HIIRAGI SHINOA — A COMPLETE CHARACTER ANALYSIS THREAD.
i’ve made a thread about her before, but that one focused more on religious imagery and how it relates to her. here i’ll be talking about her backstory and how it might shape her character.

before we start, please MIND THE TAGS. i didn’t add them for nothing. also, you’ll notice a lot of characters being shitty in this thread, and the way they treat shinoa doesn’t reflect my opinion on them personally (well, for the most part—you’ll see later).

i’ll try to be ship-neutral in this thread (unlike last time with me pushing the mitsunoa agenda) but hey, no promises. you’re welcome to have your own interpretation, but please be respectful.

to preface, i want to say kagami’s writing of women is shit and he doesn’t deserve credit for it (namely when it comes to shinoa, mitsuba, mito, etc). however, in the event that all of this isn’t just misogyny and is actually deeper writing, here’s my attempt at breaking it down.

first, let’s talk about how the adults in her life treat her. the youngest we ever see her is in the recent chapter. i’m guessing she’s around four or five here because mahiru’s wearing a middle school uniform (so she’s twelve/thirteen).

tw // child nudity
tw // needles + injection
shinoa, a literal four year old child, is forced to take her clothes off and is strapped down to a bed. then, she has eight needles injected into various parts of her body.

during the experiment, she hears people say the demon isn’t responding and this is a failure. because she was experimented on every day, it’s likely she heard these same things over and over, leading her to believe she’s nothing more than a failed experiment.

i’ve been volunteering in early age classes since i was ten. i can tell you from experience that this age is very important for kids to learn boundaries. they learn it by accidentally touching their friend somewhere they don’t like, and then getting told off for it.

they learn it by pulling a girl’s hair, and then having to apologise for hurting her. they learn it by all sorts of small, harmless actions that later on impact a huge part of their life.

tw // needles
shinoa didn’t receive any of these lessons. from a very young age, she’s been taught that her body is something people can stick needles into, something people can dissect, something people can ‘research’. every day, she takes her-

clothes off in front of a group of adults she doesn’t know, and she lets them tie her down to a bed. the only thing she knows about boundaries is that she doesn’t have any; what she wants doesn’t matter because people who are more powerful than her are going to use her anyway.

i should also point out while she’s not the only experiment, she’s the only character we’ve seen experimented on.

tw // misogyny
(and the only character we’ve seen naked and shoved needles into, which by the way, someday we’re gonna have a conversation about the author’s portrayal of women and none of you are gonna like it.)

shinoa explains that ever since she was born, she’s lived under mahiru’s shadow; no matter what she did, her sister was always in the spotlight. everyone made everything about mahiru. no one cared about shinoa and no one would ever look at her the way they look at mahiru.

tw // physical abuse
then we get to the part where she actually talks to mahiru. her sister punches her, kicks her twice (both times she literally flew across the room), jabbed her neck and knocked her down, then grabbed her head and repeatedly slammed it against a wall.

// blood
tw // verbal abuse
she hurls insults at shinoa, telling her that her existence has no value, that she’s meaningless and that she has no will, no emotions.

… yeah. it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why that’s fucked up. but the tragic thing is that shinoa says multiple times mahiru is the closest family member she has and the only one who ‘loves’ her, so we’re meant to understood that this is what she means by love.

mahiru also says she’s going to do this to her every day, so it’s implied that shinoa suffered through these heavy beatings + verbal abuse daily. once again, i’m reminding you all that she’s four years old in this scene.

then mahiru says shinoa has ‘dirty’ dreams that are apparently so terrible she can’t tell anyone. if she’s been plagued with these nightmares every day since she was a toddler because of her demon, this is definitely going to have a huge psychological effect.

now, we fast forward four years. all the hiiragis had equally shitty upbringings, and shinoa’s was full of neglect. sometime between four and eight, she stopped living with her sister and moved into an apartment by herself.

the first time we see shinoa interact with a family member that’s not mahiru is in catastrophe at sixteen. kureto uses her as ‘bait’ to get information from guren, and even though later on it’s revealed that he’s bluffing, he still physically harmed her by grabbing her neck.

tw // rape
then, we come to the worst part of this scene; kureto literally threatens to have her raped. as in, he says that he’s willing to let his eight year old sister be raped if it means getting what he wants, and he says this in front of her while she’s STRAPPED TO A CHAIR.

tw // rape
yeah, she wasn’t ‘actually tortured’, but do i really have to explain why even PRETENDING you’re willing to let an eight year old child be raped is a bad thing? do you really want me to go there?

