like a star, like a firefly

With all the defences and analysis I wrote about Shiori on Tumblr, it was fairly inevitable that I would get an ask about how I felt about her movie incarnation. Here's the response I made to it about 5 years ago.

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Weird as it may sound, I like movie!Shiori as well, even though she's undoubtedly a worse person than her series counterpart (which means that there's certain differences in my fondness for the different versions of her). I guess some people might expect me to be pissed at how the movie turns my favourite character into more of a villain, but I don't actually feel that way at all -- perhaps because I actually watched the movie before the series. I do wonder if the movie characterisations were influenced by fans' perceptions of the series, though; not only is Shiori the "witch" the fandom thinks she is, but Juri is also the noble, princely character the fans want her to be, Touga is a hell of a lot nicer... the list goes on.

I think something important to bear in mind with regards to movie!Shiori is that she's coming from different circumstances. Part of the mess that's between her and Juri this time round is the fact that her childhood "prince" died, which she holds against Juri big time because she's the one whom Touga died saving. I actually see a slight role reversal between the girls in the movie, not totally unlike what happened with Anthy and Utena; in the series, Shiori was the one wanting to connect with Juri again while Juri kept begrudging her for her past "betrayal", whereas in the movie, Juri's the one who wants to break free of her past while Shiori goes out of her way to try holding her back.

That's the crazy thing about movie!Shiori; not only is she unable to move on from Touga's death, but she doesn't want anyone else moving on from their past troubles either. It's the reason why she manipulates Juri, I think it's the reason why she goes after Anthy and Utena as a car in the climax, and she might even have been trying to pull it on Touga as well. Having just said that, though, I'm having a bit of trouble believing that she deliberately reminded him of his past trauma, because that would logically require her to have some prior knowledge of it beforehand; I don't think she directly knew what he'd gone through, though I do wonder if she might've noticed something not quite right with him when he was alive. [This went on to inspire my fanfic "Beneath the Surface".]

Which takes me to the other big thing I wanted to talk about: I see movie!Shiori as kind of a foil to Utena, at least when it comes to their relationships with Touga and how they coped with his death. Utena completely represses the memory of his death for most of the film, whereas Shiori acknowledges it in her very first scene; Utena eventually comes to terms with the death and moves on, while Shiori never does; and Utena sees him as a noble prince once she stops telling herself that he dumped her, whereas Shiori gets to see that he's kind of screwed-up in his own right. It's quite fascinating, actually.

One more thing I'd like to address: I recall Enokido saying in the privacy files that (movie!)Shiori would never return Juri's love for her, which contrasts with Ikuhara saying that (series!)Shiori does have her own romantic feelings for Juri. I believe the Touga factor is the key difference that dooms movie!Juri's feelings to be forever unrequieted; I think part of what fuels Shiori's bitter ranting in the butterfly scene (apart from homophobia whether it’s internalised or not this time round) is the feeling that Juri has no right to be in love with her because it's her fault (not) that Touga died. Like I already said, the characters are different because the circumstances they're coming from are different.

The tl;dr version is that while movie!Shiori loses the relatability of her series counterpart, she's interesting in her own right, hence why I like her anyway.

[The following bit was originally in a quick follow-up post, but it's relevant enough that I'll tack it on the end here anyway.]

In other news, I think way too much about backstory stuff in the movie. It may not have the running time to go into nearly as much character depth as the series, but at least I find it to be very headcanon-friendly. I really wonder if Utena and Shiori saw totally different sides to Touga when he was alive for example. And this may probably be a really selfish bit of headcanon, but I bet Shiori used to have a bit of a crush on Juri even in the movie.

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It might be worth noting at this point that I'm not reposting these things in any kind of chronological order.