Shion is portrayed as a girl who tries to overcome the tragic events of her past by "looking away from reality and truth". Takahashi compared the character's instinctive tendency to run away from things with his very own personality and mindset. A particular point he wanted to explore in the series was Shion "looking back at herself […] wondering how she should live her life". When he created Xenosaga, Takahashi made "life and death" a central theme of the story and gave each character a different outlook on it; Shion and Albedo were conceived as the two characters that eventually develop the "ideal compromise towards death".