(this is the point where i had a breakdown. i literally had to take a break from writing because it made me so uncomfortable.)

tw // violation
again, shinoa is told that her body is not her own, it’s for other people to use; for the scientists to experiment on and for her brother to weaponise against guren.

to make things worse, this scene is followed by the reveal that mahiru ran away. shinoa says it herself, she knows her sister has abandoned her and will likely never contact her again.

this is the closest we ever get to seeing shinoa express genuine sadness; she tells shinya and guren that no one would care if she died except for mahiru. shinya and guren respond by saying they care, but she denies this and says they only see her as a replacement for mahiru.

// mahiru negativity
side note, mahiru’s response to shinoa’s situation was horrible. this woman really doesn’t give a shit.

at the age of eight, shinoa shows a mature level of awareness; she’s accepted the fact that people don’t care about her and that everyone will always prioritise mahiru over her. given how kureto is, i-

don’t think he’s ever spoken to her much beyond the interrogation scene, and since she doesn’t question his methods, it’s likely that she’s also accepted that people only talk to her when they need something from her.

however, this awareness slowly turns unhealthy; in my opinion, shinya and guren genuinely care about her, but she’s so accustomed to a life of being alone that she rejects their concern. this theory is further backed up because later in the novel guren ends up visiting shinoa-

and when he sees how miserable her apartment is (all by herself, no refrigerator, only thing in the kitchen is canned food and microwave) he invites her for dinner, but once again, she rejects him.

what’s really sad about this pattern is shinoa believing that mahiru, who abused her, loved her more than anyone, while the people who actually do care about her are just faking it.

tw // abuse
we never see shinoa talk to her father or seishiro. throughout the whole series, her family is only mahiru (who loved her, protected her, physically abused her, and then abandoned her)-

tw // rape
and kureto (who used her, tied her to a chair, and threatened to have her raped).

moving on from family, we have shikama. the first time we see him interact with shinoa is when she’s sixteen, but keep in mind that she’s had her scythe since she was eight, so this is definitely not the only time that he’s spoken to her.

in this scene, we’re reminded of how shinoa sees herself and mahiru; that she’s inferior compared to her sister. it’s also revealed the reason shinoa’s so nonchalant about horrifying situations (often turning them into a joke) is because she builds thick-

walls around her heart, not only to repress her sadness but also to keep shikama from taking complete control over her body.

// religion mention
for shikama’s interaction with shinoa, i made a separate thread for that, so you might want to check it out. but tl;dr shikama dissects shinoa’s mind and uses her emotional walls + feelings of inferiority as a tool to manipulate- https://twitter.com/seelielovebot/status/1300113242551853056?s=20

tw // violation
her, trying to convince her she wants to experience love (+ putting an uncomfortable emphasis on sex), forcing her to confront emotions she’s not yet sure of, and taunting her when she repeatedly tells him to stop.

(coincidentally, the only time the fandom ever brings up this scene is either for ‘yuunoa proof’ or ‘proof that yuunoa is onesided’. i’m begging yall to stop only bringing up shinoa in the context of yuu.)

when shinoa wakes up after being possessed by shikama, she says this. i’ll let you all draw your own conclusion.

so we’ve established the two forms of communication shinoa’s received from adults: neglect, verbal + physical abuse, and the violation of boundaries.

now, let’s talk about her social skills. i’m going to be comparing her backstory to mika, yuu, kimizuki, and yoichi’s.

mika and yuu were both abused by their parents, then adopted by the hyakuya orphanage where they grew up surrounded by other kids. then the apocalypse happened, and because there were no adults, mika and yuu had to be the ‘parents’ of the hyakuya kids since they were the oldest.

children being forced into parental roles at a young age is fucked up. no one’s denying that. but by taking care of these kids, mika and yuu learn how to socialise. they learn boundaries. they learn how to coexist with a group of people who have different preferences and needs.

granted, their social skills are awful at times because of the horrible environment that they learned it in, but there’s the basics.

then there’s kimizuki. having to care for a terminally ill child at the age of 12 is also fucked up, but by taking care of his sister, he learns responsibility. he learns how to provide for people ‘weaker’ than him, and learns how to compromise between his own needs and others.

for yoichi, watching his sister die literally in front of him screwed him up, but it taught him one very important thing: that his sister loved him so much she was willing to give her life for him, therefore he is worthy of being loved and is deserving of protection.

it also gave him extreme survivor’s guilt and a thirst for revenge, but you know, in the context of this analysis.

their traumatic experiences fucked them up in different ways, but it also either forced them to adapt to social situations or at the very least gave them an example of real human connection.

not to mention they still had someone to comfort them; mika and yuu had each other, before the apocalypse kimizuki had his parents, and yoichi had his sister. so they know how to comfort others, or at the very least know what comfort looks like.

even though shinoa’s had people who tried to comfort her, they were too late. by that point, she’d already convinced herself she wasn’t even deserving of love, and that even if she was, it’s her version of love: getting beaten up, violated, and neglected.

