The character page for Shiki. There are an awful lot of them, so this list will probably not cover them all.
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Protagonists
These characters could be considered the protagonists of the show. Natsuno Yuuki/Koide
Voiced by: Kōki Uchiyama (JP), Jerry Jewell (EN)
One of the main protagonists, a 15-year-old boy who was forced to move to Sotoba, and needless to say, he ain't happy about it. He's one of the first ones to become aware of the Shiki.
- Adaptational Badass: He comes back as a Jinrou, a powerful sub-species of Shiki in both the anime and manga whereas he remained dead in the original novel.
- Ambiguously Gay: He shows no interest in women, seeing Kaori more as a sister and being really close to Tohru, to the point where he offered they ran away together.
- Arch-Enemy:
- To Masao, though it's one-sided on his part as Natsuno mostly finds him annoying.
- On a much serious note, he's this to Tatsumi as the latter assisted in Megumi killing Tohru, enforced the kill to survive mentality to the newly risen Shiki, including Tohru who would become one himself and was the one who planned to have him killed by Tohru himself. The feeling of contempt between these two gets stronger when Natsuno himself returns back as a Jinrou, the same species as Tatsumi.
- Back from the Dead: In the manga and anime, he returns as a Jinrou.
- Badass Normal: Bashes a Shiki in the head with a shovel when it threatens his friends.
- Big Brother Instinct: After he befriends Akira and Kaori he starts to care for them in a "surrogate big brother" way.
- Big Damn Heroes: He rescues Akira from being killed by Iwao Maeda after he was left tied to the support beam (By Tatsumi) of the house in which Iwao has taken residence. Natsuno arrived just in time, too, as said shiki was moments away from feasting on the child. After saving Akira, Natsuno brought him to a hospital outside of town to recuperate safely.
- Natsuno also brought Kaori to the hospital after she destroyed her newly-turned father.
- Came Back Strong: He returns as a powerful Jinrou.
- Curtains Match the Window: Purple hair and eyes.
- Daywalking Vampire: He eventually returns as a Jinrou, which is essentially a vampire that can walk under sunlight.
- Death Seeker: After becoming a Jinrou.
- Decoy Protagonist: He gets a relatively large chunk of focus during the first half of the story. And then he dies. Even after returning as a Jinrou in the manga and anime, he rarely appears again.
- Determinator: Even though he's completely outclassed in a fight against Tatsumi, he continues fighting until he's able to force Tatsumi into the deep pit where they both meet their end.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": He dislikes being called by his first name.
- Due to the Dead: Before going off to face Tatsumi, he looks at Tohru and Ritsuko's staked bodies, clearly upset things went the way they did.
- Empowered Badass Normal: After he becomes a Jinrou.
- Expy: His character is similar to John Reilly. Both are aloof men who end up being amongst the first to find the supernatural, and take them down at the cost of their lives.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Melancholic.
- Gender-Blender Name: He doesn't like being called by his given name Natsuno because he thinks it sounds feminine.
- He Knows Too Much: The reason why Tatsumi sends Tohru to kill him.
- Heroic Bastard: His parents are in a Common Law Marriage, which makes Natsuno an illegitimate child in the legal sense. While aloof, Natsuno still remains a relatively decent person.
- The Hero Dies: While he isn’t the main protagonist, he dies early on, but comes back, and then dies for good at the end.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Tohru. Tohru and his family are one of the few people he’s openly nice to.
- Hunter of His Own Kind: Even after he becomes a Jinrou, he still aids in the effort to stop the vampire infestation in Sotoba, culminating in him killing Tatsumi and himself in the end.
- Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: He’s not a very open person, but once you personally know him, you’ll understand he’s not a bad person. Especially prominent with the Mutou family, the Tanaka siblings, and Ritsuko.
- Named After Somebody Famous: He's named after Kiyohara no Natsuno, a nobleman and politician in the early Heian period.
- Not So Above It All: Although he's one of the first people to really start investigating the vampires, once he learns that his best friend Tohru has become one he immediately loses all will to fight and suggests that Toru feed on him instead—until he dies! Sure, he comes back as a werewolf, but he had no way of knowing that would happen at the time.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: The anime implies and manga outright confirms that he was the one who killed Iwao Maeda via burning him alive by sunlight. The same Iwao was the one who killed his family after he came back as a Shiki, tormenting Motoko, his daughter-in-law, by leaving her as the sole survivor, and was about to attack Akira when the boy was tied up.
- Real Men Wear Pink: His pink sneakers.
- Red Herring: Near the beginning of the series, Natsuno starts showing signs of lethargy and tiredness, the exact symptoms of a Shiki bite. Turns out it was just exhaustion.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue oni to Masao and Tohru's red.
- Ridiculously Alive Undead: He rises as a Jinrou/Werewolf, which is a type of Shiki that is more of an enhanced human than a vampire.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Zig-Zagged. He doesn't come back as a Jinrou in the original novel. Then again, he still dies at the end of the anime.
- The Stoic: He rarely loses his cool.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Natsuno is aloof to most of the villagers, but cares deeply about Tohru, Akira, and Kaori. He tries to send Akira and Kaori away, but they end up coming back to help him. After finding out that Tohru has become a Shiki, he lets him feed on him without much of a fight and even suggests trying to run away together. He later ends up saving Akira from Iwao and helping both him and Kaori escape from their village before the final confrontation.
- Taking You with Me: In the manga and anime, he pushes himself and Tatsumi into a deep pit. In the anime, he blows both up with sticks of dynamite while in the manga they are impaled by rocks at the bottom of the pit.
- Technicolor Eyes: Natsuno has blueish-violet eyes.
- Willfully Weak: As a Jinrou, he has heightened senses and abilities. However, he must feed on blood in order to gain access to these abilities least he gets weaker. As Tatsumi can attest, Natsuno has only been eating human food, thus was easily outmatched by him. He does feed on some blood when he hypnotized Seshirou, but even then he's still outmatched by Tatsumi.
