Shiki Ryougi

Shiki Ryougi (両儀式) is the main protagonist of the Kara no Kyoukai novels. She is a girl who possesses the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, a supernatural ability that allows the user to see the inherent mortality of everything (both living and non-living) in the form of lines. In her case, however, what she sees is the Origin of what she is observing. She assists the Garan no Do agency in handling paranormal cases when combat is required.

Background
Shiki's family, the Ryougi, are or were members of the Demon Hunter Organization. Their special skill involves creating two separate and distinct personalities within themselves. When a child is born, he or she is given a single name written in two different kanji, each one relating to each personality.

Shiki's mother and father are unnamed. While she has an older brother, Kaname Ryougi (両儀要), he was unable to manifest a second personality within himself, thus making him ineligible to succeed as the head of the family. Due to Shiki's success in manifesting her second persona and her older brother's inability to do so, she was chosen as the next head of the family and began training to do so.

When Shiki was young, her father took her to meet her dying grandfather. He told Shiki that people can only truly kill someone once in their lifetime, elaborating that those whom had killed many times are no longer human, fated to live with their guilt until their death. It is at this moment that Shiki learns to value the notion surrounding the weight and responsibility that comes with murder. Before passing away, he wished Shiki to have a peaceful death.

By the year of 1995 as Shiki reaches the age of 16, the Ryougi family had effectively retired from the task of demon hunting, becoming a family similar to the Tohnos, in that they remained as wealthy landowners. In this case, they own a large Japanese-style mansion with a grove of bamboo beyond the outer wall.

Appearance
Shiki has always mostly worn a wide variety of traditional kimonos ranging from colorful yukatas to high quality furisodes up to the age of sixteen. Despite being seemingly unremarkable, her kimono is a luxury item not apparent to the eye. The quality is revealed in the fine details, the being that she can perform high kicks while still wearing a kimono. Comments from her high school peers and prodding from Mikiya about her insistence on simply wearing extra clothing on top of her kimono caused her to buy a leather jacket, so she began a strange habit of wearing a leather jacket over a kimono during winter.

Her hair is short, and while she often used to brush her hair, it was usually unkempt after her recovery from her 2-year coma. Shiki has ink-black hair, pale skin color and black eyes described as being of "clear void". While she was known to wear wooden geta footwear as part of her casual wear, she commonly wore boots with laces as part of her default attire, especially when embarking on her assignments under the Garan no Dou agency.

While it seems that she is concerned about her attire, she does not actually care. She simply wears what she wishes, but the result ends up consistently being a kimono, laced-up boots or geta, and a red leather jacket. Her favorite outfit is the red leather jacket, but only Mikiya is oblivious to the reason as to why she loves it. She does not favor any particular red leather jacket, and insists that "I will switch to a new one if this one gets worn out".

The original concept behind Shiki was "a juxtaposition of Eastern and Western concepts", or literally "an unhomogenized compromise between the East and the West."

Pre-coma, the two personalities Shiki and SHIKI wore the same style of dress with the latter often being depicted as wearing kimonos of various warm colors. Shiki's third personality 「　」 was often depicted as having worn a light pink kimono of the furisode variety, all while lacking her signature red leather jacket despite only ever being seen during snowy nights. This third personality was known for displaying a serene and trance-like expression in all of her appearances.

Personality
Children born into the Ryougi family are generally male and are artificially induced with dual personalities, but Kaname was unable to manifest a second personality of his own. Shiki was confirmed to display the trait instead and was raised as the family head in his place, displaying the personalities of SHIKI (織), a male personality customarily called the "yang" personality, and Shiki (式), the female personality called the "yin" personality.

It is not the result of Dissociative Identity Disorder even though it is a dual personality, so it is more a matter of whose actions take priority. It is easy to tell which Shiki is speaking at a given time because they both have a distinct style of speaking, most notably that the female Shiki speaks politely and with reserve, referring to herself with the gender-neutral pronoun watashi (私), while the male persona has a brash personality and refers to herself with the masculine pronoun ore (オレ).

SHIKI
SHIKI is the personality that controls the aspect of "Denial/Negativity." He is a lost killer responsible for Shiki Ryougi's destructive impulses. He is not a pure killer, but it can instead be said that he despises his own impulses and decided to voluntarily become Shiki's subordinate personality. He has the speech and gestures of a youth. The relationship between them changes upon the entrance of Mikiya, and he decides to act as the substitute at the time of the accident and disappear.

