I completely agree with your and Pepe’s thoughts, Rika. It is very true that Shion’s experiences with Hinamizawa and especially with her family have left her quite scarred and I feel like in Meakashi it’s not just revenge for Satoshi she wants, but maybe some retribution for her family too, in regards to what they did to her. And it is even sadder when you think that Mion and Shion are twins, twins are supposed to do many things together, yet they separate Shion from the rest of the family, pretending like there never were two people, two children there. You can even interpret Shion’s scheming in this chapter in a way that since she was so very hurt by her family, she had given them this much importance in her mind and her plans are so meticulous, which at first can seem just like those of a cold-blooded killer, like you said, but in truth, it’s just the sadness that had built up in Shion’s heart ever since she was born, and she must have been so hurt by many particular things and events that she made this meticulous plan to take revenge on each and every one.
Honestly, I don’t like the word “cold-blooded murderer” in general. That has the connotation that the person in question is evil or inhuman, when in fact you can most of the time understand the murderer’s actions.
I might have had a wrong understanding of the word sympathy in my earlier post. I thought that sympathizing with Shion means agreeing with her actions, which I most definitely don’t. I do however understand her actions. Maybe those that are more proficient with the english language can tell me if that’s sympathy or not.
And yet, taking revenge is the wrong thing to do. Which brings me to another question, one which I feel is rarely even answered by the officials: What would have been the right thing to do? Because while I’m saying so pretentiously from a moral highground that taking revenge and killing is wrong, I honestly don’t really know how Shion could have been healed or helped. So I guess my question really is How could this tragedy been prevented while still ensuring Shion’s happiness?
I went ahead and uploaded the “credits” here, from the Mangagamer version. Hopefully we won’t need this soon!
No, we definitely cannot. As I said, there are just so many little reasons that piled up and gave Shion enough stress to crack, and that is definitely one of those reasons. I’m not saying it could have been avoided if Shion was “stronger”… but what I am saying is that we still have the chance to learn from the mistake that she made.
I shall take up your recommendation some time, then 
This is definitely one of those “gut feeling” moments, more than anything. The whole “thump thump” in the storage room felt less like an anomaly but more like a person who was there but nobody could see… Maybe this is also me believing that it wasn’t just someone messing with me, thus leading me towards a more supernatural vibe.
That and my conclusion from Himatsubushi that the mystery of this world may not be entirely black-and-white.
Man that’s a toughie… all the variables line up just so perfectly. Like, maybe if Shion didn’t wake up in the middle of the night? Or if Takano didn’t lend her the notebook? Or, heck, maybe even if she had bacon and eggs for breakfast in the morning
I guess the bigger question is: what was different in Onikakushi and Tatarigoroshi that caused shion not to go craycray?
It’s not the supernatural being thing that I don’t get. It’s the connection to Rika. Why?
[quote=“VyseGolbez, post:79, topic:48, full:true”]
Honestly, I don’t like the word “cold-blooded murderer” in general. That has the connotation that the person in question is evil or inhuman, when in fact you can most of the time understand the murderer’s actions.
I might have had a wrong understanding of the word sympathy in my earlier post. I thought that sympathizing with Shion means agreeing with her actions, which I most definitely don’t. I do however understand her actions. Maybe those that are more proficient with the english language can tell me if that’s sympathy or not.[/quote]
Nor do I, but unfortunately there are people who will apply that term even to Higurashi - largely a casualty of the anime adaptation, haha.
Yes, sympathizing means to understand her actions and feel sorry for her without meaning you’d replicate them.