Toshio Ozaki
Voiced by: Tōru Ōkawa (JP), David Wald (EN)
The director of the clinic in Sotoba. He is baffled by the mysterious deaths and swears to solve the case and protect his village. He is one of the first people to discover the existence of the Shiki, and ends up taking pretty extreme measures against them.
- Agent Mulder: Oddly enough, the village's man of science is one of the first to think the epidemic may be supernatural.
- Anti-Hero: He desires to rid the monsters plaguing the village and will see it through, even if it hurts someone.
- Badass Labcoat: He's seen wearing his labcoat at all times.
- Batman Gambit: He outs the Shiki by pretending to surrender to them and tricking Chizuru into going on a date with him to get her to the Buddhist shrine so she can Freak Out and get a bunch of people to escort her away, allowing them to feel for themselves her lack of a pulse and body temperature.
- Childhood Friends: He has been friends with Seishin since childhood.
- Cynicism Catalyst: His repeated failures in saving the villagers from the Shiki eventually lead him to experiment on his newly turned Shiki wife when she rises.
- "Eureka!" Moment: After Yuuki asks him wether Megumi really died, he jokingly replied with her maybe having come back as a zombie or vampire, a statement that makes him realize that maybe it isn't an epidemic after all.
- Expy:
- Of Jimmy Cody and Matt Burke from 'Salem's Lot, and to a lesser extent Professor Van Hellsing from Dracula. A man of science and doctor who discovers the existence of vampires in his area, who uses his skills to combat and exterminate them.
- Outside of vampire media, he shares some similarities with Herbert West. Both face numerous zombies attacking them and cohorts and have no qualms about their methods, even if it hurts someone.
- Former Teen Rebel: Was one as a child and inspired Seishin into still hating the village later on in his life when he was on the verge of giving up.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric.
- Friend to All Children: Episode gives us a Pet the Dog moment where he is seen attending an injured child.
- Good Is Not Soft: Toshio acts as the Big Good of the series and he also doubles on being a borderline Destructive Savior. His method of learning about how to kill the Shiki? Putting his wife-turned-shiki through cold-blooded torture to find the way to permanently kill them.
- He Who Fights Monsters: As he slowly loses more and more villagers to the plague, his psyche begin to deteriorate, resulting in his appearance becoming haggard and strained. Eventually he resorts to experimenting on his wife when she rises as a Shiki in an attempt to either cure the plague and, failing that, to find the most efficient means of killing them.
- Honey Trap: He pretends to take Chizuru out on a date to expose her as a Shiki to the villagers and lead her to her death.
- I Am Not My Father: He hates the idea of becoming like his father who he hated. He eventually does.
- Identical Stranger: He somewhat resembled Akira as a teen.
- Ignored Expert: No one believes him about the vampires. Until he outs them, anyway.
- Meaningful Name: His name means agile hero or sagacious hero.
- The Medic: He's the doctor of the town's local clinic.
- Nominal Hero: There are hints in both the manga and anime that he sought to save the village because he viewed it as more of a game than out of a genuine desire to save anyone. This is highlighted by his brief comment at the end of the anime where he says he "lost" when the village was burned down.
- No Sympathy: In the manga, he relishes in the fact that his mother was brutally murdered by a Shiki, thinking she deserved it for being an overbearing mom.
- The Paragon: Toshio becomes a rather dark take on this when he drives the villagers to riot against the Shiki.
- Perma-Stubble: Has a 5 o'clock shadow that gives him a toughen look.
- Pet the Dog: He has a few moments such as being friendly to children, and mourning over the loss of his loved ones.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The cranky and daring Red Oni to Seishin's calm and composed Blue Oni. Lampshaded in the second opening of the anime
, where a red specter rises from him whilst a blue rises from Seishin. - Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The gruff and sarcastic Manly Man to Seishin's gentle and polite Sensitive Guy.
- Shock Value Relationship: He married his wife out of spite for his parents who hated her.
- Slasher Smile: He makes a quite unhinged smile in Episode 18.
- The Smart Guy: He has his suspicions that the thing that's killing the village is weirder than normal as soon as his first appearance, but he doesn't connect the dots until Natsuno talks to him.
- Smoking Is Cool: He's usually seen smoking, which helps making him look cool.
- Staking the Loved One: When his wife rises, he literally stakes her... among other things. Although as the manga makes it clear, while he didn't actually love her due to marrying her during his rebellious youth, but what he felt besides knowing he wasn't all that close to her is left unknown.
- Was It Really Worth It?: Ends up asking himself something along these lines after his own actions bring about the destruction of his village when he was trying to save it.
Seishin Muroi
- Voiced by: Kazuyuki Okitsu (JP), John Burgmeier (EN)
A monk at the local temple in Sotoba, as well as the author of several famous novels. He is friends with Toshio since long, and befriends Sunako briefly after her arrival to town.
- Agent Scully: Not completely skeptical about the existence of the Shiki, but he still takes longer to convince than Toshio.
- Back from the Dead: He dies and rises as a Jinrou.
- Bungled Suicide: Attempted suicide once in the past:
- In the manga, he attempted suicide since he can never truly leave the village as long as people force and expect him to be a monk whether he wants to or not.
- In the anime, he attempted suicide because he desperately wanted to be free of the traditions and the weight of his family and the temple, but could not bring himself to leave.
- Came Back Strong: Muroi is much more violent and assertive when he rises as a Jinrou, as Ookawa finds out firsthand.
- Childhood Friends: He has been friends with Ozaki since they were kids.
- Daywalking Vampire: At the end of the series, he becomes a Jinrou, a type of Shiki immune to sunlight.
- Defector from Decadence: He betrays the village and joins the Shiki after deciding that Ozaki has gone too far in his methods to eradicate the Shiki.
