Shion Yorigami:
Bottom art by Rihito
Shion Yorigami is a god of poverty and misfortune. Think Hina Kagiyama, but even more powerful, yet even less in control of her powers.
She's the other half of the main villains and final boss of Touhou 15.5: Antinomy of Common Flowers. Together they are the most disastrous, dastardly duo in Gensokyo (their words, not mine). The two are rarely seen without each other, to the point I was debating just having one article for the both of them, but there's JUST barely enough of both of them getting solo appearances to justify having two articles.
Shion is named after the Philadelphia fleabane (harujion). So, she and Jo'on are the titular Common Flowers that there is an antinomy between.
Shion, as a poverty god, has the ability to spread misfortune wherever she goes, including to herself. Thus, she's stuck in perpetual poverty and misery. This applies to everyone she comes near. Even people who seem to be doing well will suddenly make bad decisions that cost them.
Her powers can be a blessing in disguise, however: if Shion's around, you'll have no money to waste from Jo'on's influence.
But either way, people pray to other gods to keep Jo'on and Shion away, nobody worships them. Can they even be considered gods?
Shion seems more shy and morose than the fiesty, bombastic Jo'on, and she tends to cry a lot and act scared. However, she isn't truly much kinder than Jo'on is, and has no issue with robbing people in an attempt to change her fate. If you mention her poverty, she's liable to get pissed off and attack. She doesn't appear to be very smart, and she seems to be subservient in any relationship she gets into, allowing the other person to do the thinking for her while she just goes along for the ride.
She and Jo'on had a fairly dysfunctional relationship, with Jo'on acting incredibly cruel and absusive towards Shion. Eventually, by 17.5, however, they seem to have made up, and now they seem to be fairly identical in thought.
Shion was Jo'on's trump card in Antinomy of Common Flowers, where she exploited the Perfect Possession incident to create an unbeatable spellcard: "Possession Exchange: Absolute Loser". This spellcard swaps the Slaves of her and the player, forcing you to fight your partner, while Shion acts as your partner but does nothing to help and actively slows you down. With this dirty trick the Yorigami Sisters defeat everyone in their path: Marisa and Koishi, Mamizou and Mokou, Miko and Byakuren, and Ichirin and Futo.
However, Yukari Yakumo figured out what was going on, and nullified this trump card. She confronted the Yorigami Sisters with Reimu as her Perfect possessor. When the time was right, she flipped the border between Master and Slave, making Shion the possessed and Jo'on the possessor. So, when Absolute Loser was activated, Jo'on went over to Reimu, and Yukari went over to Shion. However, for some reason the possessed couldn't actually control their partners, so it became a one-on-one battle: Reimu VS Shion.
Jo'on immediately had a breakdown and started calling Shion a useless smelly idiot and saying they had already lost if only Shion could fight Reimu. Shion can never win in anything, after all.
Shion then snaps. She unleashes the full fury of her abilities, becoming the Super Poverty God. She yells out that she doesn’t care if she never wins, she's dragging all of Gensokyo down with her, including her sister. And so the final battle commences.
Ultimately, however, Shion was defeated by Reimu, and the incident was finally close to being resolved. Unlike Jo'on, Shion's powers were considered too dangerous for her to be rehabilitated, and so she was dumped at the Hakurei Shrine: because Reimu is so impoverished that Shion would have no effect!
Though, it turns out Shion actually had visited the Shrine a few times before, and in fact played a big role in Reimu's perpetual failure to turn a profit.
When the Yorigami Sisters were sent to defeat the Dream World counterparts, Dream World Tenshi proved to be more powerful than anything seen before. Shion had to activate her Super Poverty God form again to stand a chance.
However, Shion soon caught the attention of Tenshi Hinanawi, who heard of Shion's powers. As it turns out, celestials are so innately lucky that Shion's misfortune aura had no effect on her! They soon became very good friends, and went on a reign of terror so horrible that people completely forgot Jo'on did anything and thought Tenshi and Shion were the disastrous, dastardly duo who caused the Perfect Possession incident.
Later, in Wild and Horned Hermit, Tenshi and Shion somehow get Reimu to let them take over her yearly flower viewing party. Reimu hated this, but for some reason she and Marisa approved. Tenshi claimed she could make food better than anything on Earth... and proceeded to gather together a bunch of leaves and junk and crappy alcohol. The few people who attended thought it was gross, but Shion, who had been poor her whole life, thought it was the most amazing banquet she ever had in her life. The people then ate the junk out of guilt, which led to many people getting sick and vomiting.
Then Reimu agreed to let Tenshi host another banquet for some reason. This time though, Kasen prepared the food. People still got sick and vomited.
All of this was Shion's influence at work, of course. Her misfortune apparently extends to influencing people to make the worst possible decisions.
Shion thought Tenshi was gonna punish her for this, but it turns out Tenshi had fun regardless and simply hugged Shion in approval. Truly a beautiful relationship. Tenshi might be a brat most of the time, but she cares immensely for the few people she's able to warm up to.
Shion primarily attacks by shooting black-and-purple words at you. Words like "poverty", "misery", and "loss". She's also able to turn her legs to blue fire and launch herself at you like a rocket. She's also able to create a giant black and purple orb of energy, her Super Poverty Bomb (a reference to the Spirit Bomb from Dragon Ball Z). She doesn't really attack much on her own, being moreso a sidekick to Jo'on.
At least until she unleashes her Super Poverty God form. Then, her curse words spill out to even larger degrees: enough to flood the screen! She even has an ultimate attack where she sends Reimu to a pocket dimension of darkness with her appearing giant in the background, only for a white crack to slowly grow until Reimu bursts out of the dimension.
Interestingly, Shion wasn't originally gonna be a god of poverty, or really even a character, but rather "the embodiment of the Perfect Possession incident".
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