I suppose I wrote my previous post without actually putting in my conclusion somehow: love and communication are what was missing from Shion’s life. Her family excluded her literally as well as emotionally, to the point where there was such a gulf of life experience between herself and Mion that even their relationship was always somewhat strained. If I’m not mistaken, we don’t actually hear about Shion in Onikakushi and Tatarigoroshi, or if we do, it’s very fleetingly. Presumably she’s living out her life in Okinomiya, just seeing Mion from time to time. As such, and because of the doll incident happening vs. Mion and Shion perhaps hardly talking about Keiichi in those arcs, she learns of Mion’s feelings, and this is the trigger for the flood of emotions she’s only just been holding at bay. In the first place, who does she have to truly lean on after Satoshi’s disappearance? We know it’s when Mion comes to her with the doll dilemma that it’s comparing this to her own struggles with Satoshi that makes Shion snap. Mion was, in her eyes, faced with a laughable problem - and not only that, but she came crying to Shion about it. Did Shion ever once do this after Satoshi went missing? I think it was this that made Shion realise how truly alone she felt, and how much everyone around her had failed to understand her feelings and pain. Within Watanagashi, it’s also my personal view that the moment Keiichi declared he’d give the second doll to Shion was another kind of breaking point. We don’t actually see inside her head here but after the Angel Mort incident, she does seem to understand a little better by this point what Mion sees in Keiichi, and she is, of course, essentially filling Mion’s role here, seeing just how Keiichi treats her. I definitely thought there was a sinister edge to this whole scene, as much as it was played off for gags in the end, when we see it was Shion pretending to be Mion (pretending to be Shion), and how relentlessly she goes after Mion in front of Keiichi, probably out of sheer jealousy and a want to rob Mion of this happiness, however subconsciously. There’s also this:
What’s sad about this is we see in Watanagashi how much confusion and pain it takes to get to the point where Keiichi understands Mion’s feelings and does this, and we know overall it’s just not in his character (it’s my belief that by this point he’s beginning to reciprocate Mion’s feelings). As such, the view Shion had of Mion and Keiichi’s relationship was always a very idealistic one, and it was probably something that looked pretty picture perfect compared to her own story with Satoshi, when that just wasn’t true. Then there’s the added factor of her pretending to be Mion for almost the entirety of her time knowing Satoshi - in a way, even her relationship with him was something Mion “took”, too. I think this view that it was Shion vs. her family was always deeply embedded in her mind - after all, the younger twin was meant to be strangled at birth, even if that wasn’t actually her - and this is where it really all comes to a head: she even thinks this of Mion. Shion’s life was increasingly one characterized by confusion, isolation, pain and a severe lack of love in favour of her twin, in her eyes, I’d say. Even so, why was it Mion continued to seem to get the better end of the deal in all facets of life? Why couldn’t even Mion understand her feelings? The doll incident was the catalyst for this arc, and I think what that incident made Shion cognizant of was her overwhelming loneliness. Lest we forget one of the signature tracks of this arc is indeed called ‘Solitude’. I suppose Onikakushi and Tatarigoroshi lacked that final spark that set off the time bomb Shion essentially is emotionally, but probably only because another tragedy happened first. I think Meakashi is a great opening answer arc because it feels like the first thing that really needs to happen for the story to begin to come to a denouement: through the events of this arc, Shion learns only at the very end what love truly is, and how to conquer her loneliness, even in Satoshi’s absence, but not before letting go of everything she’s bottled up for so long. I guess what that last scene in the classroom could symbolize is Shion realising it’s not her vs. the world, and she’ll never find happiness so long as she thinks it is, even if she wants someone to answer to everything she’s been through and did nothing to deserve. I think the last scenes demonstrate the the keys to Shion’s happiness: the understanding that there really is a place for her both in Mion’s group and the world as a whole, and that it’s not true she shouldn’t have been born, and that her existence only brought those around her unhappiness. Most explicitly, she can find her way to these keys if she remembers the last thing Satoshi left her: the request to look after Satoko. Perhaps the tragedy is averted in other worlds because she remembers this earlier? Those are just some of my very lengthy thoughts!
No what I wanted to know was more what Shion herself could have done differently. After all, in the real world if you at the very least understand why a murderer murdered, you usually don’t say “If only X hadn’t happened.” but instead “If only the murderer had acted differently.”
From @rika’s thoughts I guess one thing we could say is that it would have been fortunate if Shion had said something earlier how her life sucks, how she feels alone. Because especially for Mion, maybe the rest of the family as well, this probably wasn’t that apparent.
Incidentally, as someone who wants to go into forensic psychology, people who commit violent crimes almost always come from an extremely troubled background where really their family was at fault, often for outright abusing them like in Shion’s case. I think the responsibility lies more on the family’s shoulders - Oryou obviously treats Shion awfully, and by extension you could say Akane is at fault for not interfering with that or at least adequately expressing to Shion that however the family acted on the surface, she shouldn’t take it to heart. They are adults, Mion and Shion were children. It’s the role of adults in a family to look after those in their care. I don’t think there was much Shion could have done, she was placed under too much pressure, and she snapped. That pressure was instigated from childhood by the adults in the family, and nothing was given to compensate for it. The problem is that Shion never in the first place felt her pain mattered to anyone around her, knew anything besides pain, or felt like she deserved anything else. That is the fault of the environment she grew up in, and what’s so tragic is that no matter what she’d done, it was up to them to take that away.