Shiki
While feminine before the accident, Shiki, no longer able to feel SHIKI after waking from the coma, assumes that he has died and feels a detachment from her memories before the accident. She does not have a realistic sense of living, knowing that she is Shiki while also not feeling that she actually is Shiki. She hopes to regain herself and the "dead" SHIKI, and decides to put on a cold facade that somewhat resembles the male Shiki's, utilizing a course male speech pattern and "ore", and tries to act as the female Shiki. Touko understands the sense of detachment Shiki feels, and theorizes that the current Shiki is a third, new personality.

She has a cold, mean, heartless, and merciless personality, appearing to care about nothing, but she occasionally reacts in surprisingly feminine ways. Mikiya decides that if she were to be compared to an animal that it would be something like a rabbit. Due to being aware of her abnormality since childhood, being a killer who could not kill, she hated both herself and other people. Developing her cold personality as a result, she secretly wished to experience the happiness of a normal person. Her fate has changed drastically since encountering the materialization of that dream.

Due to her impulse to kill, she tries to feel a sense of living through killing, but never succeeds due to various accidents and benevolent obstructions. With her uncertain sense of living, he listlessly continues to go to Touko's office on a daily basis. Shiki declines Mystic Eye Killers from Touko, which would allow her to live a normal life free of seeing death if she were to wear them. It could be seen as a sign of how self abusive she is, or it can be called more like an episode that reflects her heart of clear water. While Touko put a large amount of money into constructing them, Shiki simply shoved them back, saying "Why should I do it to please you?" Her reasoning for declining is the same as refusing to wear the uniform of Reien Girls' Academy, in that she thinks it looks ridiculous on herself.

She can be said to occasionally behave like a "Stone-head-like stone head", evidence that she lives by feelings alone. She has an animalistic view towards other people, dividing them into two categories regardless of good or evil. Deciding based upon "those she can be with" and "those she cannot be with", she will stay with someone "she can be with" even if she hates them. Touko is "dislike", Azaka is "like", and Mikiya, in her own words, is "I don't know."

Strawberry ice-cream is one of the few things she is fond of, but it is also one of the things that she hates. She despises cold food, but always seems to buy it from the convenience store. Her persistence towards eating it caused Mikiya to make insensitive comments like ".... are you... are you trying to conquer your weakness...?"

「　」
Shiki possesses an actual third personality. 「　」, or Void (空) if there is to be a pronunciation, was originally the will of the body that manifested as a personality of its own. Having always existed in the gap between Shiki and SHIKI, she hid her existence from both personalities. As she puts it herself, the third personality is Akasha, "the origin of all things" itself. This personality is housed in the body rather than the other personalities housed in the mind. Usually, a life begins connected to the Origin until the connection is severed at birth, and even if somehow a life remained unsevered, the body's personality itself should not become self-aware, but the Ryougi family's special trait allowed it to survive and survive with intelligence. Because she has no interest in anything however, she usually remains dormant within Shiki.

Chapter 2: Murder Speculation Part 1
On March 1995, Shiki makes her first full appearance during a snowy night, when she meets Mikiya Kokutou for the first time, after he passes by her on an empty street. Later in April, they would meet again having enrolled in the same private high school although, upon introducing himself to her, Shiki does not recall meeting Mikiya before. The two would end up in the same class as first-year students.

On September during the last day of her school's summer vacation, Shiki unknowingly finds herself in an alley in the presence of a fresh corpse. She gazes at the corpse in awe of the blood and carnage as if she were in a trance. She would then use her fingers to touch and play with the blood spilled on the pavement, putting and tracing it on her lips, incidentally making it her first ever use of a "lipstick". Just as summer vacation ends, a new semester of their high school begins. Shiki is prompted to buy herself a red leather jacket for the coming winter season in response to Mikiya's prodding about her insistence on simply wearing extra clothing on top of her kimono even during winter.

Just as autumn begins, Shiki and Mikiya would later go on to spend their lunchtimes on one of the school building's rooftops, with the two developing a casual relationship. On one occassion, Mikiya muses about a recent murder that occurred on the last day of summer vacation during one of their lunchtime conversations. Shiki finds herself wondering about the incident in relation to the corpse she saw on the last day of summer vacation, despite outwardly expressing disgust on the matter as a topic of conversation during meal time.

