…I’d be really interested to hear how the Rena of this timeline is doing if she’s still alive 21 years later.
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Good news the end credits are getting patched back in.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Where did you get that she’s 13? The sources I’ve gotten say 17.
Are the years confirmed as well? Was pretty sure that Shion and Mion was a year older than Keiichi. Sure the wikia can’t really be fully trusted but it puts their year of birth in 1966 which makes them 17 during the series.
Edit: Also, I might remember it incorrectly but wasn’t there something in the manga during one of the arcs that Mion is supposed to study for University but that she instead wants to stay in the village?
Well, Shion and Mion were born the year before Keiichi.
Specifically what Ryukishi said was that the older club members were in their second and third years of middle school, respectively, therefore in June 1983, Keiichi, Mion, and Shion are 14 (with Mion and Shion turning 15 in July) and Rena is 13 (also turning 14 in July).
In Japanese, the word used is shingaku 進学, which can mean moving on to any higher education. I guess it was translated as studying for university, but it could actually refer to high school, too.
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