I don't have a lot of sympathy for Shiori, but I don't think she's evil.  I think "warped" would be a better word than "evil."  "I can't stand that my only friend pities me.  I just know she's going to disappear one day.  I know!  I'll hurt her so much that she'll hate me instead!  Then she'll be thinking about me all the time!  Truly, that will be much better!"

I think your timeline and argument are pretty good.  But I think you're inconsistent here:

Razara wrote:

It’s unlikely that Shiori even realized just how much stealing that boy from Juri would hurt her. Keep in mind that in Shiori’s eyes, Juri is strong, and would probably just shrug off something like this. Who would have guessed that three years later, Juri would still be suffering? . . . By stealing him, she also established hate between the two of them. By making Juri hate her, this prevented her from feeling any pity for her. It isn’t very often that you feel any pity for someone you hate.

Shiori's idealized Juri -- talented, beautiful, self-confident -- would never hate a good friend for hurting her a little.  Shiori knew, or at least hoped, that stealing the boy would hurt Juri a lot.  She knows that Juri's still hurting, and she likes it; she shows nothing but delight that Juri always wears a locket that bears (she thinks) a picture of the nameless boy.  She goes out of her way to make sure Juri stays hurt, as her behavior toward Ruka in the third season attests.  And of course, the catalyst for her trip to Nemuro Memorial Hall is the sudden revelation that oh noes Juri does not hate her!  (Or at least, not for the reasons she thought.)  She doesn't even have the common humanity to feel guilty about any of this.  I think she feels guilty over not feeling guilty, but that's about all I can say for her.  "Warped" is the right word.

Last edited by satyreyes (10-29-2006 12:14:15 PM)

I think people are harsher to Shiori because her kind of "badness" is much more human. Evil on a grand(iloquent) scale doesn't feel real. It's something that belongs to big drama and tragedy, it's cool to watch from afar, and make for a good show.

Shiori is real. Her pettiness, her jealousy, her confused malice is real. We've "known her" as kids in a way that supernaturaly seductive manwhores (I can't take Akio seriously, I'm sorry I can't, metaphore for quite a real evil that he is >_>)

The way you ask the question is, of course, a false dichotomy. And I've always found that questionning the morality of fictionnal characters led to nowhere
Shiori is an interesting character, well built, with many layers, and that brings good plot. As such I like her

Last edited by Etrangere (10-29-2006 01:26:09 PM)

Shiori is a very interesting and very complicated character, just like the rest of the cast in this anime. It's never good to take a superficial glance at either the main or secondary characters in this show, because all of them have layers of complexity. Shiori is not 'evil', but she is cruel, small-minded, and petty. She is also insecure, indecisive, fragile, and most likely a romantic at heart. Her good qualities are vastly overshadowed by her flaws and her clumsiness. As others have stated before, she's a very real character. Her flaws are almost viscerally familiar, because her emotions and her mindset are things we have either encountered commonly in high school, or have undergone on a personal level. She's repulsive to the audience because of the nature of her flaws, the shallow and self-centered desire to hurt her friend in order to bring herself higher, the way she rejoices in Juri's suffering when she sees the locket. These are negative feelings that people are repulsed by in themselves, because they are very low emotions. She has no confidence or charisma, no qualities to admire or desire. She's entirely a miserable version of our juvenile selves.

She definitely has an inferiority complex, and it twists and warps her thoughts and actions. She is suffering, she feels unimportant and inferior, and so the solution to this lack of equality in her relationship with Juri is to bring her friend down to her level. Although she could have attempted to better herself, find a talent, find a counselor to help her lack of self worth, and talk to Juri about how she felt, she chose to make her friend suffer. Shiori seems to choose 'strong friends', like Ruka and Juri, so presumably she likes someone to look up to. It's rather masochistic of her, seeing that the end result is another load of self loathing. She's self destructive, both pushing away help by seeing it as condescension and mockery, and placing herself in a position where she feels insecure and inferior.

She doesn't do anything overtly positive or kind in the series, so we don't have much proof of any good side. What we have are glimpses oftrue signs of remorse and pain. When she leans out the window and speaks to Utena and Anthy about her nostalgic memories of Juri, I believe she really means it when she says she doesn't deserve Juri's friendship any more. I'm not sure how much guilt she feels over what she's done. When we see her staring after Juri when she leaves her with the dying bird, her expression is downcast, but it could easily be regret and disappointment that her plan didn't work andthat it was all for nothing, rathen than the sadness she could feel at Juri rejecting her overtures. I believe that on a very real level she wants Juri back as a friend, but she'd lead herself back into that destructive pattern she began when she attempted to steal Juri's love from her. In 'Thorns of Death', we see that she still takes a small amount of pleasure in her actions. When she says: 'You'll never forgive me for that, will you?' the expression on her face is almost pleased, the tone in her voice has a hint of triumph. Although she feels that what she did was dirty and contemptable, I don't believe she has any pity for Juri or any notion of what it means to have hurt her that deeply. She focused more on what those actions meant to her as a person, and not on the consequences it had on either the best friend she hurt or the boy she ruthlessly used.