Within the same month, Akitaka warns Shiki of four recent murders, including the first one, just as each successive incident becomes widely known to the general public. Due to the curfew enforced by the police in lieu of the recent murders, Shiki is unable to embark on her nightly strolls that she so often loves to do. With the rising prevalence and media coverage of the murders, all students in Shiki's school were told to go home early upon being dismissed from their classes. Students were also forbidden from attending extracurricular activities. Mikiya learns from his cousin Daisuke Akimi, a police investigator, that the murderer is most likely from his school. While the suspicion initially turns to Shiki, Mikiya doesn't want to believe it, even though she has an injury consistent with Daisuke's investigation.

Shiki's male persona arranges a meeting with Mikiya, explaining to him her condition and surprising him with her male persona's outgoing and cheerful nature, which is drastically different from the female persona's reserved and quiet demeanor. This Shiki explains the division between the two personalities, and mentions that the two have been out of sync lately. After the meeting, Mikiya goes to Shiki's home, only to find her standing in front of a headless corpse, blood still spurting from the neck. Splattered in blood, Shiki utters an oft quoted line:


 * "Be careful Kokutou-kun.. A terrible premonition can bring about a terrible reality."

Mikiya is questioned by the police regarding the incident, but he maintains that he did not see Shiki there and refuses to give any further information, even to Daisuke. Mikiya then regularly camps out in the bamboo grove outside Shiki's home in an effort to 'prevent' her from committing any more murders. After a while of this, Shiki confronts him with a knife and chases him through the grove and out onto the street, pinning him down with the knife to his throat. When she asks him to say something, all Mikiya can reply with is:


 * "I don't want to die."

To which Shiki warmly smiles and replies:


 * "I want to kill you."

When she raises her knife and moves to stab him, she finds she's unable to do so. Quite suddenly, she's attacked by Araya. A brief fight between the two ensues, but after Araya is wounded by Shiki, he notes that she's not fighting to kill but rather so she can flee. He allows her to do so, and Mikiya chases after her. Once he manages to catch her, she confesses to him that both Shiki and SHIKI like him, with this being the only other thing that SHIKI has known besides murder. As such, she feels that since he won't remove himself from her life, she'll remove herself from his.

Fleeing to the end of the street, she throws herself in front of a passing car, in an attempt to commit suicide. She fails, in the sense that SHIKI dies in her place, to allow her to remain with Mikiya.

Chapter 4: The Hollow Shrine
Following her attempted suicide, Shiki finds herself floating in absolute nothingness, or 「　」. She remains in this state for two years, realizing that she is both dead and still alive. During this time, her body is in a coma where she is visited by her family and Mikiya. When she awakens, she immediately sees the lines of death around her and attempts to tear her eyes out, causing the other doctors to bandage her eyes. She refuses to talk to her family or the doctors tending to her, causing them to misdiagnose her with aphasia. She eventually begins to receive daily visits from Touko Aozaki, posing as a speech instructor. By night, Shiki is attacked by spirits hoping to gain control of her body, and eventually Touko puts up a rune, creating a ward that keeps them out. The day before her release, Touko explains to her about the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, and how even if Shiki were to remove her physical eyes, the Mystic Eyes would still be active. Touko offers to teach her how to control the Eyes, but Shiki refuses. The following night, one of the spirits possesses a corpse and uses it to get through the ward, attacking Shiki. While Shiki at first allows it to strangle her, she, being reminded of SHIKI's sacrifice and what Touko had said about it earlier, fights back, knocking them both out the window. Touko comes to her aid, but finds that her fire spell isn't enough to kill the corpse. Shiki kills the corpse with her Eyes, but the spirit possessing it attempts to possess her. Rather than be possessed, Shiki kills the invading spirit using her Eyes by stabbing herself in the chest. Shiki accepts Touko's offer to train her to use the Eyes, and begins work under her after her release.