- Expy: Of Father Callahan from 'Salem's Lot, a man of of faith who is losing it. And who ultimately betrays the heroes and loses his faith. But unlike Calahan, who in a bit of circular storytelling redeems himself and regains his faith in The Dark Tower, Seishin's story is linear. He stands by his new alliegances and principles till the end. Also he shares Ben Mears’ role as an author.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Phlegmatic.
- Good Shepherd: Played with. Seishin is genuinely a good-natured and compassionate individual, but he's secretly depressed, hates the village and finds that he could not escape, as people expect him to be a monk when he doesn't want to. He ends up empathizing more with Sunako and the Shiki because they are more similar to him and able to understand his feelings more than any human in the village.
- Hazy-Feel Turn: He abandons Toshio and the other villagers to join the Shiki and protect Sunako, but considering the Grey-and-Gray Morality this story is based on, it's hard to tell whether he's a Face or a Heel.
- Hypocrite: He disowns Toshio for staking his wife in the name of being against murder. Then, he kills Tomio Ookawa with a hatchet as the former is about to stake Sunako in the burning church in the end of the series.
- Interspecies Friendship: A human who generally enjoys his chats with Sunako, a shiki. Though he himself becomes a shiki near the end.
- Morality Pet: To Sunako who treats him with kindness believing the two of them aren't so different.
- Most Writers Are Writers: He's an author who writes novels.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: After he rises as a Jinrou, his irises turn red.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The calm and composed Blue Oni to Toshio's cranky and daring Red Oni. Lampshaded in the second opening of the anime.
- Ridiculously Alive Undead: He rises as a Jinrou/Werewolf, which is a type of Shiki that is more of an enhanced human than a vampire.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The gentle and polite Sensitive Guy to Ozaki's gruff and sarcastic Manly Man.
- Stoic Spectacles: He's a composed young man who wears a small, half-framed style of glasses.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Through his conversations with Sunako, he comes to the conclusion that he and the Shiki aren't that different and that he has more in common with them than he does with the other villagers.
- Talking Down the Suicidal: At the end of the story, Seishin talks Sunako out of committing suicide. He tells her that she doesn't have to feel the need of atoning for her sins because she isn't human and since he's now like her, they can now wander the earth together.
- You Are Not Alone: He uses a variation of this trope to try and get Sunako out of her despair after her encounter with Tomio in an attempt to bring her out of the burning church alive.
Villagers
The residents of Sotoba. WARNING: Some of the characters below become Shiki, so highlight spoilers at your own risk.Koide/Yuuki Family
Yuuki
Voiced by: Daisuke Endo (JP), Mike McFarland (EN)
Natsuno's father.
- Agent Scully: Refuses to heed his son or the Tanaka siblings' warning that something is very wrong in the village.
- Sanity Slippage: Natsuno's death and his wife's absence does a number on him. He fortunately gets better in the end.
Azusa Koide
Voiced by: Ayano Ishikawa (JP), Anastasia Muñoz (EN)
Natsuno's mother
- Put on a Bus: She disappears midway and never returns. She will reunite with her husband later.
Mutou Family
Tohru Mutou
Voiced by: Nobuhiko Okamoto (JP), Chris Burnett (EN)
A kind 18-year old boy and Natsuno's best friend.
- Anti-Villain: After he returns as a Shiki, Tohru really hates being an undead monster and still acts like the same gentle guy he was as a human. He only kills humans because Tatsumi is forcing him to by threatening to kill his family if he doesn't do it and his Horror Hunger is too much for him to control it.
- Back from the Dead: Megumi kills him early in the series and he also becomes a Shiki.
- Curtains Match the Windows: Light brown hair and eyes.
- Dirty Coward: Tohru kills people because he's terrified of dying himself. He feels bad about it, but not enough to simply refuse to kill.
- Due to the Dead: After he kills Natsuno, Tohru starts to leave a single flower outside of Natsuno's window every night to commemorate Natsuno's death.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Natsuno. It gets torn when he's revived.
- Kill the Cutie: A sweet and honest young man who generally brought out the better in just about everyone he knew and is one of the first characters to get killed. This also borders on Break the Cutie because of what he’s forced to go through next.
- Kill the Ones You Love: He's forced by Tatsumi to kill his best friend Natsuno.
- Likes Older Women: If his attraction to Ritsuko is anything to go by.
- Manly Tears:
- Cries every time he bites Natsuno.
- And over Ritsuko suffering because she refuses to drink anyone's blood.
- Nice Guy: He's a genuinely sweet teenager who was loved by a lot of people. Even the local Jerkass Masao likes him. Makes the Trauma Conga Line he goes through all the more tragic.
- Non-Malicious Monster: He suffers from the guilt some new Shiki face of murdering humans for sustenance and still maintains his gentle demeanor.
- Not So Similar: Sunako pegged him as similar to herself. The difference is that Tohru knows what he did and isn't sure how to stop himself while Sunako chooses to kind of ignore it.
- Our Vampires Are Different: He eventually rises as a Shiki after being bitten and killed by Megumi.
- Peaceful in Death: Unlike most Shiki who died kicking and screaming, Tohru evidently went out without fuss given the peaceful look on his face.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Doesn't like being a Shiki, and mostly sucks blood just to stay alive and to keep Tatsumi from coming for his family.
- The Mole: After Natsuno comes back as a Jinrou, Tohru gives him valuable information on what the Shiki plan to do with the village.
- Redemption Equals Death: Lets off Yasuyo at Ritsuko's request before being killed the following day.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: He is emotional and supportive red to Natsuno’s blue.
- Secretly Selfish: Gets called out on this by both Megumi and Ritsuko after he becomes a Shiki. He doesn't want to admit how inhumane his actions are and try to justify them by saying he has no choice. The fact that Ritsuko refuses to kill humans herself leads him to having a Villainous Breakdown.
