This feels like an odd, absurd form of therapy precisely because Shiori is halfway between an imaginary friend and the Grim Reaper- Hinako's so convinced of her fantastical nature that she can finally express her true self with no fear of being pitied.
Except that forcefully confronting a person with a potential trigger for their trauma while overriding their explicit denial of consent is the worst possible "therapy". So far, I am inclined to think that Shiori is a real monster (i.e. not just Hinako's imagination), so her not comprehending the extent of Hinako's trauma is understandable in-story, but I would strongly discourage anyone to pull the same swim-or-die kind of "therapy" on a traumatized person IRL. The depiction a panic attack/PTSD episode in this chapter is scarily real.
Hence my point that she's an expression of all of Hinako's complexes and urges- both a desire to be killed and a desire to be saved. While I do agree that she's very likely not a figment of Hinako's imagination (since other people also react to her), I'd argue that she might be something like Monogatari's aberrations- an entity manipulated by psychosis as opposed to a member of an actual race of mermaids inhabiting an underground (underwater?) society. This story just seems too intensely personal for me to think of Shiori as just one part of a race of aquatic vampires- I think she has to have some kind of deeper connection to Hinako. There's also the fact that she saves Hinako from actual monsters that show up to eat her whenever her depression peaks, claiming that they're 'savage'. You could read the whole thing as a person with immense self-hate struggling between the urge to kill themselves on the spot, or to trudge on for another day. There's no neat binary between an optimistic 'I want to live' and a pessimistic 'I want to die' attitude in this case- Hinako's simply trying to choose between pitch darkness and an extremely grey ally.
In short, the story wouldn't work if there was a perfect, angelic, positive influence on Hinako's life, because then she wouldn't have ended up going all Rei Ayanami in the first place (not to mention the fact that it'd clash with the tone). The tension comes from the constant choices between rocks and hard places, between simple murderers and enigmatic torturers, and a common theme that I've found running through a lot of Japanese works about depression and angst are that there are no therapists- only well-meaning people that can't understand your pain, and similarly twisted people who get it, but might also make things worse. The only piece of Japanese media that I've ever seen a therapist in is SeaBed (which uses the novelty to reinforce the norm). All in all, the easy, cut-and-dried professionalism of a therapist in a bright room or the saccharine supportiveness of a manic pixie dream girl would never fit with the story, and seem dissonant at best and hypocritical at worst. Therefore, the dangerous, aggressive, condescending murder mermaid is Hinako's best shot at rehabilitation, not because it's a realistic way to cope with grief, but precisely because the entire world is insane in Hinako's eyes. The best thing she can do, given the circumstances, is pick the most beneficial flavour of madness and bond with her imaginary/nightmarish friend.
TL;DR- Hinako wants someone who behaves nothing like a therapist, because if Shiori sat her down and asked her to talk about her feelings (like Miko's been doing), Hinako would spit in her face and walk away. Ironically enough, this makes Shiori the best possible person to undertake Hinako's therapy, precisely because she doesn't pretend to give a shit and therefore comes off as more 'genuine' (even with her mermaid powers) than any of the faceless, real people Hinako ignores every day.
last edited at Nov 30, 2020 4:03AM
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