[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!
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.