- Together in Death: With Ritsuko.
- Tragic Villain: He maintains his gentle personality after he becomes a Shiki, but gets also the all consuming bloodlust. He hates what he does, but can't help himself and is torn by guilt.
Takeshi Mutou
Voiced by: Yasuaki Takumi (JP), Chuck Huber (EN)
Tohru's father, whom also works at the clinic.
- Good Parents: He's portrayed as a loving father towards all three of his children. He refuses to be involved in the hunt after learning it'd involve hurting his son again.
- Nice Guy: Just like his son, he's a very courteous individual.
- Opt Out: Ditches the Shiki hunt.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Loses his son very early on. He also lives to the very end.
- Strong Family Resemblance: An older version of his sons.
Shizuko Mutou
Voiced by: Izumi Sawada (JP), Jennifer Green (EN)
Tohru’s mother.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Like her husband, she outlives her eldest son. Her fate is unknown.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Vanishes after her oldest’s funeral.
Aoi and Tamotsu Mutou
Voiced by: Yuka Saito (Aoi, Japanese), Trina Nishimura (Aoi, English), Yasuaki Takumi (Tamotsu, Japanese), Jessie James Grelle (Tamotsu, English)
Tohru's younger sister and brother.
- Break the Cutie: The deaths of their older brother shatters them.
- Nice Guy: Both are very trusting of Natsuno and it's clear he enjoys having them around as much as Tohru himself.
- Satellite Character: They rarely show up without Tohru being involved somehow.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Like with their mother, they inexplicably vanish at the end of their brother's funeral.
Tanaka Family
Kaori Tanaka
Voiced by: Haruka Nagashima (JP), Alexis Tipton (EN)
A friend of Megumi and later Natsuno. She and her brother Akira are some of the first characters to make connections between the recent deaths and the mysterious new family. She is kind-hearted, but easily scared.
- Action Survivor: She's a run-of-the-mill young girl that has no powers to face against the supernatural, yet she still manages to get out alive.
- Anime Hair: Her braids end in flowers. They end up undone near the end of the series.
- Batter Up!: She beats her undead father to death with a baseball bat.
- Break the Cutie: First her best friend dies out of the blue... later her new friend, with whom she found out the truth behind the recent deaths in her village, dies after she and her brother try to save him. Then her father dies and she is informed of it by her ex-best friend, who is in fact her father's killer. Her mother also ends up dying and later her brother disappears, leaving her thinking that he is also dead. Poor Kaori goes Ax-Crazy when her undead father tries to kill her and brutally beats him to death.
- Brother–Sister Team: With Akira.
- Childhood Friends: She claims to be Megumi's childhood friend. However, the feeling is one-sided and Megumi actually dislikes Kaori.
- Curtains Match the Windows: Brown hair and eyes.
- Despair Event Horizon: She goes through one after her parents die, Akira disappears and she presumes he is also dead... and then she has to kill her father again. While she and Akira reunite at the end, she never seems to really get much better.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: She ends up ditching her braids and lets her hair loose. Maybe in a way to represent how she lost her innocence.
- Expy:
- She's very similar to Kirsty Cotton. Both are ordinary young women that get wrapped up in a major life-or-death situation against the supernatural, lose their fathers, and end up as one of the few survivors. Both also become extremely dishevelled signifying how they’re past the Despair Event Horizon.
- She also shares similarities with Megan Halsey. Both are young women that end up entangled with zombies, with their fathers becoming one of them, losing a close male ally, and digging deeper in. Unlike Megan, Kaori lives to the very end.
- Final Girl: One of the few characters to make it out of Sotoba alive.
- Girlish Pigtails: She wears her hair in a pair of braided pigtails. Though she loses them when she starts to give into despair.
- Madness Mantra: "Megumi-chan is going to come and kill me. Megumi-chan is going to come and kill me. Megumi-chan is going to come and kill me."
- Nice Girl: She's very nice and friendly.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Is nothing but kind and considerate towards Megumi, and is by far the most heartbroken when she dies(besides her parents). How does Megumi repay her friendship? By going out of her way to ruin her life.
- Patricide: Kills her father when he rises as a Shiki.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Has black hair and fair skin, which isn't too pale like the Shiki.
- Refusal of the Call: Really doesn't want to dig too deeply into what's going on or dredge up memories of her dead friend. Too bad the caller knows where she lives.
- Staking the Loved One: After discovering her father turned into a Shiki, Kaori applies a baseball bat to his head multiple times, and when that doesn't kill him, she gets out a pickaxe to finish him off. She then proceeds to shove his unrecognizable corpse into a closet for good measure.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: More or less the tomboy to Megumi's girly girl.
Akira Tanaka
Voiced by: Keiko Kawakami (JP), Luci Christian (EN)
Kaori's younger brother and a friend of Natsuno. He discovers the existence of the Shiki early on and tries to out and fight them throughout the series.
- Action Survivor: Like his sister, he's an ordinary young boy with no powers. And in the anime and manga, he lives to the very end.
- Big Brother Worship: He really looks up to Natsuno as an older brother figure.
- Bound and Gagged: What Tatsumi does to him after he tries to kill Iwao. It takes Natsuno rescuing him.
- Brother–Sister Team: With Kaori. He always tries to make her go along with him.
- Curtains Match the Windows: Brown hair and brown eyes.
- Hot-Blooded: He's pretty gung-ho about his Shiki fighting duties and refuses to leave the village when things start to go south.
- Jumped at the Call: He readily sets out to fight vampires after being convinced that they are behind all that has been happening in the village.
- Never Found the Body: In the original novel, his fate remained unknown.
- Nice Guy: He's a very friendly kid.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Natsuno saved him in the anime and manga, but his fate remained unknown in the original novel.
