Shf (twt)fandom can be a prison, that ship wars would exist in this fandom was to be expected considering how so many are willing to write dissertations about how "shipping Hinako with anyone (but especially a man) misses the point of the game and SHF shouldn't be one of these games to have a fandom" (welcome back MW fandom)
But the fact that there are wars between (disclaimers here, not all of them, I know not all fans of these ships are like that) Shuhina fans and Kotohina fans about which one of these dudes is worse and how fans of either faction are "treating Hinako terribly because they expect her to settle with the man who treats her like this" is the last straw
Ladies, gentlemen and those who identify as neither... might I remind you that Shu and Kotoyuki literaly have not one, but TWO scenes of befriending each other ?! Like seriously, what do you think that fist scene in FW meant ? What do you think that Shu acknowleding Kotoyuki as their comrades when he couldn't remember him meant ?!
Shu and Kotoyuki are awfully similar and the way they treat Hinako is just as similar
Both Shu and Kotoyuki are the "perfect match". Shu is the son of a family of physicians that is a pillar in the town, he is described as more clever than he appears and charismatic. Kotoyuki is handsome, polite, educated, refined and behaves as a perfect gentlemen, he is a from a powerful family and filfy rich. They are both what would be considered "the perfect match", this is even reflected in Kanta's messy apology where he talks about how he viewed them as men capable of making Hinako happy
But what's important to note is how when it comes to them, the game shows that they both makes the EXACT SAME MISTAKE in assuming how Hinako would be happy, in how it's their job to help her and protect her, to be the white knight on a horse when Hinako doesn't need that
It's not coincidence that Ryukishi talks about the both of them when he explains that Hinako doesn't need someone to walk ahead to protect her and ensure there's no danger ahead, but someone who would stay by her side and walk with her hand in hand, at her own pace. It's no concidence that it's these two specifically that are the characters who can accompany Hinako but instead of helping her, they go who knows where as a form of "protection"
They are flawed in the exact same way !! The game even uses the same ways to make us feel wary of them !! With Shu, it's in how he is taken aside with Rinko and constantly seems to be talking behind Hinako's back about something she doesn't know and doesn't tell her what it is (reflecting Hinako's constant impression of people talking behind her back and feeling inadequate in her own home). With Kotoyuki, it's how despite being courteous and kind, he is being passive to a suffering Hinako and how you can never pierce through his mask (reflecting her fear of him hiding his true face and being unable to know what he truly wants)
They both talk about her in a way that sounds equal part endearing and possessive. When Shu makes comments like "That's the Hinako I know" or Kotoyuki calls Hinako "My Hinako", there's a faint uneasiness with both, one is sounding like he was expecting her to behave in a certain way and the other, like he is claiming ownership of her. This gets to a whole new level when you get the document. I don't need to share the Kotoyuki letters because everyone already know them, do I ?
This is best examplified by their dialogue in FW
Actually, HINAKO should be the one beating you BOTH to a pulp, seriously where do I begin with this dialogue ?!
Firstly, Shu's threat to Kotoyuki goes back to how his desire to protect Hinako crosses the lines into possesiveness, something that we can all agree also applies to Kotoyuki
Secondly, when Shu calls Hinako "his Hinako", one of these "marks of endearement that crosses the lines with ownership", Kotoyuki doesn't EVEN DENY THAT since he says "she is no longer yours". He only denies that in the sense that now she is "his Hinako", meaning that instead of acknowledging Hinako has a free being prior to his possessing her, he is acknowledging her as someone who used to belong to Shu !!
And then Shu's last lines... like you know this whole deal of Hinako's name being a pun of her being both a baby bird and a doll ?
Show these lines out of context and it sounds like two kids fighting over a literal doll !!
And note how Shu talks about "if Kotoyuki makes Hinako unhappy", implying that he has to make her happy when the entire point is that Hinako doesn't want her happiness to rely on someone !!
