And people failing to understand that is pretty much the root of all the Sayaka hate threads at /a/.
Of course, nobody in their right mind would expect Kamijou to feel obliged to Sayaka for something he didn't even know her to have done for him (and probably he's better off not knowing
). Sayaka herself seemed to realize it, just as she might have realized he's not exactly swooning over her. But she couldn't help hoping for something. Maybe subconsciously picturing her future like that of a comic superhero with double identity, managing to save the world at night and share Kyousuke's happiness of music at day, slowly getting closer to him until... (insert the good ol' Mendelson here). Mind you, that's something a lot of traditional magical girls manage to achieve, hence the constant bitter conclusion that our Sayaka found herself in the wrong series. Instead of a superhero, she became someone who did NOT fit into the future she might have imagined (that's how she saw it, at least). Thanks to Kyouko (and in TL6, assumably thanks to the others as well, as she had Mami by her side and likely was on much better terms with Homura) she seemed to have snapped out of it for a short while, but in the end she couldn't get over it. Quitting an unreciprocated love and finding another love interest is better said than done for a teenage girl, let alone one who stopped viewing herself as a normal human being. Just like Mami said, "she couldn't handle the change". And it's the same old story in the end, whether she sits and angsts herself into witchhood or burns her soul away in desperate fighting. And we can only WISH she had gotten over it somehow, not with contempt for Sayaka's character but with compassion.
Yet it's the same point of view that makes me think Kamijou wasn't worth her death. Like I said, I don't see her wish as meaningless, but her sheer suffering and fall is too painful, and Kamijou, while not playing a deliberate role in the events, was surely a factor here. And that factor stems from his behaviour which remains hardly approvable even in regards to a close friend rather than a love interest. Of course, he gets his share of wham - you didn't have time to talk to your friend, well now you don't have a chance to talk to her, nd you never will. In regards to Sayaka's fate Kamijou remains both a plot element and simply a guy who, even taking the situation into account, just did not behave too well by simple social standards. That's what will bug people about him for a long time.