- Too Dumb to Live: Goes into an abandoned house to kill some Shiki alone. It ends with him Bound and Gagged, though fortunately Natsuno saves him.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: His attempts to stop the Shiki and criticism of the villagers' failure to listen to him hint at this.
Yoshikazu Tanaka
Voiced by: Hayato Nakata (JP), Phil Parsons (EN)
Kaori and Akira’s father.
- Anti-Villain: Despite turning into a Shiki, he’s still portrayed as a loving father and his children are devastated by his death.
- Henpecked Husband: Sachiko gets frustrated with him a lot.
- Sacrificial Lamb: His death proves to be a massive turning point that tells Kaori and Akira that they’re in deep danger.
Sachiko Tanaka
Voiced by: Keiko Aki (JP), Linda Leonard (EN)
Kaori and Akira’s mother.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She’s stern, but she loves her kids and husband. They’re all freaked out when Yoshikazu is found dead.
Ookawa Family
Tomio Ookawa
Voiced by: Kouji Ishii (JP), R. Bruce Elliott (EN)
The owner of the village liquour and bottle shop. A huge man who is quick to begin hunting the Shiki once their existence is uncovered.
- Abusive Dad: He tends to hit his son when his son is alive, especially when his mom was telling on his son. He also enjoys killing his son in the manga far too much.
- Adaptational Villainy: In the manga it's revealed he enjoys killing people. The fact that Shiki aren't considered human allows him to kill people without being judged, and shows that he was quick to use any excuse to kill people as long as Ozaki wasn't around. One such case was the temple, where he killed everyone who lived there.
- Anime Hair: Seriously crazy hair that curves upwards in three prongs.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Once he has Sunako at his mercy, rather than killing her on the spot, he gives a "Reason Why You Suck" Speech to her, which gives Seishin enough time to rescue her.
- Dope Slap: Often administers one to his son Atsushi.
- Foil: To Megumi and Tohru's fathers. Both are portrayed as loving towards their children and are distraught over their sudden deaths and the idea of them having to be killed twice while Tomio was always portrayed as an Abusive Dad.
- Hot-Blooded: He's loud and hot-headed.
- Jerkass: Arguably the biggest out of all the human villagers due to his abusive tendencies and massive temper.
- Jerkass Has a Point: His verbal beatdown of Sunako isn't exactly wrong, the Shiki would have been welcome in the village had they not murdered most people there. In the end, her actions lead to both the village and all of the Shiki except herself and Muroi getting burnt down.
- Karmic Death: He kills Seishin's family when the monk joins up with the Shiki. Muroi returns the favor.
- Knight Templar: In the anime, he kills a human who was under Shiki hypnosis, believing that he was a Shiki collaborator. He is also part of the group that killed Seishin's family after it became clear he was helping Sunako. Subverted in the manga at first, where he doesn't harm the hypnotized humans even after being stabbed by them, but then double subverted with his slaughter of the people at the temple in the manga.
- Number Two: Effectively becomes this to Toshio after the latter rallies the humans to start rioting against the Shiki.
- Offing the Offspring: He kills his own son after the latter rises as a Shiki. Everyone is mortified.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Kills his son, which after everything Atsushi's done, isn't undeserved. He almost does this to Sunako, but Seishin stops him before he can go through.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers a speech to Sunako in the climax where he proceeds to completely deconstruct her goals and motivations that ends up utterly destroying her self-conviction.You little murderess, you don't deserve my mercy. In this world there are crimes too depraved to ever be forgiven. There are certain unstated rules for living in a village, rules that go back far too many generations to count. Outsiders are welcome as long as they adapt to village ways. We're a community here, we work together, we protect each-other. In a village, the young don't die before the old. These simple rules keep places like Sotoba alive through the years. But you and your family has torn that apart. I'm going to send you back to the hell you came from. You'll never rise up again Shiki!
- Staking the Loved One: He literally does this to his own Shiki son after the latter kills Ozaki's mother, claiming it's his duty as a father to punish his son for his evil deeds and return him to rest. Subverted in the manga, which makes it clear he killed his own because he enjoyed it.
- The Unfettered: Ookawa is utterly devoted to wiping out the Shiki when they get outed in the anime, taking control of the mob from Toshio and showing little remorse for the often innocent people he kills in his goal.
- Unusual Eyebrows: His eyebrows resemble steam or flames rising upwards.
Atsushi Ookawa
Voiced by: Ken'ichirou Matsuda (JP), Chris Rager (EN)
The son of Tomio.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After being cornered by the villagers in the clinic, he begs his father for forgiveness and mercy. Determined to exterminate the Shiki by any means necessary Tomio ignore his son's pleas and puts a permanent end to him with a stake. Takeo is mortified by this because he it's heavily implied he had a loving relationship with his daughter.
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: He inherited his father's big eyebrows.
- Dirty Coward: Doesn't come to Chizuru's rescue because he's so terrified of his father.
- Gonk: He has cartoonishly huge lips and eyebrows.
- Karmic Death: After terrorizing the village as a Shiki and murdering Dr. Ozaki's mother as a warning to the remaining humans he is effortlessly captured and executed in the clinic by his own father.
- Our Vampires Are Different: After being killed he rises as a Shiki and takes to the lifestyle disturbingly quickly.
Ozaki Family
Takae Ozaki
Voiced by: Kaori Yamagata (JP), Pam Dougherty (EN)
Toshio's obnoxious mother and Kyouko's mother in-law.
- Make an Example of Them: She is killed off by the shiki late in the story and has her dead body left at the clinic to serve as a warning to the surviving villagers.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: She's constantly getting into arguments with Kyouko and treats others rudely.
- Rich Bitch: She's quick to flaunt her family status and likes to boss people around.
Kyouko Ozaki
Voiced by: Yuko Mizutani (JP), Jamie Marchi (EN)
Toshio's wife who owns an antique store.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: She is tortured by having cuts made all over her body and getting injected with powerful chemicals to discover a weakness. Afterwards she gets put out of her misery with a stake to the heart.