The point of both of these guys is that they do care for Hinako and want her to be happy, but they couldn't be further from what she actually wants because they always constantly assume things such as "it's a man's job to make a woman happy, to protect the woman" with the downside being that " woman's happiness can only be granted to her by a man or else she'll remain incomplete", something that neither of them seems to realize since in the first phrasing, it's phrased in a way that places this on the men's shoulder, therefore it doesn't sound nearly as bad
But probably the biggest common point with these two is how they are both in the "I want to let Hinako choose to do these things by herself"
With the rituals, I don't need to explain, I already went over it, everyone already went over it. Instead of merely forcing her, controlling her or any variation of this behavior, Kotoyuki only plays the role of guide and lets Hinako herself make the choice of getting rid of her own agency, because he doesn't want to force her but he is still letting her do something that painful without realizing the sacrifice it represents
But with Shu, it might be harder since so many people focus on the hallucinatory effects of the kakura makakura, so let's re-read the clinical trial note together bit by bit
While I have tons of question as to what type of discussion Shu and Shu had, the commentaries about how "she clearly must not be in her right mind because why is she behaving in a way different from the Hinako I know" ties back to his commentaries about "now that sounds like something you would say" and other variations
Shu is so convinced that he knows Hinako best, as his partner, it's HIS job to set her back on train when she is clearly not doing well because she is not behaving like how she is SUPPOSED to since she has ALWAYS been behaving in this very specific pattern he knows her for...
Do I need to make it any clearer ? Shu being the son of a physician makes this sounds even more creepy considering the number of instances where woman's mental health had been used or taken as a sign they were possessed or under a spell or hysterical, but we know that Shu isn't the Hinako experts he believes himself to be. There's that one memory where Hinako is shown rejecting a dress after she talked with Shu, and while Hinako says that " it was what she wanted", we are given many hints that suggests the opposite since Hinako, as a little girl, originally didn't cared about gender before she started to get rejected by girls for playing with boys
But most importantly, Shu highlights that in giving her the kakura makakura, Hinako would still be able to make the choice herself, he is just "guiding her" to the "right decision
Much like how Kotoyuki doesn't force Hinako but only guide her and she is still making the choice, Shu is trying to do the same with kakura makakura, it's not a drug that would rob her of consciousness or appease it unlike the one he used to give her, it's one that forces her to confront her and enter an active cognitive process
Shu is literaly giving Hinako the same advice as her mom, but he isn't forcing her, she can still make the choice, he is just hoping her choice will be in a certain direction because he is so convinced he knows what she truly wants
Shu's desire to protect Hinako mirrors how Kotoyuki came to convince himself that Hinako could only become happy if she were to be his wife, how it's HIS job and no one else to make her happy, something he literaly build his identity upon as reflected by his name bearing the kanji for happiness in it
Kotoyuki too falls into the same "oh, Hinako isn't behaving like she habitually does, she must be possessed" with how in ending 3, when Fog Hinako confronts him, he reacts that way
There's also the creepiness leaping in due to how much Kotoyuki and the Tsuneki are associated to the realm of spirituality, because before the "oh she isn't acting like usual, she must have gone crazy", we had "oh she isn't acting like usual, she must actually be possesed by the demon !!" and it's something we see displayed here as well
The thing about SHF is how it plays both with japanese legends of kitsune possessing young women through Fox Hinako and how it uses the doll/ Tsukumogami as another being capable of possessing Hinako to show that in both cases, Hinako's desires clashing with the social expectations from her friends on the side and her family on the other gives everyone a possible scape goat. For the "non wedding faction" , the scape goat is Fox Hinako being the result of fox possession and spell while for the "wedding faction", it's the doll taking over Hinako. But this also allows us to see how Kotoyuki and Shu, despite not being bad person, falls prey to the exact same rhetoric despite their affection for Hinako and in fact, the game would make the argument that they are even more likely to fall prey to them in their genuine desire to protect Hinako and make her happy
That's why Hinako's fighting the both of them in the separate endings and how it's a direct confrontation of the misrepresentation these two had, in the case of Shu, it's the idea that the Hinako he knew would be dead if she choose to go a way where he isn't part of her life and how she didn't dislike being a girl but the constraint that came with it. With Kotoyuki, it's the very idea that it's his or any man's job to make a woman happy instead of letting the woman herself decide what's her happiness and come with a way of achieving it, as well as his own desires being also independance
So tell me why on earth am I seeing people claim one is better than the other ?? "Shu only wanted to protect Hinako but you all want to see her with the man who wants to rob off her liberty", "Kotoyuki only wanted to make Hinako happy but you all want her to stay with the guy who drugged her"
THEY ARE THE SAME THEY ARE THE SAME THAT IS THE POINT !!!
