So let’s talk about Shion’s madness a bit. I think we can all agree that her descent was caused by a big bout of paranoia: she believed that the whole hinamizawa persecuted Satoshi, and was now out to get her. There are many many little things that caused her to go down this road. We have her investigation, the news from satoshi, the damn notebook from Takano, and her going into the storage shed only moments before Takano and Tomitake’s deaths. They all ligned up just sooo well with making it appear that there was a “system” involved in Hinamizawa with all this. After she listened in on her granny and Mion talking about it, she just cracked. Kimiyoshi’s reactions regarding Satoshi didn’t help one bit. And because of her belief, she ended up using Keiichi to try to ensnare the culprit (we all know how that ended up )
But where did she go wrong? I guess the VN makes it quite obvious: Shion failed to protect the Satoshi in her heart. Not only Satoshi, but she failed to protect the entire Hinamizawa in her heart. She was a part of the Hinamizawa Guardians after all! With what she did, she ended up betraying the people she grew up with.
This is why the catharsis for the entire VN was the scene of Satoko protecting her belief in Satoshi. And damn did that move me to tears. The epilogue itself was just so sad. Things could have gone so much better! I demand a chapter with Shion being a part of the gang!!!
Even with regards to her grandmother, she was too quick to label her as the mastermind, but failed to remember the tip from her own mother. Oryou isn’t really as bad as she seems! She does have to put on a very scary act, but it remains just an act at the end. Maybe it has caused things to happen, perhaps even the kidnapping of the grandson in Himatsubushi, but that is probably all there is to it.
But looking at it from a more meta perspective, what does this have to tell us, the readers? Well I have a question for you guys: were you able to protect the Hinamizawa in your heart? Or were you, like me, quick to label Rena, Mion, Satoko and even Rika as murderers?
Yes, a subtle point of this whole topic goes into how people think of the series as a whole. Suffice to say, I felt an immense amount of guilt at the whole Satoko scene. I was not able to protect the Keiichi, Rena, Mion, Satoko and Rika in my heart. Heck, my biggest view since Onikakushi has been that they are guilty, but we should play along anyway, and forgive them for that (which is why I liked the potential of there being an alibi for Keiichi in Tatarigoroshi).
So what I think the VN wants to tell us regarding this mystery is that we should not be so quick as to judge our friends just because there is a potential of them being the culprit. We’ve spent so many chapters playing games and having fun with them, and then we would label them as culprits soon after?
Yes, call it naive if you will, but this is probably the biggest hint I’ve been given in the entire series. I will not make the same mistake as Shion, and I will protect the friends in my heart. I drop all my charges against Rena, Mion, Satoko, and Rika, no matter how suspicious they seem to be. I’ve always wanted to trust and believe them (which Onikakushi all too easily disgraced for me) and from here on I’m pushing on that belief.
I agree that it is easy to start suspecting everyone and acquiring the same paranoia that many of the characters developed. However, it’s hard to suspect certain characters. I mean Onikakushi was clearly the Keiichi getting super paranoid and ended up beating his friends into pulp. Watanagashi, Shion calling Keiichi and supposedly meeting the mayor when it was completely impossible was a huge giveaway that something was up with the twins (except at the time I thought it was Mion as Shion. I even thought it really was Mion switching into Shion at the cafe and stuff which has been proved incorrect).
After Meakashi, it’s especially hard for anybody to accuse Mion or Satoko of being guilty. It seems likely that Takano killed her boyfriend, so maybe, (wild guess incoming) oyashiro sama punishes murderers through Rika? Maybe the god gets rid of murderers like the guy who killed the foreman, like Satoshi who probably killed his aunt?, gets rid of Takano, and Rika went to kill Shion because Shion was a murderer by then?
Regardless, I find that it’s hard to protect the image of someone when they are shown to be in the act of murder. Even if somehow Rika just carries syringes for fun and Keiichi has alibi in Tatagoroshi and it was all in his head, there’s no mistake that at least in Onikakushi Keiichi bloodied up Rena and Mion in his room. I feel like before we exonerate anyone we need to focus on some of the details and how some of these murders may be crimes of passion due to paranoia and the historical image the village gives off.