This may be why the Ruka incident let her soften toward Juri enough to make another overture at the end of the episode- waiting for her and following her down the path. Did she find out about Ruka's death and want someone to talk to about it, or did she realize how similar the manipulation Ruka played on her was to what she did to the nameless fencer she stole from Juri? At this point at the end of the series, they're both tentatively reaching out to each other once again. We don't know what happened afterwards, presumably she simply walked with Juri and had a short discussion, but this was the first time Shiori actively sought Juri out after her arrival to the school. As for Juri, there was never any question of her feeling for Shiori. The shattering of the locket, however, in my opinion, signifies the destruction of the ideal image of her former best friend, the person she desired who never really was. She is now ready to see Shiori as she really is, and not as Juri idealistically remembers her.

Post-revolution, we see Juri calling out for the next member of the fencing team to step forward, and out comes Shiori. This is a huge turning point for the character: for me, it shows that Shiori has at least put aside some of her huge misconceptions about both Juri and the way to strengthen herself. She is not trying to be important by dating men who are important to Juri, she is not trying to 'steal' something away from her former best friend. At this point, she is meeting Juri as a fellow fencer, and she is willing to learn from her. This signifies some acceptance of their relationship as it stands, and the desire for growth. Shiori is trying to improve herself by her own means, and is setting herself up for a position of 'inferiority'. (Pupil to master, not equal to equal. Not just yet.) She seems confident, more self-assured, and less like the girl crouching in the shadows. Just before this scene, we see her watching Juri play badminton, and her hand is clutching the same place Juri usually kept her locket. This could be seen as a reversal of roles, now Shiori longs for Juri.

We can't be sure how far she's come from the desperate girl she was before. Certainly there's room for her to become stronger, more self-assured. Granted, she is still yearning to be 'more like Juri', she still feels inferior. She continues to attempt equality by emulating Juri. But there seems to be less of a vicious nature to that now, and more of a genuine yearning to better herself.

Giovanna wrote:

This may be a stupid question on account of me not having watched the episodes in a while...but do we immediately rule out Ruka as being the same boy Shiori seduces before? I don't recall the conversation exactly proving they'd only met for the first time in the gym...

I think we have to rule that out. Their character designs are completely different for one, and secondly, Shiori and the first boy she seduced broke up on what we are to assume "bad terms." If Ruka was that boy and he saw Shiori at his locker the way he did, he'd be more angry than curious.

Aaalso, on the matter of Ruka =/= boy Shiori ran off with, he seems pretty set in his Juri ZAP Shiori ways, and so I really doubt he would have gone off with Shiori, especially as there's the strong implication that used!boy would have known that she was distracting him from Juri in some way and figured it out afterwards and and and Juri seemed to quite like him as a friend or think they were all happy together PLUS Ruka has this air of superiority and detachment which would I think drop if he had been that obviously involved.

PERSONALLY. I think Ruka's an oooold Ohtori student who didn't age and didn't age while there and knows the game et cetera and then his death is actually a matter of finally growing, letting go, and finding he's physically NINE HUNDRED. And kinda dying. In a cute way. But that's both crack and off-topic.

Shiori is...insecure and bitter, basically. If Juri hadn't been kind of hung up on her and giving her slack she might actually have turned out better, as in best-case scenario being: "hey Shiori I'm ACTUALLY INTO YOU" "lafjougahfu!!!?!?!!?" "...." "that - explains a lot! right! I WILL USE YOU NOW" and some kind of SUPER JURI FAITO against this. Everything out in the open would probably have helped.

Also, she IS a romantic, and, well, she is the kind of embodiment of what makes the Million Swords of Hatred and stuff like that. The one problem Juri can't solve for her is that she's inferior to her, and so...

I'm a Juri fanboy. I adore her, even as it feels weird to about a lesbian character. As such, it would be a natural response to hate Shiori. But I don't hate her at all, even though I still want to.

I appreciate Shiori for hurting Juri, because Juri's pain makes her a character that I can identify with, which makes me more like Shiori as well because it's Juri's pain that makes me, as the viewer, happy.