The cherry on top is probably how Ryukishi discussed the possibility of a lover suicide ending for Shu, SHU, and not Kotoyuki. With how openly possessive Kotoyuki is, you would expect him to get the shinju ending but no, it's freaking Shu.
The main reason why imo Kotoyuki is given a chance in ending 4 is because ending 3 demonstrated best how, despite having feelings of attraction (which are seemingly different than for Kotoyuki) for Shu and it being required, these two still don't enter a relationship, they are still behaving like kids, Shu and Hinako making fun of each other wearing clothes for a wedding reminds me of two kids making fun of them playing growns up !! That's this ending that makes me think that rather than Shu expecting Hinako to choose him, he just expected her to reject the wedding. Yes he wants to be acknowledged but in the sense that he is her partner, because he still can't bring himself to confess to her in that ending, he just congratulate her for "finally speaking her truth", which is itself worthy of lot of commentaries about how it's him yet again projecting what the "right Hinako thing to do".
But to go back on train, he precisely says "well, that's because you were brave that I decided to help you" (this is contradicted by Fox wedding) but this shows well the idea that Shu's drugging Hinako was in the same mindest of "I am not going to force her, she must make this decision by herself !... I am just going to guide her into this way" just like the rituals, he even tells her outright "I thought it was weird that you were ready to give up your life like that"
If Fox Wedding is an ending where Kotoyuki cannot learn anything because he was never confronted, FWT is another ending where Shu can't learn anything because he was never confronted, he didn't even confessed to the drug thing here because "oh well, she made the right decision in the end so there's no point in doing it right ?!"
As opposed to Kotoyuki who was thrust into adulthood and has no real sense of self, Shu's acting immaturely in ways that even clash with Hinako sometimes like that one instance where he played with her by throwing water at her but she wasn't having it, so if anything the real difference between these two is how the game considers one to be too attached to the past to get into a relationship with Hinako while the other is given the opportunity to go on a self discovery journey through reconnecting with his inner child and discovering who Kotoyuki is, in the same way that Hinako has to discover who Hinako is
That's the main reason why I think that Hinako's starting to acknoweldge Kotoyuki as a person overlaps with the game's fourth ending. All the documents related to Kotoyuki were not bearing his name, which not only indicated that Hinako didn't viewed him as a person yet but more as ghastly mask (hence how Fox mask appear as he does) but also how Kotoyuki didn't even had a real self yet, or rather how despite being called Kotoyuki, he wasn't Kotoyuki yet since he never had the chance of making his own choices
This is also apparent in how kid Kotoyuki is able to name what he wants vs Hinako only naming what she doesn't want
Whether it's before he meet Hinako or after, Kotoyuki was always able to say "I want this" as opposed to Hinako who doesn't know what she wants, only what she doesn't wants
While I'll need to check Rinko's again, I am farily sure that he and Sakuko have dedicated plans for the future as opposed to Hinako but Sakuko is the infamous case of "she wants to be a head priestess but Hinako claims she wanted to have a candy store" so when Hinako speaks of Shu's desires for X or Y carrier, I am taking it with some grain of salt.
But anyhow, the real difference between Shu and Kotoyuki isn't how they treat Hinako differently, with one being better than the other, it's in how to grow up, they have different answers. Shu's absence in ending 4 seems to suggest that in order to grow up, he needs to let go of his desire to always protect Hinako and trust her to actually make decision on her own without his intervention (hence her giving up on the pills) and accepting whatever answer without ever showing up to give his approval unlike in Fox Wedding. As for Kotoyuki, given how he still lets her go in ending 3 but that's not enough, it's precisely because giving up on Hinako isn't enough for him, he needs to let her go AND to take control of his own life.
Since Kotoyuki is actually involved in the wedding, his staying makes more sense than Shu's meddling because it was always between Hinako and Kotoyuki, making every other character interfering with it "meddlers", and once it's solved between Hinako and Kotoyuki, it can finally be solved between Hinako and her self while Kotoyuki settle things out with himself.
I get preferences and all of this but you cannot look me in the eyes and tell me one is better than the other when both fail to understand what Hinako wants, especially if your justifaction is "he just wants to protect her and make her happy" when Hinako spends the ENTIRE GAME telling us that's not what she wants or need
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