first manga i ever picked up, so sad netflix just left the anime to die

I gotta say, there is one thing that the anime does that absolutely blows the manga out of the water.

Spoilers:


Instead of having Sato hijack a plane and crash it into the building to get at the politician inside, they instead had the absolute mindblowingly genius idea of having him drop a fucking skyscraper on top of it

I also want to give props to the random no name characters too. The metro SWAT team in this story were no push overs too. They used tactics and professionalism to do some effective counters against Saito but once again, Saito is damn good at his job too so it's tactic vs counter tactic constantly

Sato is literally the song "Free Bird" personified. In fact, half way through the manga I made a playlist with Free Bird and a couple of other similiar songs and blasted it nonstop while reading the rest of it. Absolutely how this manga should be experienced!

Sato from the introduction to the final chapter is a FORCE OF NATURE, I love how he's the pure foil to the young frowning careless(at first) Nagai with the smiling old terrifying joy from Sato just wanting to have fun. But despite being an old man has the short attention span of a child, quickly finding things boring while Nagai tries to stay stoic trying how to stop this man. Or thing more appropriately, that THING.

Easily one of my favorite manga I couldn't put down when starting.

Sato isn’t just good on his own, but he accentuates the themes and story of ajin. The whole point is to question what humanity really is, and having Sato be an insane, cold-blooded killer even before he was an ajin helps put that into perspective. Also, the whole “gaming” thing with him is great and gives a similar feeling to anton chigurh in “no country for old men”, who feels similarly disconnected from reality. It’s funny because in order to stop sato, they send all these different military units that get increasingly less and less humane, to the point where the anti-ajin defense force are basically just faceless, nameless soldiers. Also, out of all the times they try to use actual weaponry to take out Sato, it’s only really effective when Kei uses the gun to shoot himself instead, not only to cure his memory loss but as a final sign of acceptance that he has become ajin; inhuman. Then when he later takes out Sato, it’s not with any insane weaponry or strategy, but something that would take out any random human. Love it so much.

Sato is the definition of Black Air Force Activity

God, this manga lives in my head rent-free.

Even though Sato was one of the characters that kept me hooked on the story the whole time, I have to admit that I think Kei is the one that intrigued me the most. To be more specific, I enjoyed how much he contrasted against Sato while also being similar to him.

On one hand, they're both very smart people who find ways to use their ajin abilities in ways that normal humans wouldn't even think about. Even other ajin don't think about using their abilities the same way Sato and Kei do. And I think that's because both of them have embraced their inhumanity. Other ajins are still holding onto their past human lives and how they used to live, but both Sato and Kei have both accepted and adapted to the fact that they can no longer live as a person.
Similarly, they're both rather cold people. Sure, Sato is a lot more emotional than Kei; he freely shows his joy and excitement-- but they both go about achieving their goals in a rather rational matter-- and more importantly, they don't really sympathize or empathize with others. We see this more clearly with Kei and how he basically treats people as pawns in his plans, but Sato does the same thing. He doesn't start an ajin revolution because he really wants ajin rights and freedoms; he does it because he wants to have fun. Even Kei doesn't really want ajin rights for others, but rather because it will allow him to live peacefully. They're both rather fundamentally selfish people.
I think that similarity is also picked up by Sato-- because he does have this moment where he says he wants to cut off Kei's head and essentially kill Kei, because then Kei can fully step onto Sato's level and make a better "rival". I also don't think it's a coincidence that it was Kei and Sato who had the shared memories moment, essentially tying them together as opposing forces.

However, the core difference between them lies in compassion-- or as Sato's father puts it, understanding life is a precious thing. I think Kei understands better than Sato that he can't live alone in society. In fact, there are many points in Kei's journey that he is helped by other people; I also think it's telling that to stop Sato, Kei teams up with the anti-ajin squad while Sato essentially does his acts of terrorism largely by himself.
I think that last confrontation with Kei and Sato sums it up pretty well, when  Kei says he has never treated life as a game. He understands that when other people-- non-ajins-- die, they die. Sato never really saw it as a bad thing, because he never cared about them; to him, life is a game and the people he kills are just "NPCs". Kei treats life seriously, with the gravity it deserves. Sato treats it frivolously, which is why he can commit such brutal violence on both others and himself.

I think you said that Kei is a "mid protagonist" and I think that's the point. Sato is very bombastic and hedonistic; he wants to have fun and he wants to have fun *extremely*; once he's set his mind, he's 100% in.
Kei has multiple moments where he just wants to stop fighting and just live under the radar, but he's continually brought back into the plot. He's a very passive/reactive protagonist in this way. Sato's pushing the plot forward, creating conflict, and Kei is mostly reacting to that. I don't think he actually takes a proactive approach to stopping Sato until near the end.

But I also think it's probably reductive to say that Kei doesn't care for others. He does care about the people close to him; there are even moments in the manga that show that even though he seems "cold", he does care about people. For example, even though his own sister doubts his reason for becoming a doctor, his mother does confirm that Kei wants to become a doctor to cure his sister. He is a just a rather rational person, and rationality spreads even into his own emotions. He cares about the people close to him, but (like his mother says) caring about them in thought isn't enough to make them better/help them, so he has to take the optimal path. The part where he says something along the lines of "everyone weighs other people's worths in their mind; don't blame me because I do it consciously" I think sums it up perfectly. It's also that line that I remember the most clearly out of everything in the manga. I think compared to other shounen protagonists, Kei stands out because he's way more aware of how he's driven by a very personal "power of friendship" than an abstract desire to do good. He can write off the millions of people dying due to Sato's terrorism, but keeps letting himself get dragged back into the fight because in the end, he does care about himself and his friends.
But he also has his moments of bordering the irrational. Like that moment when he continues to stop Sato even though the situation looks hopeless because a non-zero percent chance of success still means there's a chance of success. It's a very emotionally driven sentiment, but still framed by rationality. I don't know, but Kei's relationship with compassion/idealism and realism compels me in a different way than Sato's enthusiastic swan dive into selfish hedonistic pursuit of a high score.

I'd apologize for the long ramble, but I really do like the manga.

Its kinda great how Sato is such a threatening villan without anything special. He doesnt have some broken technique, he's got the same ajin powers as everyone else, Sato is just good at using his skillset and isnt afraid to do what it takes to win.