Shiki Ryougi

Ryougi Shiki (両儀式) is one of the main protagonists of the Kara no Kyoukai novels. She is a teenage 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. She assists the Garan no Do agency in handling paranormal cases when combat is required.

Shiki will also appear as an exclusive playable character for the Playstation 2 version of Melty Blood Actress Again.

Character history

 * This section needs expansion

Family
Shiki's family, the Ryougis, are or were members of the Demon Hunter Organization. Their special skill involves creating two seperate 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 has an older brother, however he was unable to manifest a second personality within himself, thus making him ineligable to succeed as the head of the family. Like her brother, Shiki's mother and father are unnamed, but are seen in the movies. (Shiki's father in the second movie during a sword fight; her mother in the fourth movie after she comes out of her coma.)

Pre-Coma
By the time of the second movie, Shiki's family had effectively retired from the task of demon hunting, becoming a family similar to the Tohnos, in that they remained wealthy landowners. In this case, they own a large Japanese-style mansion with a grove of bamboo beyond the outer wall. 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.

During a snowy night, she meets Kokutou Mikiya for the first time, after he passes by her on an empty street. Later, they meet again when they enroll in the same high school and end up in the same class, beginning a casual relationship. Around this time, murders begin to occur in their town. Kokutou learns from his cousin Akimi Daisuke, a police investigator, that the murderer is most likely from his school. While the suspicion initially turns to Shiki, Kokutou doesn't want to believe it, even though she has an injury consistent with Daisuke's investigation. A number of scenes interspersed throughout the movie show Shiki at the crime scenes, but not actually committing the murders.

Shiki's male persona arranges a meeting with Kokutou, 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 demenor.

Personalities
Prior to her coma, she originally proved to possess two personalities, a male personality named Shiki (式), and her usual female personality Shiki (織). Children born into the Ryougi family are generally male and are raised with two personalities, so the male personality is customarily called the "yang" personality, while the female is called the "yin" personality. However, Shiki's unnamed brother was not born with these dual personalities and thus deemed unsuitable to be the family heir, resulting in Shiki being raised as the family head in his place. 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 refers to herself with the pronoun watashi (私), while male Shiki refers to himself as ore (オレ).

After waking from her coma, Shiki discovers that she can no longer feel the male Shiki's presence and assumes that he died because of the accident. She also feels a detachment from her memories before the accident, and while she knows she is Shiki, she does not feel that she is. In the hopes of regaining herself and the "dead" Shiki, she puts on a cold façade that somewhat resembles the male Shiki's and tries to act as the female Shiki did. Touko understands the sense of detachment Shiki feels, but considers the current Shiki a third, new personality.

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 Asagami Fujino's manifestations of her telekinetic powers.

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 Araya Souren's Boundary Fields. It's revealed by Aozaki Touko that her eyes are actually linked somehow to Akasha, the 'origin of all things', which perhaps explains the reason her eyes are more powerful than those possessed by Shiki Tohno.