Chapter 3: Remaining Sense of Pain
In time, Garan no Dou is approached by the head of the Asagami clan, who hires them to find and kill his step daughter, Fujino Asagami, after she awakens to her power and brutally kills the delinquents who were abusing her. One morning, she is called by Mikiya to tell his sister, Azaka Kokutou, that he would be unable to meet with her at Ahnenerbe. Arriving at the restaurant, she meets Fujino with Azaka, but notes to herself that she couldn't be the target, as she doesn't sense the desire to kill from her. After squabbling with Azaka, she leaves. In time, she comes across Fujino again after she kills another man linked to the delinquents who tried to attack her. Shiki prepares to fight Fujino, but leaves after noticing that Fujino can't feel pain. Shiki eventually receives word that Fujino killed a passerby unrelated to her tormenters and, disapproving of such senseless slaughter, vows to kill her. The two fight in the interior part of the Broad Bridge, and Shiki is able to "kill" her Mystic Eyes of Distortion using her own Eyes, but not before Fujino tears off her left arm. Fujino awakens to Clairvoyance and collapses the bridge around them. Both manage to escape, but Fujino loses her powers and regresses to a childlike state of mind. Shiki stabs her, killing her appendicitis, but lets her live. Afterwards, Touko constructs for her a Magical Prosthetic Arm to replace the one she lost.

Future Gospel
During one of her walks, Shiki comes across Meruka Kuramitsu before one of his bombings. Fearful that she would reveal his identity, Meruka began to pursue and set traps for Shiki using his ability to see the future, even setting traps in areas that Shiki visits by chance, and sends her a cellphone to communicate with her. However, Shiki survives the bombings, forcing him to come out of hiding and personally witness his latest trap so that he can see her charred body after the explosion, as his visions predict. However, Shiki cuts through his right eye's ability to see the future, causing him to lose his ability to make accurate predictions and thus encounters unforeseen events, such as the bombs he set being delayed by five minutes.

After dealing with Meruka, Shiki meets with Mikiya at Ahnenerbe, who was waiting for her there and speaking with Shizune Seo.

Chapter 1: Overlooking View
In August 1998, Mikiya brings over some ice cream while visiting Shiki, but Shiki is not happy to see him and says that she does not like ice cream so she decides not to eat it.

Around September 1998, Shiki had a conversion with Touko about the recent suicide cases in the Fujou building. Shiki found out that Mikiya has been in an unconscious state since after he investigated the Fujou building. When Shiki went to the building, she noticed a ghost floating around it.

She struggles as she witness Mikiya's state and hurries to the Fujou building. She witnesses another suicide from a high school student. She encounters Kirie Fujou's spiritual form who tries to curse her to death through her own puppet arm. Shiki cuts off her arm while Kirie retreats.

Back in Garan no Dou, Touko repairs her puppet arm with more improvements. Returning to her apartment, she finally eats some of the ice cream that Mikiya brought earlier. Knowing that she can't live without Mikiya, she becomes determined to save Mikiya from his slumber. She faces Kirie and ghosts of the other girls; Shiki quickly kills them using her Eyes.

After the physical Kirie's suicide, Mikiya wakes up and feels as if he had slept for a very long period of time. Shiki demands that he stay over at her house to finish the ice cream he bought.

Melty Blood
Shiki appears as an exclusive playable character and a secret boss in story mode for the Playstation 2 version of Melty Blood Actress Again along with Melty Blood Actress Again: Current Code. In Actress Again she appears as secret boss in story mode (using Eclispe Moon Style) by defeating 6 opponents in a row with a perfect but when using Shiki Nanaya or Neco-arc, she will be a normal opponent. In Actress Again: Current Code she was no longer a secret boss but changed to a normal character thus Archetype:Earth replacing her, adding that at the end of her story mode, she fights against Archetype:Earth just after her fight against Shiki Tohno. During the conversation between her and Archetype:Earth, Shiki recognizes the overwhelming aura which flows from Archetype:Earth, stating that she can not see her death and then calls her a monster, jumping into a deadly struggle.

Fate/Extra
The version of Shiki in Fate/Extra is similar in nature to her Melty Blood counterpart. She appears after Taiga makes a wish upon the Tiger Thermos found for her by the Protagonist. She is classified neither as a Servant or a Master, and her existence causes the air to continuously warp like a human moan. She gives off a murderous aura far above that of a human, and while she isn't a Heroic Spirit, she is called a demon, Aramitama, a being who dies, kills, and curses, and Death itself by the Servants.

She doesn't like existing within the Moon Cell, and wishes to leave as soon as possible. She has been set to kill one hundred Servants for an unknown reason in order to return to her world, but she assures that it is nothing personal. She notes that she has already killed ninety-nine, and that the Protagonist's Servant will be her one hundredth. She doesn't care about Masters, so she is willing to let the Protagonist be if their Servant dies willingly. She is called "Monster" when fought, and her special ability is called Boundary of the Void.

