Kanon - Shiori Misaka Route & Character Discussion

Discussion topic for Shiori’s arc & character in Kanon. Feel free to discuss anything from the route, but mark any comparisons to events outside of her arc and the common route with the [spoiler] tag. Her arc refers to episodes 16-18 of the 2006 anime. For all intents and purposes, Shiori’s route commences from the 18th of January onwards, but feel free to refer to earlier events relating to her character as well. Her birthday is the 1st of February.

This topic also hosted Kanon Bookclub discussion from this post onward, and was referenced in our Shiori Route Podcast.

What would you rate this route?

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Real talk though, I haven’t even read the Kanon VN yet, but Shiori is the best damn character in the series to me. Her story feels so real, so tragic, even for a Key game. That reality of knowing there’s nothing you can do but try to help her make the most of her time left while clinging on to the hope of a miracle… Best arc, and a really great character too. The way she’s always doing her best to ease the burden she’s placing on everyone else, smiling until the end, is as tragic as it is beautiful.

I can’t wait to read her route for real.

Shiori is an okay character. She’s pretty normal and harmless, but she is also quite interesting. She has accepted her imminent death, and her mentality is more open and positive as a result. However, her attachment to Yuuichi near the end of the arc, as well as her sister distancing herself from her, leaves some regret in her heart. She knows she can never be with Yuuichi forever, leaving her hopeless and miserable. Her arc is pretty tragic, and I think it’s the only arc in the anime that isn’t resolved. I haven’t seen the ending in the visual novel (stupid sex scene in the way), but I still liked how it handled things.

Shiori’s not my favorite character (that honor still belongs to Ayu), but she still has a place in my heart from the anime’s ending. :slight_smile:

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Hey remember when I just took a bit shit in the Mai thread a few days ago, saying ‘I like this route less every time’?
MEANWHILE, AT SHIORI.

I like this route more every time.
Aspi is a jerk and already stole my thunder though, what can I even say that he didn’t…
OOOH. Best Romance, the route absolutely has the best Romancing in Kanon, I feel it’s part of the reason why the Anime blew this route somewhat compared to the others, they couldn’t make the romance explicit and it lost a few points.

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And to this day I still enjoy ice cream in freezing weather.

Best girl.

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[quote=“Bizkitdoh, post:5, topic:857”]
And to this day I still enjoy ice cream in freezing weather.
[/quote]Is it vanilla ice cream?

When I first watched the Kanon 2006 anime I thought that Shiori was annoying as hell and I couldn’t stand her.

However, for some reason in the visual novel her character is so lovely and her route is one of the better ones in Kanon and it’s quite nice (albeit a tad dragged out).

What about the option to just kiss her? you can skip all the sex scenes other than Nayuki.

That and the ctrl key.

[quote=“HeliosAlpha, post:8, topic:857”]
What about the option to just kiss her?
[/quote] I couldn’t find an option like that. Is it on a specific day? Maybe I could try and get to that point and finish the route…

[quote=“HeliosAlpha, post:8, topic:857”]
you can skip all the sex scenes other than Nayuki.
[/quote]Yeah, I learned that the hard way. XP

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Ah, I see. I kind of stopped right there. Thanks. I’ll finish the route today. :slight_smile:

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Oh, wow. I completely forgot about the text and voice glitches in this route. XD

Something interesting I noticed during the ending is that Shiori mentions the possibility of someone dreaming about this ideal ending, using their final wish to make it come true. If that is true, then does that mean that Ayu’s final wish is the reason Key Magic exists in the world of Kanon? I thought those wishes could only be fulfilled within Yuuichi’s ability. Interesting…

Great route nonetheless. It’s well-written, quite enjoyable if a bit long (kind of got Return of the King ending syndrome there), and it’s the source of one of my favorite quotes in the game:

XD

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That sentence just made me realize something… Shiori’s character is the kind that you don’t see happening very often in Japanese media anymore. The whole deadpan-snark style of hers is something that is now usually relegated to side characters.

Totally agree with Kanon. One of the few Key routes that actually gave a damn about the romance. I wish I could see more of those :<
Didn’t the anime have some romance in it though? I don’t know, I haven’t seen it in 8 years.

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The anime didn’t have any romance between Yuuichi and Shiori (which was a shame because the romance between them was what made Shiori’s arc so great in the visual novel and so lame in the anime) since all of the romance was left for Yuuichi and Ayu

https://twitter.com/ZEN_KAMURO/status/561853771509030913/photo/1 based ZEN delivers

(oh I guess I should post this on the fanart thread as well)

Bookclub discussion begins from this post onward!

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I finished this route with quite some time left before the podcast. Hopefully I’ll be able to discuss more actively your posts this time. :relaxed:

First things first. Someone (sorry for not remembering) told me that Shiori would be the best girl for me once I read her route, and he wasn’t wrong. What I liked the most of this route compared to others is how Shiori looks like a pretty normal character. She is not abnormally shy, not abnormally outgoing, not abnormally childish. She is just a standard girl, which helps for the rest of the route to feel more credible.

It is because of this that the early part of the route feels a lot more relaxed compared to the a bit more hectic life of Nayuki’s and Mai’s, and way calmer than the havoc caused by Makoto’s pranks.