I just want to say a little thing (everyone else has demonstrated a far better understanding of the arc’s message than I do overall)- in retrospect, the beginning hammers this point in incredibly extensively.
She escapes the boarding school, and the first thing she thinks of after reaching relative safety (Kasai’s car) is who in her family will allow her “existence outside the school”. She hasn’t been in contact with the outside world for years (as evidenced by her response to hearing from Mion about her favorite cake shop closing down), so the rag is pulled under her even when she gets to her hometown, Okinomiya. She only has Kasai to place her absolute trust in, but she has to force herself to do so in moderation in order to ensure his safety as well. Then, of course, comes her acting in Mion’s place while working, her acquaintance with Takano and of course, eventually, Satoshi. One of the first things we hear from Shion’s inner thoughts is that she is only alive thanks to a merciful whim on Oryou’s part.
She’s forced, from the beginning and time and time again, to be a foil against Mion’s personality. So perhaps, in a sense, Shion was struggling to separate every single scrap of her personality from Mion. Even Satoshi was someone whom she always met under the pretense of Mion. Perhaps, her brutality later in the arc is Shion subconsciously trying to convey “This is me, I am Shion, and this is how violently I struggle to be Shion- and since this struggle is now the center of my being, I will show my violence to you so that you understand me and comprehend my existence”. Yet another irony here is the fact that at the end, even Keiichi believes that she’s Mion for a long time- even as a serial murderer, she’s unable to impress herself as Shion and not Mion.
edit:
Yeah, this is some MGS2-level meta narrative here. And it’s incredible.
…I’d be really interested to hear how the Rena of this timeline is doing if she’s still alive 21 years later.
Good news the end credits are getting patched back in.
Oh that’s because of the whole thing about Rika’s footsteps being compared to that of the “presence”. A far stretch, I know 
Well, not zapping her sister and granny would have helped, for starters 
but yeah it’s hard to get into their mind and think that you could have just not done something bad. So many factors, both internal and external, affected her decision so it’s hard to say which of those she could have stopped from her own will to prevent everything from happening.
But, like the novel implies, the best thing she could have done is remember her promise to Satoshi. That would have solved everything in a jiffy.
Huh, that might be the reason why I wasn’t really able to come up with an answer.
Possible. It would cause her to be in the friend group as “Shion”, and then for the first time feel accepted as herself, which seems to be the core problem. Once she has reached that level of acceptance, she might be able to vent about her family (since that is still a problem) to Keiichi or Rika, or heck, maybe even Satoko.
Also, with what you guys said, I wonder if Shion’s case qualifies as psychological abuse.
Shion absolutely suffered severe psychological abuse. Even if she wasn’t Shion originally, she eventually took that identity and everything that came with it, including growing up hearing that “she” should’ve been murdered at birth by those who were supposed to love and care for her, and was treated as as much of a nuisance as that would’ve suggested she was to them for the rest of her life. Mion “took” the role that was originally hers with nobody so much as realising - and I think this is an important point, because there was nothing “different” about the twins in so far as their worth - and yet was brought up in an atmosphere of prestige, treated with such importance, whilst Shion was utterly, literally tossed by the wayside. She was sent to a school she hated, essentially forgotten about, and eventually forced through literal torture whilst everyone who again was supposed to love and care for her only looked on emotionlessly, including Mion, even though we know this facade was only her own way of dealing with the trauma. The environment the twins grew up in was a horrific one, but they’re both so stoic in their own ways I think it’s easy to forget.
I think it might be interesting now to go back to Watanagashi and determine who was who. There were a few things in Watanagashi we never saw in Meakashi so there’s still room for questions.
I think maybe all the murders are products of psychological abuse. If Satoshi really did murder his aunt, it would’ve been because of the psychological trauma of abuse and shielding his sister.
In a way, every single character of the club (apart from Keiichi maybe), has been under significant psychological stress. From Rena being separated from Hinamizawa and going lunatic, Mion/Shion with their whole family situation, Satoko from the abuse and losing brother, and finally Rika I don’t actually know she’s so confusing. I really don’t know about Rika though, the Extras detailing Rika’s mother’s diary, I believe in Ch. 4, just created a bigger shroud around her. Perhaps each arc, it was just a different person snapping each time? It just seems the more you learn about each character, the more tragic and troubled they seem. It’s like they just grabbed a bunch of troubled young people with pretty horrible pasts, mixed them together until a murder happens.