- Small Role, Big Impact: She gets introduced near the middle of the story, gets a few scenes, some dialogue and character development and is killed off just a few episodes later after turning into a Shiki. However, she provides vital information to Dr. Ozaki which allows him to discover how to effectively fight back against the Shiki and allows the humans to begin hunting them.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: After dying she revives as a Shiki and is experimented on by the doctor to find their weaknesses. Afterwards she is killed for good by having a stake driven through her heart.
Shimizu Family
Megumi Shimizu
Click here to see her as a shiki
Voiced by: Haruka Tomatsu (JP), Tia Ballard (EN)
A village girl who hopes to one day leave Sotoba and create a career for herself in the city. She has an unrequited crush on Natsuno, who finds her annoying and cannot stand her. Megumi is one of the first victims of the Shiki and is also the first to rise.
- Adaptational Villainy: In the original novel, Megumi is more humanized and conflicted, and does not commit some of the evil deeds that she does in the manga and anime adaptations, whereas in those she is a Card-Carrying Villain.
- Back from the Dead: The first villager to rise as a Shiki.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: She dreamed of being accepted by the people who lived in the "European" castle with open-arms. She got her wish.
- Berserk Button: Do NOT insult Yuuki in front of her. Masao found out the hard way.
- Bilingual Bonus: Megumi, Mega-Me, doubles as a lame pun.
- Card-Carrying Villain: In the manga and anime. She willingly antagonized the village for her amusement and selfishness. Most of the others only did it to survive or were strong-armed into it. She has no such excuse and it was because of Shiki like her that the villagers came down so hard on the Shiki as a result.
- Childhood Friends: With Kaori. But she doesn't really like to be associated with her.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: She hates it when people get close to Yuuki. After turning into a Shiki, she starts taking extreme measures to keep people away from him.
- The Corrupter: After she turns Kaori's father into a Shiki, she incites him to kill his own family under the possibility that they will also become Shiki and join him.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: By the end of the series, particularly in the anime. She is hit by a truck in all versions, is impaled by five stakes in the novel and manga, and has her arm crushed before being completely run over by a tractor in the anime.
- Curtains Match the Window: Pink hair and eyes. Noticeably, her parents have normal hair colours, which may suggest hers is dyed.
- Daddy's Girl: If her father's reaction is anything to go by, she loved him a lot.
- A Day in the Limelight: She is the main focus of the first episode of the anime.
- Death by Irony:
- Gets run over by the same tractor that splattered her with mud in the prologue.
- Getting distracted by seeing an imaginary Natsuno in the manga and novel is what allowed her to get hit by a truck and get five stakes shoved into her chest.
- Death Glare: Gives one to Masao in Episode 14, over him being happy Yuuki might not come back as a Shiki.
- Defiant to the End: Rather than the pitiful, tearful death she receives in the anime, the original novel and manga has her just tell the villagers to back off and let her go to the city. She then walks to the town line and is just about to cross it before the villagers stake her in the back.
- Dying Dream: After the villagers catch up to her and proceed to finish her off. She hallucinates finally making it to the city.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: She's into Japanese Goth/Punk lolita fashion.
- Even Evil Can Be Loved: Despite her flaws and villainy, her parents very clearly loved her and Kaori cared for her a lot despite the feeling not being mutual.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Evidently, she was on good terms with her parents prior to her death.
- Evil Is Petty: She kills Yuuki's best friend because Yuuki likes him more than her. Not to mention how she starts to mess with Kaori's life just because she and Yuuki became friends.
- The Fashionista: She likes to dress up with stylish dresses, shoes, makeup, and hair accessories. However, the other villagers think she's way overdressed for their backwater village, making her hate them all for having no fashion sense.
- For the Evulz: She often mocks those who refuse to kill like Masao and Tohru, and in Episode 13, she can be seen skipping around with a smile on her face saying how making someone she hates miserable makes her feel good.
- Freak Out: She cries and screams when she find out that her beloved Natsuno Yuuki, might not come back as a Shiki. It doesn't last long, thanks to Masao setting off Megumi's Berserk Button, earning him a Violently Protective Girlfriend's Death Glare, "The Reason You Suck" Speech, and a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
- Genre Savvy: Particularly after rising as a Shiki. Not enough to hightail it out of the village fast enough when things hit the fan, but still.
- Girlish Pigtails: She has a twintails hairstyle, which goes well with her bratty and capricious personality.
- Go Out with a Smile: She dies while happily dreaming of being in the big city in the manga and novel.
- Hidden Depths:
- Unlike other dramatic teenagers who are self-absorbed pricks (like Masao), Megumi doesn't seem to want to be a self-absorbed prick to people and keeps her contempt largely to herself (until she becomes a Shiki anyway).
- In the original novel, Megumi actually has some internal conflict as a Shiki, not liking what she has to do and wishing she had remained human, and with her dark side taking over almost literally described as such. The manga and anime has none of this.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Her motivation at the start of the series.
- Irony: In her human life, she was always complaining about living in the small village and wanting to go out and live in a big city. Then she dies and turns into a Shiki, gaining the freedom she long sought for, but can't leave because the Kirishiki won't allow her to be part of the Big City Unit which captures people to feed the Shiki in the village, so she takes out her frustrations on the villagers instead. This winds up backfiring big time when the villagers strike back, and by the time things have gotten so bad for the Shiki, only then does she decide to flee to the city, only to barely make it to the city limits before she is caught, staked, and put down for good, dying in the small village she always hated.
- It's All About Me: A central trait of her's is her inability to see beyond her own wants and needs.
- Jerkass: Self-centered, spoiled and condescending. She may have some moments of kindness after becoming a Shiki, but they're few and fair.