After being defeated, she contemplates that her journey is not yet over, thanks the protgonist for setting her free, and notes that she would like to have a similar fight again. It seems that she is warped elsewhere, and the Servants believe she has been flung through time, either to the past or the future. Archer speculates that she is some form of spirit connected to the Moon Cell's Holy Grail War.

Carnival Phantasm
She makes brief cameos during the series and a small appearance in Episode 12 as she is seen cooking at the Ahnenerbe party.

Abilities
With her Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, she can see the points and lines of a target's death. A cut along any line will bifurcate the object, no matter the sharpness of cutting tool used, and ultimately destroy the object's origin, causing instant death. Her abilities extend to cutting things with no physical existence, such as Fujino Asagami's manifestations of her telekinetic powers. Unlike the other Shiki, Ryougi shows no definite proof after her release from the hospital that the use of her eyes causes mental strain on her brain, leading to the hypothesis that one's mentality greatly affects whether or not the brain can handle the power of the eyes. It doesn't matter if the target has a spiritual body like a Servant or they are dead like the ghosts surrounding Kirie Fujou, as it only matters if they are "living" in the sense that they can interfere with the current world. She has a hard time with Souren Araya's because it belonged to an enlightened one who achieved "becoming extinguished, alive." Killing it using the lines of death would require her to decipher advanced "lines of death" levels higher than the normal concept of death. It's revealed by Touko Aozaki that her eyes are actually linked somehow to Akasha, the 'origin of all things.'

Shiki has also shown that she is a fair combatant without a weapon. As seen in Kara no Kyōkai Movie 5: Paradox Spiral, when she approaches the bullies that were attacking Enjou Tomoe. When one of the guys attacks her, she quickly grabs his wrist and slams him face first into a nearby pipe. She quickly grabs the other assailant's stomach and using some kind of nerve strike causing the him to vomit and pass out. Giving the first bully enough time to recover, Shiki kicks him on the left side of the face with enough force to draw blood knocking him out.

Shiki has a Magical Prosthetic Arm that allows her to grab things from a distance, and also affect intangible objects. When she went up against Kirie Fujou who at the time was a ghost had several ghostly figures under her control, Shiki used her Magical Prosthetic Arm to grab her in her ghostly form. It has been stated by Touko that her second arm prior to going up against Kirie will be twice as strong as the original, and that it would take an elephant to destroy it. It also showed great durability when Shiki was running at high speed and jumped off of a building and landed on the other building grabbing the roof as she landed. Shiki had to cut off her first Prosthetic Arm because a ghost was grabbing it and was going to throw her off the Fujou building. Shiki's puppet arm has a hidden compartment to store a secondary knife.

Shiki also possesses heightened physical abilities, allowing her mobility in combat. She apparently has enough self-discipline to endure a great deal of pain, since she did not stop a charging attack against Fujino when her arm was twisted in midair. This arm was later replaced by a prosthetic crafted by Touko. With her bare hands, she was able to cut through Souren Araya's Boundary Fields.

She wields a katana called Kanesada Kuji in Paradox Spiral, Kanesada Kuji is a old sword with the ability to cut down barriers. Her overall ability in swordplay is about equal to Taiga Fujimura. The sword was broken when it landed on Araya.

Most notably she possesses self-suggestion which reinforces her physical and mental abilities when she is armed with a Japanese katana. Araya notes this, in the sense that she's not a knife-fighter, but a swordswoman, and that a distance of about 3 meters is nothing to her normally. But, when armed with a katana, her range triples to nine meters, which is something Araya didn't expect.

Third personality
Her third personality, 「　」, can be said to be directly connected to Akasha, and she can even be called Akasha itself. While Shiki can see it with her Mystic Eyes, she can go even deeper, connecting to where all cause and effect begin and everything and nothing exist. She claims the ability to do anything she wishes, as being connected to it makes her an equivocal existence. She claims restructuring the laws governing atomic matter, going back in time to change the evolution and development of all life, and reconstructing the orders and laws of the world would be easy for her to accomplish. It is not actually changing the existing world, but instead annihilating the old one with a new reality.

Despite this claimed ability, her combat ability is only possibly around the level of Ciel, allowing her to manage a defensive fight against a being on the level of a Servant. While still much stronger than the regular Shiki, who holds no hope in even competing with a Servant defensively, it is unknown how her abilities work and the speed with which they take effect should she choose to utilize them. She is noted to be the second strongest being in the Nasuverse when not including Servants, under Arcueid Brunestud and above Primordial Demons.