Shiho, passion, and her fear of hurting others
Helloo!! I've grown to really like shiho recently, and I want to talk about her LMAO
Shiho is mischaracterised or misunderstood a lot as a 'mean' character, liking to her sadly being one of the least liked characters in the game. This is because many people rely on how she's seen through the main story and don't look at her as a whole through her focus events. (Quite funny how 'mean' main story male characters face this issue less and people acknowledge their development...i might discuss this issue with misogyny another day...). Anyways, here is a quick analysis of her!!
Before Shiho even picked up the bass, she was a child very dedicated to perfection and doing well. Nobody told her to, but she was extremely dedicated nonetheless. This is shown in Shiho4, where she is doing calligraphy for a school assignment (something she is good at already because she does it outside of school). Despite it getting praise from her peers and her teacher, she still believes she can do better and wants to reach a level to her personal satisfaction. Because of this, she skipped on a classmates birthday party to practice and perfect her assignment after school
This line alone shows that she wants something SHE is content with. And if you know shiho, she sets the bar very high for herself (hence why she was in the 'Dreamers' world link 3 unit. Just like An, Tsukasa, and Minori, they all work extremely hard for a goal they've had since a young age)
When she gets introduced to bass, she is determined to learn well within the first time she picks it up. Love at first sight. But she's aware of how her brain ticks and is very aware that when she's focused on doing something, she has to do it well. But because of this, she declines to learn the bass as she fears hurting people around her because she knows she'll prioritise her passion over free time. Perfection, just like her sister, is an important thing to Shiho but she's worried about what it can bring. (Shizuku and Shiho have a lot more in common than you think...)
Because of this, flashforward to middle school, Shiho distances herself from Honami and Ichika. This is because her passion for bass is so strong that people think she's 'too serious', which leads to rumours about her being a mean person (cough cough...autistic Shiho is real in my eyes...). People misunderstand her completely. She isn't mean. She just wants to do things as well as she could. Because of these rumours about her, she distances herself from Ichika and Honami because spite her being able to 'handle it', she cares heavily about her friends and doesnt want them to be impacted from rumours. Your honour, she cares a lot about her friends :( she just struggled with communicating these worries and feelings.
Another flashforward to Shiho1. She loves her friends dearly, and she wants to pursue her dream of going pro TOGETHER. But she fears that they don't take that as seriously as her, which brings her a lot of conflict because she doesn't want to hurt her friends, but she wants to do her dream no matter what.
People have boundaries sometimes, and also people have dreams and the expectation of Shiho having to give up her dream just so she can protect her friends from being 'hurt' is straight up wrong and it's her dream :( god forbid she's passionate and direct with what she wants to do (I am always a shiho defender). Very happy she was direct about her feelings, because it led to them taking music seriously and yayy they went pro!! Woohoo!! Ignore the ominous Saki. Saki please communicate your feeling Saki pleas
Okay thats my little analysis over as im too lazy to type anything else 🥹
