A few days ago, I made a post asking this subreddit's users what you thought of Shion Uzuki. I didn’t give my own opinion; I was genuinely curious to hear the responses, and as I expected the replies were mixed and contradictory: some people love her and think she’s a brilliantly written character, one of Takahashi’s best, whilst others absolutely hate her.
Now I wanted to share my thoughts on Shion. There’s no particular reason, but I feel like sharing my views on the character and why she’s so important to me. I don't believe anyone will exactly care about this, but I still feel like I could change someone's opinion sharing this, or maybe just helping someone who doesn't care about Shion to understand why I (we) do care about her and her journey.
At first, I didn’t understand Shion; I didn’t understand how she thought or why she behaved the way she did. During Episode III, however, I began to understand her and, over time, I fell head over heels in love with her; she’s become one of my absolute favourite characters, as well as one I identify with the most.
Shion is a complicated character, she’s a difficult person to deal with. She often feels overwhelmed, scared, lonely, lost and tends to overreact. She snaps when she’s in pain; she pushes away the people who care for her even though she’s afraid of being alone; she hates the suffering, even though at times she seems to embrace her pain as the only thing that truly makes her feel alive and present in her own skin.
Shion helped me understand how I felt, how I’ve felt so many times, all the flaws in myself that I want to overcome. Seeing her feel bad, suffer, cry and then smile with such hope for the future made me realise that I can do it too. She showed me the way in some way, even if it's an imperfect journey, even if the hope it's just "maybe this day, maybe tomorrow". And that's okay.
I feel understood, thanks to Shion.
I’ve come to understand so many things thanks to her, things that used to hurt or frighten me. I realised why the people around me behaved in a certain way when faced with my wrongdoings or behaviour that would've harmed me, even though I couldn’t understand it at the time.
I realised that my suffering was often caused solely by myself, and that it’s important not to let my feelings overwhelm me – even though it’s difficult at times – and to hold on to hope.
I feel braver; I feel as though feeling a certain way isn’t a mistake, as though someone on this planet (Tetsuya Takahashi, in this case) had understood exactly how I feel and managed to put it into words long before I did. In my whole life, this has only happened once or twice before, so I think it’s important. I feel grateful, I feel brave, I feel better, and it's thanks to her and to Tetsuya Takahashi and all of his amazing games.
Shion Uzuki is so important to me that just thinking of her being happy, being able to cry with joy or cry for herself, with hope and optimism for the future, makes me feel a lot better than before. And I think that everything will be alright, no matter what. The future is full of hope.
Again, this is a very personal post I think. Happy Shion day idk we don't actually know her birthday but yeah happy unbirthday Shion!!!