The route evolves, as I said, calmly, with not many surprises, but there is always that mystery lingering around: what’s exactly the matter between Kaori and Shiori. Are they truly sisters? Are they not? Did something happen between them?

Then the truth is unfolded. Shiori is to die in two weeks and Kaori knew it, so she distanced herself from her own sister because she couldn’t withstand the pain of having to see her die.

Here is where we see two different approaches to the situation. Either you pretend Shiori never existed or keep on hanging out with her as if no one knew she had two weeks left. One might think that Kaori’s approach is plain selfish, and it might be true, but in my opinion her actions are justified. She was broken to hear that her sister was about to die, so much that she denied the fact to the point of completely erasing Shiori from her life.

Yuuichi, on the other hand, thought that if she only had two weeks left, those should at least be the two best weeks of her life, and went out with her, trying to do anything he could to make her happy.

If I have any complaint about this route is that I would have liked to be shown more of Kaori’s and Yuuichi’s inner thoughts in this kind of indirect way. Like when Shiori stopped coming to see Yuuichi at lunch break or when they ended up eating together that monstrous Jumbo Mix Parfait Deluxe which cost 3500 fucking Yen.

Anyway, on a side note, I wanted to add another fact about how Akiko is God: she is omniscient.

Both this and her “Is anything wrong with her?” prove her to be a divinity. Either that or her job involves spying on Yuuichi.

Going on with Shiori’s story, a question prompted when I discovered her suicide attempt. She knew that she had just three weeks left. She was sad because she didn’t have life time to do all the things she wanted to do. Then, why does she want to commit suicide?

My guess is that she really didn’t want to do anything. Going to the same school as her sister and wear the same uniform is not something she really wanted to do. It was after the whole Ayu-Yuuichi-Shiori scene that she realized that happiness can be found in the smallest things in life, like an unexpected crash/encounter, or an afternoon spent window shopping with someone you love.

From there on, she thought, like Yuuichi, that since she only had three more weeks left, she might as well life them to the fullest.

Then we have the ending. Once again, the ending doesn’t clear things up completely. Did Shiori die? Did she survive? This time I’ll say that she lived. When she collapsed by the fountain, she didn’t truly die, maybe she fainted and was brought to the hospital. Then, after some time, she somehow (miracles/KEY magic) recovered and came back to her life as Yuuichi’s girlfriend.

While it’s true that this miracle wasn’t bound to happen since it is set that it is certain that Shiori had to die at around her birthday, the miracle isn’t too far fetched as the ones in Mai’s route or in Makoto’s route. It is rather like (Nayuki’s route ending spoiler) when Akiko is in hospital in a pretty bad condition but still recovers. Very improbable, but not imposible and doesn’t truly involve any magic.

Overall, I rate this route a 4. While I enjoyed it and the main heroine was of my liking, it did not strike me as hard as to give it a 5. In fact, Kanon’s routes haven’t been all that striking to me overall, but that will go in another post after we end the bookclub.

I’ll post something more afterwards if any ideas come to mind, and of course I’ll come back to your thoughts to give my opinion of them!

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Let me start by saying that I absolutely love Shiori’s character. She’s so snarky! So down to earth! So adorable! I honestly never had a standout favorite girl for Kanon, but I think Shiori might have snuck her way into first place (or at least a tie with Ayu). Also, I really like Kaori, so points there as well.

The most interesting section here is the attempted suicide scene. A lot of things really struck me as interesting about it. First off, Shiori had already been diagnosed as terminal, but she didn’t seem to be in any serious pain. It really makes me wonder what her motivation was. Did she feel miserable because of Kaori ignoring her? Did she just want to feel pain to help her deal with her emotions about death? Or did she want to have a measure of control in her final days, not letting her illness get the last word? I get the sense that even Shiori doesn’t know why she wanted to do it, and that feels rather realistic given the circumstances.

This route really made me think about the concept of “living each day as if it was your last.” I’ve always found that interesting, and I can’t help but wonder how I would want to spend my remaining time if I knew my days were numbered. Would I want to do something dramatic and new to pack all of the excitement of a lifetime into a few short days? Would I want to resort to familiar places and people to remember the best days of my life? Or would I want to simply carry on as if the end was not coming, accepting my mortality but not letting it have power over me?

Shiori’s route dives right into this question and gives us her answer: she wants her final days to be the normal life she never had. She wants to go to school. She wants to have a boyfriend. She wants to kiss in her favorite place. She wants to spend time with her sister. She wants to spend her final days smiling like everything is fine. In a way, it’s kind of beautiful and it certainly reflects a cultural admiration of a quiet life.

Now I’m going to get a little philosophical. When is the turning point? Ultimately, we’re all going to die. No one lives forever. But when do you shift from living for the future to living like your days are numbered? Should you literally wait until you know when you are going to die? Is life more fulfilling if you treat every day as precious, or does that sort of attention become exhausting? Is it good enough to live life normally but occasionally assess your goals in the context of your own mortality? I really don’t know. I feel like retirement is our cultural answer to this question: you work for tomorrow until you can afford to live for today. But it seems somewhat backwards that we squander our youth in toil so we can bask in the misery of age (though I may be biased because my career path has no age limit, with a few of the magnates of my field still working past age 100).

What are your thoughts? How would knowing that you are going to die change the way you live? Should the way you answer that question impact the way you live without that knowledge?

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