- Karmic Death: Yeah her death is pretty harsh, but she was pretty much the instigator for the Shiki attacks and freely committed a lot of heinous actions as well. So she did pretty much have it coming.
- Mad Love: She has a huge crush on Natsuno, who makes it clear he only finds her annoying. In response, she frequently chases after him and spies on him behind bushes.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: The reason why she kills Tohru is because she wants Natsuno to herself and she's jealous of Natsuno's fondness of Tohru.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: She gave a good beating to Masao when he insulted Yuuki in front of her. Just watch the end of Episode 14.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: After hearing the Shiki must get rid of Natsuno because he's aware of their existence, Megumi wants to be the one to kill him and tries to intervene in Tohru's mission so he doesn't get to kill Natsuno before her. Unfortunately for her, Tohru bites Natsuno first and Megumi gives up on killing Natsuno.
- Our Vampires Are Different: She rises as a Shiki, which makes her essentially a vampire.
- Parasol of Prettiness: In the first episode, she's seeing walking around the village with a parasol.
- Peaceful in Death: In the novel and manga, she comes to a peaceful state as she dies. Not so in the anime.
- Pet the Dog:
- Megumi is arguably one of the absolute least sympathetic characters in the series, but even she gets one of these when she first begs Tatsumi not to kill Natsuno and then offers to kill him so Tohru won't have to.
- In the novel, it was shown toward the beginning that she did hold some residual affection for Kaori due to their childhood friendship, and it was Kaori not being able to understand her dreams that angered Megumi to the point of taking the action that led her to becoming a Shiki. She also initially protests when she is told to attack Kaori's family. The trope becomes subverted immediately afterward once she is informed that Kaori has "come between" her and Yuuki by resident Manipulative Bastard Tatsumi.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives one to Masao."Shut up you creep! How can scum like you rise up when Yuuki was cremated?! He deserved to be here instead of you! Why don't you take his place and die?! Just shut up. Yuuki should've risen up and become one of us, he would've climbed the ranks right away-straight to the top! He wouldn't be a bottom feeder like you."
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: After she becomes a Shiki.
- Revenge by Proxy: After getting some influence from Tatsumi, Megumi goes to kill Kaori's father to make her pay for getting close to Natsuno.
- Rose-Haired Sweetie: She's a self-centered brat and a Yandere, but she's girly, romantic and cheery. Well and truly averted after she becomes a Shiki.
- Slasher Smile: The one she has when she kills Tohru is a good example.
- Stalker with a Crush: She has a habit of watching Yuuki from his window while hiding in the bushes.
- Teens Are Monsters: She's one of the few teenagers to rise as a Shiki and definitely one of the most monstrously evil.
- Transhuman Treachery: She takes to being a Shiki very fast, enjoying both the power and freedom it brings. Plus having very little qualms about attacking the villagers.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: More or less the girly girl to Kaori's tomboy.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: After rising up as a Shiki, Megumi becomes more malicious, openly expresses her disgust of the village and becomes a dangerous Yandere over Yuuki.
- Undignified Death: In the Anime at least, Megumi spends her final moments tearfully trying to convince the villagers not to kill her, it doesn't work and she's ran over with a tractor multiple times, even after this she's still weakly pawing at one of the villagers(who rightly notes that they've maybe dragged it on for too long) as he puts her out of her misery.
- Ungrateful Bitch: Kaori is nothing but nice to Megumi when she's alive and is grief-stricken by her death, when Megumi rises as a Shiki she does whatever is possible to make Kaori's life a living hell.
- Virus-Victim Symptoms: After her visit to the Kirishikis's manor, she quickly falls very ill much to the confusion of the doctors as she didn't show any signs of it beforehand, much more so when they can't find the cause of blood loss. She's virutally bedridden afterwards and dies not long afterwards.
- Yandere: After rising as a Shiki, she kills Tohru because, as his best friend, Natsuno likes Tohru more than her.
Takeo Shimizu
Voiced by: Hiroaki Ishikawa (JP), Cole Brown (EN)
Megumi's father who is left heavily distraught after his daughter's untimely death.
- Everyone Has Standards: He and everyone else who witnessed it are shocked by how Tomio has no shame in killing his own son. This contrasts how he had a good relationship with his daughter before her untimely death.
- Karma Houdini: He was a member of the group of villagers who attacked the shrine and murdered Seishin's mother under the suspicion that she was in league with the Shiki. Unlike Tomio he manages to survive the finale and leaves the village with his wife.
- Knight Templar Parent: He'd certainly kill a woman if said woman was his daughter's killer.
- Outliving One's Offspring: He is shown to still be alive at the end of the series, meaning he survived both Megumi's rise as a Shiki and her eventual second death at the hands of the villagers.
- Papa Wolf: He deeply cared for his daughter and is horrified when she dies. Later when Dr. Ozaki reveals her killer to him he immediately takes his revenge by driving a stake through her heart.
Others
Ritsuko Kunihiro
Voiced by: Nozomi Sasaki (JP), Colleen Clinkenbeard (EN)
A nurse at the Ozaki Clinic and Toshio's right hand. She's kind and gentle to everyone, and works hard to help people get better. She has a dog named Taro and is the object of Tohru's affection.
- Anime Hair: Her hair twirls around like a spiral.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Delivers these to Tohru about his motives and why he's been going along with the attacks. It works enough that he spares her coworker.
- Back from the Dead: She dies and rises as a Shiki near the end of the series.
- Curtains Match the Windows: Green hair and eyes.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Has one in Taro. Unfortunately, she opts not to listen to his warnings and ends up killed for it.
- Heroic Willpower: Her refusal to drink blood as a vampire.
- Improbable Hairstyle: It defies gravity in more ways than one!
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Not even turning into a Shiki and feeling the need to drink blood to survive could corrupt her and she chooses to die instead of becoming a murderous monster.
- Kill the Cutie: Some Shiki bite her and she dies again and for good after being exposed and staked.
