Shion Sonozaki

"I won! I did it!! I TOOK DOWN THE PEOPLE WHO KILLED SATOSHI!!!"

- Shion Sonozaki, as she "succeeds" to "kill" Rika.

Shion Sonozaki is one of the main protagonists of the Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni series, the twin sister of Mion Sonozaki, and the anti-hero of Meakashi-Hen and Watanagashi-Hen. She is a crazy psychopath who has an obsessive crush on Satoshi Hojo.

She was voiced by Satsuki Yukino in the original Japanese version, and Megan Hollingshead in the English version.

Backstory
Shion was born as the twin sister of Mion Sonozaki. Though she acts as the younger sister to Mion, Shion was actually born as the older sister, and therefore she was born with the name "Mion".

Shion and Mion switched their places when they were younger because "Shion"(Current Mion)felt it would be unfair for only one of them to attend family meetings. At the day the oni tattoo was to be applied, it resulted in the younger sister "Shion"(Current Mion)becoming the next heir.

No one but the twins themselves seemed to be aware of this. This all is not explained by the anime but by the manga. But in some parts of the anime and manga, Shion asks Mion to allow her to be the "big sister".

During two of the many arcs in the series, she is portrayed as a villain, killing off most of the other characters, excluding Reina and Oishi. Shion moved to Hinamizawa after a long time at a boarding school elsewhere in Japan. Here she found her sister, Mion Sonozaki, the only character not to kill anybody, who would have taken her in if her Grandmother wouldn't force her to torture herself for it.

After a while she was saved from a group of bikers by a boy named Satoshi Hojo, she fell in love with him, even to the point of being the assistant manager for his baseball team to get more time around him.

Her grandmother found out she was there, and that she was in love with one of the members of the "traitorous" Hojo family, she was forced to tear 3 of her nails off with a traditional Japanese torture weapon often referred to in the anime as the Nail Ripper. A while after, Satoshi goes missing. This drives her to a point of almost breaking. The thing that broke her though was when Keiichi gave a doll to Rena instead of Mion.

This caused her to go on a strategic but violent murderous rampage so that she could get revenge on all of the people who were involved in Satoshi's death. She kills her grandmother, the village chief, Rika, Satoko, Mion, and Keiichi. After she kills these people, she too ends up getting killed as she falls off the ledge on the 8th floor of the hospital she was in. Rena was the sole character who was able to survive from Shion.

Personality
Shion is often shown to be Mion's polar opposite. While Mion is tomboyish, assertive, and free-willed, Shion is more feminine, gratuitous and strict. Though this is mainly due to their different upbringings. Although she was taken out of the main house due to an error when she and her sister switched places as young children, she has a great relationship with Mion.

In spite of their contradicting personalities, Mion and Shion switch places very often, which can easily cause confusion in Chapter 2 and 4. Also, both seem to also differ in the acts of Hinamizawa syndrome.

In which Mion is the only character to never succumb to the paranoia or vicious anger that it causes (though it is debatable due to Chapter 1 using her and Rena Ryuuguu as the main antagonists), while Shion is one of the most memorable victims. She was in love with Satoshi before his "disappearance" and seems to have a crush on Keiichi due to his similar appearance.

Like most Higurashi characters, she has a very contradicting personality when under the effects of Hinamizawa syndrome, in fact, she may have arguably been one of the worse case scenarios in this instance, as claimed by fans. In her case, she develops rather severe Paranoid Schizophrenia, before full on Psychosis. With this, she is shown to be the series' most vituperative and violent character. One of her most intense moments took place in Chapter 4 (which shows the events of Chapter 2 from Shion's point of view).

In this chapter (which takes place before the 4th festival to after the 5th festival), she falls in love with Satoshi Hojo, a boy with a troubled and dysfunctional home life, and forms a love/hate relationship for Satoshi's abused little sister, Satoko. In this chapter, she is forced to be de-nailed three times due to her family's hatred for the Hojos and is put under the impression that this will free Satoshi from any curse the family places on him.

When Satoshi kills his aunt and later goes missing, Shion believes her family lied to her, which causes her to go on a warpath where she kills her Grandmother, Oryo Sonozaki, with a taser, before beating her corpse with a whip and burning her face. She then hangs her grandfather, imprisons Mion, beats and nearly kills Rika (who escapes death from Shion by stabbing herself in the neck repeatedly) all until she finally victimizes Satoko (whom she blames for bringing Satoshi to death because of her constant crying for him). It is after she violently kills Satoko, where she realizes too late that she had forgotten her last promise to Satoshi, to look after Satoko should anything happen to him. With this, Shion officially sunk below the Moral Event Horizon, and not only kills her sister but returns to Keichii to stab him in the stomach (which does not kill him).

Shion then attempts to climb to the 8th floor of the hospital where she is staying, however, she slips and falls to her death, before dying Shion sees Satoshi's face in the moonlight and apologizes to him for failing to protect his sister like she had promised him.

Appearance
As she is Mion's twin sister, Shion looks very similar to Mion. She has green long hair and teal eyes. Shion leaves her hair down and half-ties it with a yellow ribbon to differ herself from her sister. During her free days, Shion wears a white shirt with yellow jewels and a black dress. She also wears white shoes. During her school days, Shion wears a white shirt with a blue-striped tie and buttons on the shirt. She also wears a blue-black dress. While working at Angel Mort, she wears a blue-red scarf with a yellow bell and blue-white-red clothes. She wears blue-white shoes.

Shion's original school uniform is a white shirt with a red tie and a gray coat outside it. The coat has yellow buttons and an album of the school. Shion also wears a blue dress. In Matsuri, Shion's usual outfit is different than the anime. It is a brown-white shirt with a brown-blue skirt.

Weapons
Shion uses a lot of weapons in the game, the one you see her use the most is a taser that she keeps in her back pocket for self-defense. Among her others are a knife, and a boulder. She also uses an assortment of Japanese torture devices in her pursuit to get her revenge, such as a device used to tear off the nails of her twin sister Mion as well as other characters, which later became a Ritual Tool Devil known as Nail Ripper in Ayakashisenshi-hen. In Matsuribayashi-hen, Shion is shown to have access to an AK-47 assault rifle, and to be trained in its use.