by katimus_prime Tue Sep 17, 2013 8:05 pm
Hnnn, running out of words, here, but your response was great, RD!
(Also, check your PMs when you get the chance? I heard back on that ticket I put in.)
I'll post something more worthy of this thread when I can brain a little better.
Edit: Yay, brain. I reread the Shion essay and reply so that they were both fresh in my head. Wallpapering my disclaimer here that I have a whole lot of unpopular opinions, so if I step on toes, I don't mean to.
I honestly didn't realize how much mud was being flung at Shion until I stepped out of my little Ormus fangirl corner. I thought she was awesome from the get-go and then life kind of kept punching her in the face. Science genius girl invents killer robot woman and they save the universe forever from the spooky ghost aliens! was the headline I took away from the first couple seconds I spent with Xenosaga, but it's never just the headline, especially not in a Takahashi story.
It's established very early on that Shion has had a lot of trauma going on in her life. Episode I shows us a little bit, but a lot of it is revealed in 2 and 3. There's not a whole lot of time for Shion to sit and cry in Episode I because a lot of it was setting up the universe and introducing the rest of the characters. Something Episodes 2 and 3 sort of slip on reminding the audience is Shion's compassion. It's not that she loses it, but there is a lot of time spent hammering the point of how compassionate she is toward KOS-MOS, the other Realians, her peers and even the people she doesn't really have a need to be compassionate toward (long meaningful look at Andrew Cherenkov).
Her complete in-the-dark about Allen's feelings for her kind of takes two to tango. Shion is dead set on her work or what's she's trying to accomplish to dull the pain of the enormous amount of junk life has dumped on her, and Allen isn't very assertive at first at making his feelings known, and that isn't Shion's fault. The fact that she does snap out of the Zomg, Kevin, you're still alive! bit was brought to us in part by Shion acknowledging Allen's feelings for her (albeit a little hastily for story pacing, but).
Re: Shion's outfits, I was a little disoppointed when Shion lost her glasses, but that's only because I'm also a glasses girl. She lost a little bit of her Velma Dinkley, but I didn't think either of her newer costumes were crimes against anything. I liked her Ep 2 outfit because it was something I could see a civilian wearing, and it was really flattering. Her Ep 3 getup was more fanservicey, but it didn't really bother me all that much.
Re: Questioning Shion's intelligence, as an emotional person myself, having been through some junk and back, there is a VERY broad distinction between intelligence and emotional reaction time in intense situations. It's easy to sit in thought and plan your day, but nothing always goes as planned outside of your head. It really depends on the person, but a lot of the time, intelligence has nothing to do with handling extremely stressful situations after you lose your cool. I know I act purely on survival instinct when I've been backed into a corner, and when I've been pushed past my limit, I've done some really dumb shit to just get out of the situation I was in. There was one goal, and it was to run. Rational thought didn't enter into it, and kind of couldn't. When people think of intelligence, they're not really grasping on what kind of intelligence there is. Most people confuse it with booksmarts, but there's situational intelligence, social intelligence, logistical and mechanical intelligence, and countless other things to consider. When your heart has been busted up as badly as Shion's has, the expectation of rational thought 100% is a little unfair.
She's no yuki onna, but I really still love my Robot Guidance Councillor in general. She's the most composed in Ep 1, but stuff doesn't break her open until later. It might be a bit of a bad look, but I still like her. She made enough of a positive impression on me to negate anything else.
