The purging is only for player characters, as they require [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZvbCgnCJoA]direct control.[/url]

All side characters stay in-tact, and characters that have been purged will be meshed into the background and obscurity.

I am also glad Vita also stopped. It'd be difficult to have half a character running around (I believe her other half was her character's love interest, which would have complicated things, because player of love interest was no longer playing).

In the case of Sachiko however... We can do the same with Kato and simply ignore her. If anyone hasn't noticed, I've slowly just stopped mentioning inactive characters such as Kato.