I think it’s easy to sympathise with Shion in her situation at the boarding school, her happiness of meeting Satoshi, and the loss that she felt when he was gone. However, it’s hard to sympathise with how she just started killing unrelated people. The way she tortured and killed Satoko, the sister of the person she loved. If Satoshi killed the aunt for Satoko, then she’s just stomping all over what Satoshi wanted. I don’t think this is love. It’s a selfish psychological attachment due to her feelings of isolation. She doesn’t want to make Satoshi happy, but rather wants Satoshi to be there for her to be happy.
Watching Keiichi from Shion’s perspective, he was so clueless and helpless. She just played with him trying to get him to act as bait to lure out the “perpetrators.” It just gives a feeling of betrayal since Keiichi trusted Shion and waited for her phone calls. Even until the end the “culprit” is Mion, without him knowing that this is not the Mion that he had so much fun with at school and gotten to know. Although, he was able to preserve the image of his friend Mion in his heart, if he only knew that this wasn’t even the Mion he had made friends with… The idea of it just feels awful.
Before this chapter, I thought of Shion as a fun person that had a way of getting under her sister’s skin. During this chapter, my opinion of Shion increased as I grew sympathetic of her plight in a boarding school and how she later couldn’t even go out in public freely. However, by the end of this chapter, her image really fell for me when she kills under the pretense of a selfish love. She lies and spreads misinformation to villagers, manipulates Keiichi, guilt trips Mion to do her bidding. It makes me wonder how much of it was a revenge for Satoshi, and how much of it was revenge against the village and anyone she could lash out at for her abhorrent plight in that household.
One thing that I want to know what kind of decisions or things happened that were different in this route that caused Shion to go on a rampage. Shion claims it was because the doll that Keiichi didn’t give to Mion led Mion to be sad and tell Shion about it which sparked Shion’s anger of the loss of Satoshi which led to the murders. That sounds absolutely far-fetched, though not something I can dismiss right away. This is a visual novel without any choices, but somehow I still want to know what Keiichi or Shion could have done to prevent tragedy again this year. After all these routes, it seems no matter what anybody does, tragedy always seems to strike. The root problem seems to be the culture of the village to create scary psychological trauma for the children, which doesn’t seem like something anybody’s actions alone can fix.
Ahahaha~ Why thank you for congratulating me for this thing I don’t remember doing.
However this new poem also still works for our alternate theory that “Frederica” is a representation of Hinamizawa itself.
Well actually she didn’t even kill herself.
UNFORGIVABLE
Hey, I’ve been a “Takano as culprit” guy from the start. Don’t look at me! Ehe~
But in all seriousness and on a slightly more meta level I think suspecting any of the club members has always been something of a fools errand if only because of how much focus these characters receive in the story itself and yet how little time is dedicated towards presenting potential motives.
Shion and Mion know roughly how the other thinks. Sure Mion might have clung to a bit of hope in her heart that it would work, [color=blue]but surely she knew that revealing that the Sonozaki family had nothing to do with the “curse” would not save her life.[/color]
From a meta level it is also one of the last twists of the story and prompts a major emotional reaction from the point of view character.
I see little reason to entertain the possibility of it being a lie.
When we were in podcast prep for Himatsubushi waiting for Aspi, we briefly talked about that and I said that I didn’t understand why Mion refers to Shion as “Mion”, you suggested why I don’t cut the middleman and assume that the two switched at some point in childhood.
Technically yes, but we were referring to this chapter’s POV character as Shion throughout the thread, to avoid confusion.
However he’s in the same situation as you and doesn’t have money.
he could pirate it and buy it when he has money
So remember when I made that post looking at how a court would judge Shion? Now, back then, I said that Germany in specifically would judge her as a youth. Looking at when Shion’s birthday is and how old she is, that is actually wrong. Because according to that, she is only 13 years old at the time she committed the crimes. Legal age in Germany is 14 however. Therefore, what would actually happen if she wouldn’t have died, is that she would have been sent into therapy. Furthermore, there probably would have been some investigation on her parents if they neglected her. Kasai would also have to face consequences for giving a child a modified stun gun.
The interesting thing is, and we touched on that in the podcast, that Ryukishi views that differently and probably considers her as adult enough. Which, honestly, is a viewpoint I disagree with.