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Originally Posted by haguruma

I doubt that a middle school or high school in Nijima would actually produce a year book in the early 1980's, but yes, there should at least be a commemoration photograph of the class at the very end of each year and it was a time where people actually would already take pictures on a daily basis.

I'm not a Japanese expert however the school owning a book with all the photo of the students for each year is something like a given in many anime/manga and they handle it like something that had started to be done by quite a lot of time.

Sort of like a record of the students in the school.

Though, of course, I don't know if it's a standard procedure.

Originally Posted by haguruma

Yet, what does that prove?

Merely that Shannon's look should have been known with a certain degree of precision since tehre were photo of her. Sure, she could have been wearing padded bras in the photo as well but her facial features should be the same.

Things are different for Kanon as we've no idea if there were pictures of him so to the people of Prime his look could have merely be what Jessica's classmates who saw him at the school celebration told the media.
As, interesting enough, Kanon is shown wearing a coat those collar partially covered his face it can be they didn't manage to take a good look at him.

Originally Posted by haguruma

The only alive people who could have commented on the Shannon who was on Rokkenjima on October 4th and 5th 1986 are a mad woman who's stalked by paparazzi and an amnesiac with a head injury. The one would not comment on whether this was the Shannon from the stories, the other probably could not.

Well, in the beginning Eva wasn't mad or stalked by paparazzi. Also Shannon's classmates could comment about the picture if the news were to spread a picture that's different from the one of Shannon.
But I'm not sure what you mean.
The look of the Shannon in the forgeries was likely never that detailed. probably they contented themselve with saying she was a pretty yet a big clumsy girl whose breasts attracted Battler's interest.

Originally Posted by haguruma

Going by the story told in EP7, Shannon is exactly NOT who people saw her as. Shannon was a model servant who finished her chores and kept a smiling face, Yasu was too clumsy to even keep her own set of keys together. So Yasu became a witch and left to the golden land, but somebody needed to stay, because the person him/herself couldn't actually just go away and live there, this slot became filled with Shannon, the ideal servant.

The Shannon of Ep 7 in the beginning seems very much a fantasy creature. She's simply perfect and, although she talks with people they never answer her. If I'm not wrong she's also said to share her room with Yasu yet Yasu had the room all for herself... which means Shannon wasn't really counted like someone different by Yasu by the other servants.

Originally Posted by haguruma

The problem is, Gohda likely knew from a certain point on and I wouldn't be surprised if Jessica knew as well and the truth we are supposed to draw from the stories is a lot more messed up than "ingenious disguise fooled everybody", yet Battler could have easily been tricked, as he only knew Kanon for 1 1/2 days at most (depending on wen Kanon 'vanished').

Jessica knowing the truth would create two possibilities:
- Jessica didn't love Kanon and it was all fantasy
- Jessica knew Shannon was Kanon but loved him/her all the same. Therefore likely Jessica believed Kanon to be a girl and wouldn't expect certain stuffs from him/her as Yasu instead seemed to dread

Gohda knowing the truth would create the following possibilities:
- Gohda would, for unknown reasons, hide the truth to Natsuhi, who's hiring him
- everyone on Rokkenjima is aware Shannon is Kanon, Natsuhi included but they had allowed Shannon to play crossdressing for years for unknwon reasons
- everyone minus Battler is aware that Shannon is Kanon but they're covering it up for unknown reasons

One of the above possibilities is, of course, possible (in fact my theory includes one of the above) but there's no proof beyond 'it's hard to think they didn't notice'.

Originally Posted by GoldenLand

The stories themselves (and presumably the message bottles too) don't really go in for much by way of physical descriptions of the characters, so there's no real way to check to see if the "real" Yasu-Shannon looked more like Kanon or Shannon. There isn't actually any reason to suppose that she looked more like the pictures we were shown of Shannon than those of Kanon. But I'm pretty sure that her real appearance won't have been a blonde as in the manga version of her, or had any obvious Italian visual characteristics, although she may well have had long hair.

The real problem with details like hair colour are that the visual novel couldn't care less about them. Probably nearly none of the characters had the hair colour we saw but if we accept this it means nearly none of the characters we saw is 'real'. With Yasu's 'real' look I mean the look Yasu would have if she could have a character design of her own. And the manga implied that her character design would include her having long blonde hair with a fringe which makes her different from Shannon that has short brown hair or Kanon that has short dark hair.

Originally Posted by GoldenLand

Come to think of it...assuming she really did go to the festival, even if Yasu was no longer going to school at the time of the last conference or so, wouldn't there be a really high chance of people she used to go to school with being students at Jessica's school? If she went along to the festival, going in a disguise other than "ordinary Yasu-Shannon but with no fake boobs and wearing a big coat" would be a good idea, if only to spare Jessica's pride. Because really, why would Jessica invite so much ridicule upon herself as to risk people going "Oh hey, Sayo, it's been ages" to the person introduced as Jessica's boyfriend? Going by that, presumably however the Kanon who went to the festival looked is not the most like her usual appearance.

*nods* that would be embarassing... not mentioning Jessica would probably know about her total lack of breasts in addition to knowing she's not male. And she were to pursue him/her regardless not only it would clash with the idea that Jessica supported the George/Shannon relation but would also make her a person who knows a lot about Yasu and yet accept Yasu for how he/she is.

Originally Posted by Renall

There's probably only so many ways you can turn things into servant names in the peculiar manner they do on Rokkenjima. Why couldn't there have been multiple Shannons?

I mean at worst you'd have people who would go "Oh, yeah, there was a Shannon... but that was when I worked there in the 1970s, this must have been a different Shannon." This would be easily backed up by the fact that, you know, Model-Shannon would still be alive somewhere. However, I don't think that would be taken as "proof" that the Shannon of 1986 didn't exist or anything; they'd just assume there was a different person who happened to have that servant name. It can't be that uncommon, especially if two servants working in different years were to have reasonably similar real names. It's not like they retire the names like sports jersey numbers.

There could have been of course 2 different Shannon but I don't think the Ushiromiya would have want to have 2 Shannon at the same time as it'll be unpractical.

"who did it?"
"Shannon."
"Which one?"

If there was a Shannon that acted as a model this would mean that at some point Yasu switched her name from whatever-on to Shannon. And as names are given, not chosen and it's also said the kids from Fukuin weren't happy with them, I'm not sure she would have been allowed by Natsuhi to do so.