VN Talk: Variable Barricade - Part 3: Shion

This week, I'm continuing with the second love interest I played from Variable Barriacade. Spoilers will be coming further down after the break.

Shion was surprisingly close to being my first pick of the game over Nayuta, if not for the fact I went through that rationalization process on who made the most sense from Hibari's point of view, and that's a funny thing because going into the game, he was the guy I was least interested in. Ichiya was the flirt, Taiga was the foul-mouthed rough around the edges guy, and Nayuta was the happy-go-lucky bundle of energy. Though they aren't flat characters, most of the cast falls into certain archetypes.

Except for Shion. Even the opening movie tags him as "The Daydreamer," which doesn't really fit him at all, since that's implying he's always thinking about what doesn't exist.

My first impression of Shion as a character (outside of the fact that he's supposed to be an extremely beautiful man) was that he was surprisingly insightful. He ordered Nayuta to get him a drink, which Nayuta did, complaining all the way, and while Nayuta was gone, Shion spoke to the other guys about stuff that Nayuta should not hear. When Nayuta came back before the conversation could finish, Shion told him he didn't get the right drink and sent him out again (which Nayuta did, because he's a nice guy).

Shion might be the prettiest pretty boy in the game, but that doesn't mean he lacks a brain, and it was Shion's ability to read people that caught my interest. His flaw (aside from being unemployed like all the rest of the guys) is that he has always been a kept man and never worked a day in his adult life. Instead a string of patrons kept him housed and fed until he eventually ended up in the suitor competition for Hibari's hand.

It's understandable that Hibari, as heir to a high-powered company, would not want a freeloader for a husband, but because of Shion's intelligence and general sense of shrewdness, I figured that even if he wasn't conventionally employed, he could still be an asset to her and her company as a second set of eyes and ears when it came to meeting people and making decisions.

Alas, that's not the route the game decided to go, and while I found myself sympathetic to Shion's lifestyle and his desire to maintain it (he makes it clear that he considers it a give and take relationship and essentially centers his life around his current patron), I did not like how his route chose to go about it, making Shion ultimately my least favorite love interest in the game.

So what happened? Where did it all go wrong?

Well, his route is a little meandering, and then leads up to a finale that felt atmospherically romantic but that I couldn't agree with. Variable Barricade's love interest routes (after the common route) are not that long, essentially being two acts. So there's not a lot of time to build secondary plots because there needs to be a big moment at the end of each act, the latter of which needs to be the route finale.

The first half of Shion's route spends a lot of time building up his backstory as a child model and a young fan of his who wants to be a model for the same photographer before he gets too old. Ru, the boy who wants to be in the same "angel" series that Shion was in, is a particularly manipulative boy, and Shion knows it. (Perhaps game recognizes game?)

Aside from all the narrative reasons Shion has to dislike Ru, I dislike him on account of not being a terribly realistic child character, to the point he arranges for a photographer to "surprise" Shion at the museum where his most famous photograph is being displayed. Ru even gets himself photographed along with Shion to make it look like they're associated with each other; all to raise his public profile and (he hopes) increase his chances of working with the famous photographer Claude Leclerc.

When Ru isn't being a manipulative brat, he's supposed to be sympathetic because, you know, it's his dream to be a part of Leclerc's angel series, and what's wrong doing everything you can to fulfill your dream? So Hibari and Tsugumi end up cutting the kid a lot of slack. I sided with Shion on this one more. He knew Ru's personality wasn't what Leclerc was looking for in an angel model and sometimes them's the breaks. (Apparently Ru's desire to pose specifically to please the photographer is too strong and won't produce the more candid results Leclerc wants.)

But annoying Shion, and a lesser degree Hibari, isn't really romantic, and Hibari finding a marriage partner is the main plot. So for romance we have Shion gradually trying to achieve intimacy with Hibari. Being reasonably good at assessing a person's character, Shion knows that Hibari is someone who will work herself to the bone if necessary, and because she is heir to the Tojo family fortune, this is likely to happen someday. He decides that it will be his responsibility to carve out a safe haven for her, so that when she comes home she'll have a place where she can relax and be pampered before going out into the world again.

It's not a bad goal for the prospective spouse of a high-powered woman. But he's a little weird about it. I get that Hibari's not inclined to be touchy-feely given the courtship circumstances, but Shion convincing her that spending a little time hugging each day is a healthy way to decompress is a little strange. Even if he's right about hugging being healthy, it's just such a flimsy excuse and you get the impression that Hibari recognizes that, but just likes the hugging more than she cares to admit.

Shion also proclaims that he is going at Hibari's pace, letting her choose how fast they'll go, which he seems to mostly do, until one specific scene after the final act has begun.

Hibari and Shion are on a date when she finally brings up the big issue that's been bothering her this whole time; that Shion doesn't have a job and has no intention of getting one. Though he's happy to care for her like a second butler, that's not what she's looking for in a husband. After all, she's the Tojo heir and she has to think about how this will look. Shion initially says that him being unemployed doesn't matter as long as the both of them don't mind, but the thing is, he's saying this to a teenage girl who has been pressured all her life to be the Tojo heir. It's not like she can just dump all that formal upbringing to say she doesn't care what people think, she'll marry him anyway. Her life has been all about maintaining appearances!

