PART 1: OBSESSION
It is very apparent that Sameji is completely fixated on Naota…Well, that’s actually not true. Her attachment to him is purely a means of staying connected to Tasuku. Essentially, Naota is a proxy for Tasuku, but I didn’t need to explain that already.
This obsession that Sameji has is greatly explained in Episode 1 where Haruko goes through the mail and finds Tasuku’s letter, and eventually brought home in Episode 2.
It’s a minor story element, but it is also an important facet of Sameji’s character, and it was beautifully explained in 2 episodes. That's astounding considering that she’s not even the main character! At the very least even someone who vehemently hates FLCL, or just hates anime altogether, could at least be able to recognize an example of amazing writing.
To make a long story short, Sameji first met Tasuku when he saved her from a fire that she started. She started the fire because she was getting picked on at school and therefore hated it and everything it stood for (THIS IS BEHAVIOR THAT I DO NOT CONDONE BTW), but she holds onto that first interaction with Tasuku for a long-ass time. This leads me to believe that something that I thought was a throw-away line in the anime actually may have some merit.
In episode 1, Kamon states that he believes Sameji’s family is poor, and throughout the anime people speculate on whether or not she is homeless. I think that probably the latter of those speculations may be true, based on her later actions.
Personally I think that if she was homeless she wouldn’t be so apathetic about committing arson like she does in episode 2, but the fact that in the midst of all of her despair she found Tasuku and still holds onto their relationship serves to uphold the basis of psychological or emotional trauma that Sameji’s character is built off of.
She keeps Tasuku’s number, she latches onto his brother long after he’s gone, and she names everything “Takkun” to keep the memory alive, to keep the candles burning, even though she can never reignite that flame. And she does so with such a childlike naïveté that initially pissed me off and made me dislike her. Still, there’s something about that character that has such an authentic appeal that I can now appreciate.
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