Tomoe Enjou

"I wish this spiral was a paradox."

- Tomoe Enjou

Tomoe Enjou (臙条巴) is a protagonist of the fifth chapter of Kara no Kyoukai.

Background
His earliest and happiest memories was when his father gave a spare house key to Tomoe when he was younger and told him to protect his family. This happiness was a short lived as his father would later cause the death of someone in a drunk driving accident.

This incident caused his family downfall and hated by others. This hatred caused his family to move into a smaller apartments, his father lost his job and struggled to find work which cause him to have a drinking problems. His mother has to work full time in the super market to support the family. Tomoe is frequently bullied in school which forced him to quit the tracking team and school. His relationship with his parents turned sour.

His family had to move several times due to harassment as rumours keep appearing about his history until they moved into the Ogawa apartment complex.

One day, he came back from work and slept in his room. First his mother killed his father while he was drinking and eventually killing Tomoe. His mother committed suicide after killing his son. It was revealed that his originally body was killed half a year since Tomoe met Shiki.

While he died, Souren Araya surgically removed his brain from his body for his experiments. The experiment was to control the brain that was still functioning and implant them in the puppets that Cornelius Alba provided. He created the spiral apartment complex to create a loop to repeat the residents death to access the gates to the Spiral of Origin.

In one of the loop, Tomoe had a recollection dream about his mother killed him originally. The puppet in Paradox Spiral however, was able to escape from one of the loop in which he was killed at night and reborn in the morning. He killed his parents and ran off, his escape out of the spiral was a surprise even to Araya.

Before leaving the spiral complex, Araya implanted an unconscious imprinting in this puppet to have an interest in Shiki Ryougi.

Personality
Tomoe is a head-strong individual that had grown disillusioned by his experiences. He had originally loved sport, particularly sprinting, but complications surrounding his family changed his outlook on life. His family's reputation led him to be bullied at school. Due to this, Tomoe had grown to become more apathetic towards his loved ones, simply carrying out his daily routine with nary a care in the world surrounding him. After supposedly murdering his parents, Tomoe recognizes his guilty actions, going so far as even anticipating his cruel punishment. His interactions with Shiki demonstrates his tendency to adhere to societal norms, initially finding Shiki's habits to be rather odd.

He has stated that he despises the notion of romance and love based on his bad experience with his past girlfriend. Tomoe would go on to become close friends with Shiki Ryougi, being able to talk about himself and his experiences to her unlike any other person he has ever met. It is hinted that his attachment to Shiki is caused by Tomoe's ability to relate to Shiki's continued impression of her SHIKI personality. He cares about this deep relationship enough that when he admitted his love for her, he disliked the idea of ruining such a relationship by simply labelling it under the notion of "love". While he claims that he is willing enough to die for Shiki, this lowered sense of self-worth is prompted by his feeling of hopelessness, due to having "killed" his parents.

While initially brash in his reactions towards Mikiya, he grows to respect him. He later understands Shiki's attachment to him, remarking that people like Shiki and himself truly need someone like Mikiya to keep them sane. Upon remembering his past memories with his family, he empathizes with his family and their situation. Finally gaining self-respect, Tomoe finds his resolve to fight for himself and his love for his family. When Araya reveals the true nature of the current Tomoe Enjou's identity and the supposed fabrication of his attachment for Shiki, Tomoe strives to believe that his feelings are true. Nonetheless, he considers the possibility that everything about his current identity is truly fabricated, thus defiantly thanking Araya for granting him such a chance of realization in his life. In his final moments, he expresses his empathy for his family's situation as well as sympathizing their deaths caused by Araya, until finally remarking the legitimacy of his existence.

Chapter 5: Paradox Spiral
In the middle of October 1998, he was attacked by bullies from his old school and saved by Shiki Ryougi. He asked her to hide him at her place and admitted that he had killed his parents because of constant dreams of getting killed by his mother. However there was no report or news about the murder of his parents, this caused Tomoe more paranoid until he revealed his dreams to Shiki.

Shiki and Tomoe went to the Ogawa complex to investigate. When they arrived at Tomoe's apartment 405, his parents were alive and they witness the reinactment of his death. Shiki already notice that the Ogawa Complex has some abnormalities, she found Tomoe parents corpse in apartment 410 where they died for half a year ago.

They encountered puppets and Araya, Shiki was able to destroy the puppets but she wasn't able to kill Araya.

When Shiki is captured, he first flees back to her apartment, and meets Mikiya. After he is shown his past by Mikiya, they both decide to go save Shiki.

After separating from Mikiya, he is confronted by Araya, who tells him of his origin as a puppet, which is shown true when Tomoe's arm falls off, revealing gears inside his arm. Araya revealed that he let him escape when he captured Shiki because his body would be falling apart and called him foolish to return.

He was attracted to Shiki, fell in love with her and he even confessed (although Shiki only reacted by laughing at him). It is unknown whether his attraction to Shiki was because of his own feelings, or because Araya added it as unconscious imprinting when he ran away. Although Araya claims that his love for Shiki is artificial and that he placed these emotions in his mind. But Tomoe disagreed as he said the feelings he had in his heart were real and he said that if Araya said was true then he was grateful that he implanted it in him.

Tomoe confirmed his determination that he's here to kill Araya for his sake and his parents death weren't sinful enough for them to die. He used Shiki's knife to assault Araya but Araya used his bounded field to stall him. Tomoe managed to stab him but he is eventually killed by Araya by dissolving him to dust, Tomoe shed a tear and his final words were:

"I was here."

Araya downfall was partially responsible by Tomoe as he leaves behind Kanesada Kuji; a katana with the ability to break barriers, in the Ogawa apartment's elevator. This causes boundary field around the spiral apartment complex to weaken and thus frees Shiki, allowing her to confront and defeat Araya.

He reappeared near the end, it was hinted that Shiki's mystic eye that connected to Akasha was able to see him one last time and bid him farewell.

Abilities
He doesn't possess any special abilites however the origin that he has is "worthlessness".

Trivia

 * His character design was used as a basis for Fate/stay night protagonist Emiya Shiro.