Since Shion modeled before and is implied to have the chops to do it again if he felt like it, she suggests that he give it another go, but he's not interested. If he modeled, it would just be because Hibari wants him to and not because he wants to, which is fair enough.

I thought this was a really interesting dilemma that most otome don't get into. What happens when the needs of two lovers clash even though they like each other? There is no outside force involved. She wants him to get a job, he doesn't want to work.

Alas, this is where Shion lost me.

Shortly after this argument, Shion starts spending a lot of time out of the house. So much so that Hibari isn't given a chance to apologize to him, because even if she wants him to get a job, she realizes the implication of her words was that he isn't good enough for her, and that's not the impression she wanted him to come away with.

It turns out that Shion has taken up modeling again, and at first I was happy. I thought after seeing how important it was to Hibari he decided to give it another go and see if it was something he could seriously do. But he spends the vast majority of his time away from home, even standing up Hibari for together time only to text her after bedtime to say he's not coming home, which is obviously making her miserable since she can't see him.

Strangely, though characters do text in this game, she never texts him during all of this, when I would have been lighting up his phone every hour when he stood her up without explanation (because I would have been asking if he's running late, if something happened on the set, etc.). People with very busy professional lives can still swing a courtship (and a marriage) with good communication skills.

At first I thought the two of them just needed to sit down and have a talk about the expectations of Shion's modeling job. Long days might be necessary while on a particular assignment, but because he clearly won't have to do this for a living, he could take jobs less frequently allowing for more together time in between. But no, the long hours aren't because of the job. It's because he wants to punish Hibari for suggesting that he get one.

During a late night conversation with Taiga, Shion reveals that he was going to give Hibari all the time she needed, but after that job argument, he decided he wasn't going to wait anymore and instead make Hibari miss him so much she finally realizes how much she needs him. And if that's not a dick move, I don't know what is.

He lays it on even thicker later in the act, telling her that he's doing all this for her so he's going to accept a modeling job overseas so he can be worthy of her. First, that's really twisting the knife in, making her think that this is all her fault. And second, that also breaks one of the rules established earlier in the game, that leaving the home for an extended period of time would be considered a withdrawal as a suitor. While it could be argued that in the heat of the moment Hibari didn't think about it, I suspect it's more the writer(s) forgot, since the character who'd most like to toss Shion out of the competition (Kasuga, the butler) doesn't bring it up in the next scene, and Kasuga seriously dislikes Shion's effect on Hibari.

All this leads up to the climax where Hibari begins freaking out because Ru tells her that Shion will be kissing another lady in the commercial he's filming. (Of course Ru is in on the whole thing because he wants that referral to work with Leclerc.) Hibari runs downtown to where they're filming so she can tell Shion her feelings, and the scene would be fantastic with the Christmas setting and other guys trying to help her along, but it felt so fake knowing that Shion had engineered all of this.

Even worse, when she finally gets to him and has trouble spitting it out, he takes out a little something to help her speak. It's the lip gloss from the cosmetic commercial he's filming and he puts it on her lips. I thought it was going to be the his and her perfume they got earlier in his route, since the different scents are supposed to combine like sharing a secret with each other, but the lip gloss?

Hibari finally makes her confession, and it's great, perfectly in character as she tells Shion that he belongs to her. It's everything he wants, and she wants. And then we find out that the camera was rolling the whole time and that was the commercial, which is why Shion had to use the lip gloss! Hibari is… annoyed by that, but her face is not seen on camera in the final cut of the commercial so she deals with it.

Oddly, she is not upset by Shion's crazy manipulation of her feelings. Perhaps she agrees that without that push she wouldn't have recognized her feelings for him, but I didn't care for it.

I was hoping Shion's After Story would cover how Shion would integrate into her life going forward, given that he quits his modeling job and is clearly going back to the life of never working again (Nayuta's After Story had him being introduced to people as her fiancé after all), but there's nothing of the sort. Hibari might have decided that his lack of employment ultimately didn't matter to her, and shouldn't matter to anyone else (her grandfather clearly didn't mind, given that he chose Shion for a suitor), but it just felt lazy not to address it in some fashion.

There are endings called "Another Ending" if the player gets to the finale and does not have enough romance with her prospective partner, and I have to say I like Shion's version of this a lot better. In Another Ending with Shion, Hibari suddenly notices all the people around her, the director and the film crew, so she doesn't spout her confession to Shion and flat out ruins the commercial. In fact she ends up using her family's influence to brush the entire thing under the rug. Shion goes on to continue his modeling career overseas and he and Hibari mutually seem to have decided to keep the relationship, but spend some time apart for their own good. And though it sounds like a downer, it actually feels like a healthier ending for both of them.

Finally, because I'd written about a biracial love interest written well not too long ago, I figured I'd mention that Shion is half-French. Shion is an example of the biracial background used as mild flavoring rather than an integral part of his character. This is something he just mentions and the subject matter never comes up again. None of the other characters acknowledge it, or even comment on the fact he speaks flawless Japanese for someone who has only recently arrived in the country. He doesn't act like a French guy living in Japan, but a Japanese guy who has always lived in Japan.

For her part, Hibari never thinks "I wonder if he acts this way because he grew up in France." Given that all of Hibari's suitors are supposed to have something she lacks, it would have been nice if Shion had an international worldview to bring to the table. Oddly enough, the worldly advisor and international traveler vibe that I expected from Shion showed up in Taiga. His route's next week!