This is pretty typical SKU, I think. It's disguising itself as a shoujo anime about a girl who wants to become like the prince who saved her long ago, and instead is so chock-full of symbolism and other literary goodies that we as fans are still discussing it years after it ended.

And as to Fluffy's theory about Ruka... that sounds like a fanfic in the working.

I like Shiori because I can relate to her.  I can not say I would do what she did, but I know I'm capable of it.  I know I have that side.  She's human.

I always thought of her as the quiet girl in high school who never was very popular, never had the best clothes, and was always below someone else.   

Really, I think that Wakaba and Shiori are as close as we get in Utena to "ordinary girls".

Shiori is simply one of the greatest characters anime has ever offered me. She is my favorite character of SKU, and of all anime.

Many see Shiori as this evil girl who does nothing but bring pain and misery. To be a Shiori fan, you have to understand her flaws. I relate to Shiori more than anyone, because she is HUMAN. She is the embodiment of everything you don't want to admit about yourself. She's insecure and paranoid, jealous and afraid. She's every teenage girl you will ever meet. And I accept everything she's done.

But that doesn't mean it's logical to assume that Shiori supporters hate Juri. Not true. When I bought the first DVD of Shoujo Kakumei Utena, Juri was my favorite character. I still love her deeply. But I can relate to Shiori much more. We all have a time where we live in someone else's shadow. We've all had "power" go to our head. We've all felt resentment towards someone who can be what we cannot. In hating Shiori, you are hating all that makes you human.

One thing that really bothers me is when fans of only the "good guys" try to accuse every other character of doing such horrible injustices to the world. I'm not try to bash, nothing of the sort, I'm just pointing out. I've had Anthy fans say Shiori hurt Juri, but Anthy stabbed Utena. Touga fans have called Shiori a traitor, but Touga works with Akio, and deceives every single character far worse than Shiori did. Utena fans have even called Shiori a slut for sleeping with Ruka, but Ruka was Shiori's boyfriend at the time, while Utena slept with Akio even though she was well aware that he was engaged. I have nothing at all against Utena, Anthy, or Touga; I'm simply trying to show that all characters have flaws, and trying to bash Shiori for them while ignoring them in everyone else is just ignorant.

Last edited by dollface (12-07-2009 05:57:18 PM)

ShatteredMirror wrote:

If I had grown up in the shadow of someone who'd outshone me in everything, made me feel like a pity friend even though I wasn't, and then it turned out he'd been in love with me the whole time (but too ashamed to tell me) I have to say that Shiori's behavior isn't unrealistic at all.

This is exactly the way I feel about Shiori. I think she's quite justified in how messed up she is over Juri. Neither one of them can deal with the feelings they have for each other but Shiori is neurotic about it only because Juri is MORE neurotic about it.

dollface wrote:

I've had Anthy fans say Shiori hurt Juri, but Anthy tried to KILL Utena.

I don't agree that Anthy intended to kill Utena. She gave her a painful stabbing very much away from vital organs. I think she was trying to save Utena from the swords that would have struck Utena had she beaten Akio in the duel and freed Anthy. However, Utena did it anyway. Anyway, we discussed this on another thread already. Sorry, off topic.

My main experience with Utena fandom has been on this forum and I'm happy to say that I don't see much character bashing going on here. I think it's obvious that the "evil" characters have just as much appeal to most Utena fans as our title hero. I love the complexity of all the characters.

Dani wrote:

My main experience with Utena fandom has been on this forum and I'm happy to say that I don't see much character bashing going on here. I think it's obvious that the "evil" characters have just as much appeal to most Utena fans as our title hero. I love the complexity of all the characters.

The only SKU character bashing I have seen usually occurs in fanfiction.

This forum has a number of members who have a fondness for the darker characters which is not surprising since the head of this forum has a major fixation on the darkest character of them all, Akio.

The only worthwhile reason a character should be bashed is if their existance would ruin the story.

Razara wrote:

I've seen a lot of character bashing on other forums, so I'm glad that there isn't any here. I only hope that no one makes a thread discussing least favorite characters. A war would abrupt in our quiet little community.

But I think everyone would have to pick the frog.

I hope a war never happens. A thread over least favorite characters could be interesting if it's handled well. The discussions on this forum have led me to think more about characters that I disliked initially, like Shiori. Of course, I disliked Shiori because her relationship with Juri reminded me of a relationship that I had with someone, who used the knowledge that I loved her to hurt me, and while I still don't like Shiori per se I see her as an important part of the story.