(also, the reason why it wasn’t too late for mikayuu to learn comfort despite their abuse is because mika and yuu lived together for four years. for the most part, shinoa lived alone.)

the result of all this is ABYSMAL. she’s extremely touchy with people she considers close (or wants to be close to), she makes insensitive jokes and uses mean-spirited humor, she airs out people’s trauma, she laughs when the scenario is inappropriate, she doesn’t-

know when to stop talking, she can’t ‘read the room’ and respond properly to others’ grief. she’s insensitive, apathetic, and dense.

or, if we’re going to use the word this fandom loves, ‘annoying’.

which eventually leads us to this. her sister is dead, her brother is evil, and her step-brother (shinya, aka the only good hiiragi in this shitshow) is literally dying.

yuu is mika’s reason to live, and mika is yuu’s. kimizuki lives to protect his sister. yoichi lives for revenge (again, not healthy). mitsuba lives in the hope that one day she can win her sister’s approval. but shinoa has nothing.

now her apathy, her nonchalance, her inability to give a shit about herself and her surroundings make more sense. if she doesn’t see the point in being alive, then she doesn’t really have motivation to do anything. she simply does things because it’s expected of her.

or, because of love.

even though shinoa’s bad at comforting, we actually see her try to comfort people twice. and there’s a recurring theme in both scenes: guilt.

mitsuba blames herself for the death of her teammates when she was thirteen, so shinoa tries to convince her that it’s not her fault because there was nothing she could’ve done.

yuu blames himself for hurting his friends, so shinoa tries to convince him it’s not his fault because this was something he couldn’t control.

it’s worth mentioning she uses reasoning to get through with them. for mitsuba there was nothing she could have done because she was thirteen and because it was her teammate’s choice to save her.

for yuu, she tells him that it doesn’t matter because all of them ended up surviving anyway, because she seems to understand his guilt stems from worry.

what i got from this is that out of all negative emotions, shinoa understands guilt the best and knows how to properly respond to it. and since she uses facts and logic as a ‘base’ for her words of comfort, we kind of get the gist that shinoa can’t rely on emotions alone.

my theory as to why is because she blames herself for her mother’s brutal death and for being unable to live up to everyone’s expectations. she’s lived with this guilt her whole life, and she’s simply telling other people what she would have wanted to hear.

but for the most part, shinoa’s love is usually expressed with actions.

a huge example is when she makes the split second decision to save mika and yuu, even though she knows she’d be betraying the JIDA. keep in mind that the humans are at war with vampires, and all the teens in owari no seraph were raised to hate vampires (for good reason, too).

plus the hiiragis are the leaders of the war, so they have a bigger reason to hate the vampires more than anyone else.

shinoa overcomes sixteen years of prejudice to save this vampire she doesn’t even know, simply because yuu is her first friend and she loved her friends more than she feared vampires. all of this in the span of literal seconds.

shinoa loves yuu, the first friend she’s ever had in her entire life. she loves mitsuba, who tolerates all of her antics and stays with her no matter what. she loves kimizuki, yoichi, shinya, guren, and her sister.

hell, i’d even go as far as saying she loves mika. i know a lot of people think the only reason she helps him is because he’s close to yuu, but when’s the last time you ever gave your blood to someone just because they happened to know your friend?

there are two key points to summarise. the first, shinoa’s been told her entire life that she means nothing. she’s worthless, she has no value, she’s a failure, and she’ll never live up to other people’s expectations.

it’s been drilled through her head since she was four and the damage is too far gone to be undone.

the second, shinoa’s had the concept of love and intimacy used against her multiple times, and this does not happen to any other owari no seraph character; it’s an experience unique to her only.

tw // rape + child nudity
from being stripped naked and experimented on as a four year old, to being threatened with rape as an eight year old, to being forced to confront her emotions before she’s ready as a sixteen year old, not a-

single adult in her life gives a shit about her boundaries.

we are familiar with the concept that the people who love us would never hurt us. but shinoa doesn’t know what love is; as far as she knows, love and pain are two things that go hand-in-hand.

love is your sister throwing you across the room to ‘toughen you up’. love is your brother tying you down to a chair ‘for your own good’. love is everyone ignoring you because you’ll never be anything more than hiiragi mahiru’s shadow.

but despite all this, she still manages to help her friends. she saves their lives, she’s there for them when they need her, she prioritises them often at the risk of compromising herself.

and i think we can all agree if hyakuya “i hate everyone except yuu” trusts her, then that must be a testament to how good of a friend she really is. or at the very least, how hard she’s willing to try for the people she cares about.

massive thank you to everyone who helped with this! leo ( @okumurinne) for providing light novel pictures, satomi for context, nada, yury, and iris for dealing with my breakdowns, and the (honking horns) gc + psychoanalysis gc!

thank you to everyone who has made it this far <3

// end of thread.