Something about this arc had felt off to me. It, somehow, hit me nowhere as hard as most people here despite Shion being my favorite character in question arcs. I finished it in two or three days but something felt off regardless. I thought that perhaps I should have reviewed Watanagashi. Perhaps I binged it too hard. I felt I was doing, or feeling, or thinking about something the wrong way.
And you just fucking nailed (pun not intended) it in a single sentence. I stopped caring when I started to think of everyone and everything as the culprit. In the end, I fell to my own excessive paranoia as well.
I love your outlook. I’ve also focused too hard on “solving the mystery”, myself! I think I’ll believe in the club members from now on, just like you do.
You raise a good point here. And if we assume that he indeed just ran away and is overall well, then perhaps Shion is right for once and he really did only remember the number for his home, which is why he never came back most of the time. In that case we would have to assume that in Tatarigoroshi he did come back and most likely got Satoko to safety.
Well, I did make a theory tracing most things back to Satoko, so I guess no, though I abandoned that by the time we got to Himatsubushi. I still think of Takano as highly suspicious, so if we count literally every character as being part of Hinamizawa, then I obviously have to say no. However, I recently have been wondering from the fantasy side if we aren’t viewing Oyashiro-sama as too cruel as well. I started to wonder if Oyashiro-sama might actually be just a mediator, and the whole part with the cruelty and curses actually isn’t the work of that deity. In that case the steps behind someone would be him trying to convey a message, but it’s sometimes misinterpretated by people.
Can we get a link to this omitted credits song, by the way? I’m really curious, it’s famous I believe, but I’m not sure if I’ve heard it and I don’t want to spoil it myself.
We are all just victims of the curse of Oyashiro-sama. All falling into the trap of believing it. All of us slowly turning into the Keiichi of Onikakushi.
Man, I don’t know if Ryukishi07 intended that while writing this, but damn if that isn’t powerful stuff.
For sure she is suspicious heh. I guess i meant that as a general term. I really only had the rest of the club members in my mind when I thought of “protecting the hinamizawa in my heart”
Bravo to your whole post Pepe, it’s actually a pet peeve of mine when people approach When They Cry as though the mystery is the primary thing that matters and certainly when they forget to look at the story from a human perspective. I wanted to riff off of your point about Shion failing to protect Hinamizawa in her heart, which I also did in the Spoilers topic: indeed, I think considering Shion’s view of and experiences with Hinamizawa is a pivotal part of understanding her and this chapter, but I’m inclined to sympathize with her on this front. Namely, while not excusing her actions, we can see Shion was isolated and abused by her family and made to feel very small. Can we really blame her for jumping to conclusions here about them executing the curse after how they treated her, on both emotional and logical fronts? I’d also like to recall the scene where Shion screams at Mion for not protecting Satoshi when the Sonozakis supposedly killed him. This was a particularly moving scene (I recommend hearing it voiced on YouTube if you haven’t), and I saw it as Shion using Satoshi as a vessel for her own feelings, as she talks about Mion putting up a front for the family and not protecting him, the same way she did when Shion was forced to rip out her nails. I can’t imagine the effect it would have on you to be twins yet to have your family treat one of you so vastly differently. Moreover, I actually took the tip at the end with Akane talking about Oryou to be Mion pretending to be Shion. As we know full well after this chapter, they often switched places, and it was exactly that kind of communication that could’ve prevented the entirety of this chapter’s tragic events. And yet, not even their own mother could tell Mion and Shion apart. Nobody could, but even so, Shion was treated as though she was so much less.
I do not ultimately empathize with Shion’s actions in this chapter, but I definitely see her as a victim too, and I think those who see her story as one of a cold-blooded murderer rather than an all-round tragedy might want to take another look at her past and how it led her down this road. There is certainly no way of understanding Higurashi even from a mystery perspective if you do not think about the characters’ emotions, however uncomfortable it may be to do so.
I haven’t read the Steam version of Meakashi, but did MangaGamer also change the epilogue of it? Or is there a different reason why you are sharing the original here?
I also haven’t gotten around to the Steam version of Meakashi… But I thought that if the credits were changed then perhaps the epilogue might have been changed too. Thus the reason I shared them both, so that those who have both versions can see if there were changes!
Where the hell did this come from? I’m not following your reasoning at all. Sorry to go back to this but it just leapt out to me as a weird conclusion to make.
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?
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?
[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.
)