- Nice Girl: Quite possibly the kindest character in all of Shiki. So nice, she adamantly refuses to kill her coworker.
- Peaceful in Death: She's dies with a quiet look, not even looking pained.
- Our Vampires Are Different: She rises as a Shiki.
- Reluctant Monster: She rises as a Shiki, but refuses to become a "monster" and prefers to die of starvation and stay dead than to kill another human being.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She's going steady with Tohru, one of her coworkers' eldest son and he shown to be nothing but kind. At least until everything goes to hell, though she's able to reel him in.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: She completely refuses to kill people. Even after becoming a Shiki she refuses to kill in order to survive and chooses to die of starvation instead.
- Together in Death: With Tohru.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: So sweet and pure that when she rises she chooses to die of starvation and stay dead than to kill another human being.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Not her, but rather her dog. After Ritsuko gets bitten and Ozaki returns her home, he's nowhere to be found.
Masao Murasako
Voiced by: Shinya Takahashi (JP), Todd Haberkorn (EN)
An obnoxious high school second year. Prone to whining and moaning about his lot in life despite others being much worse off.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In the anime, he's so terrified at the prospect of dying that he begs for help from his sister-in-law, though of course she kills him instead. It's arguably the most sympathetic he's been all series.
- Asshole Victim: Seems to get this treatment in the manga. He starts off this way in the anime too, but ultimately the focus gets less and less on the "asshole" part and
more and more on the "victim" part. - Attention Whore: It's implied it comes from his home life, where he's being neglected in favour of his nephew. In fact, Tohru's sister accuses him of being one.
- Back from the Dead: Another Shiki victim who rises.
- Beady-Eyed Loser: Virtually no one likes him.
- Butt-Monkey: Particularly after he becomes a Shiki.
- Camp Straight: He acts in effeminate ways, which frequently get coded as gay; but the only people he expresses anything resembling romantic interest in are female.
- Dirty Coward: According to just about everyone who interacts with him.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: He has sallow-looking skin and brownish-black hair, both as a human and as a Shiki.
- Foil: Variously functions as a foil to Tohru, Natsuno, and Megumi.
- Gonk: In contrast to many of the male characters, whom border from cute to pretty, Masao isn't exactly that.
- Harmless Villain: Despite all his bad qualities, he apparently couldn't bring himself to kill innocent humans, which Megumi bitches him out for. Subverted in the manga, where he was more than willing to turn his family members into his slaves starting with his niece in order to survive, only to get a knife stabbed into his head and a speech that describes the kind of person he is from his sister-in-law before she kills him.
- Hidden Depths: He's essentially a Jerkass Woobie masquerading as a Straw Loser.
- Innocently Insensitive: Most of his dialogue consists of his acting this way.
- It's All About Me: Various characters have accused him of having this worldview, depending on the version.
- Jerkass: A jerk to pretty much everyone except Tohru.
- Mad Love: Implied to have a crush on Megumi, who is obsessed with another man and insults him and beats him up on a regular basis.
- Missing Mom: Masao is the only teenager in Sotoba—and one of the only younger villagers in general—who doesn't seem to have a mother.
- Motor Mouth: He rarely goes quiet unless it's upset.
- Our Vampires Are Different: He eventually rises as a Shiki.
- The Resenter: Towards both his nephew and Yuuki.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Tohru and Natsuno's blue. He is also blue to Tatsumi and Megumi's red.
- Sissy Villain: Although how much of a "villain" he is probably depends on your interpretation.
- Spoiled Brat: In the manga it's implied that he grew up as this, but now his nephew receives the attention he used to.
- Stalker with a Crush: His behavior toward Megumi shows signs of his being this.
- The Unfavorite:
- He seems to be felt like he was treated like this by his family, to the point they let him die all alone while they look after his nephew and then later seem to have completely forgotten that he was one of the Shiki's casualties to avenge. Although he does more-or-less seem to bring it on himself, and at least in the manga it's revealed that he used to be the favorite before his nephew came along.
- His resentment towards Yuuki is rooted in his jealousy over how fast Yuuki and Tohru became close friends and over the fact that Megumi is obsessed with him.
- What Does She See in Him?: He honestly can't understand why girls like Megumi would ever fall in love with cold cool guys like Yuuki.
Nao Yasumori
Voiced by: Miki Itō (JP), Cynthia Cranz (EN)
A young woman who moved in Sotoba several years ago after marrying Mikiyasu, another friend of Dr. Ozaki and Seishin. Begins to show the symptoms of a Shiki bite early on and quickly succumbs to it.
- Alcoholic Parent: Not the Yasumoris, but her own family.
- All for Nothing: She thought killing her entire family would eventually turn them into Shikis and they would be together forever, but they didn't rise up. All of the actions she did were meaninglessness.
- Back from the Dead: Another Shiki victim who rises.
- A Death in the Limelight: The first OVA reveals information about her life prior to the beginning of the series. And she dies by the end of it.
- Face Death with Dignity: In the anime, Nao smiles at Hasegawa when he gives her a Mercy Kill.
- Happily Adopted: The Yasumori family happily treated her like she was already family.
- Happily Married: She lived very happily with Mikiyasu, until she kills him, though she did it because she believed he'd come Back from the Dead like her.
- Hates Being Alone: Nao desperately wants to have her family by her side. So much so that she killed all of them hoping they could join her as Shiki. Sadly, none of them rose up.
- Heel Realization: In the manga, when facing death at the hands of the villagers, she realizes that she is no different from the serial killers and murderers she once denounced. In the anime, in the same situation, she realizes how horrible it was to kill her entire family hoping in vain they would return as Shiki.
- Irony: She escapes from her Abusive Parents and finally finds a loving family in Sotoba, only to have it all taken away from her when none of the others rise when she kills them. And she knows that it's her own fault, too.
- Inelegant Blubbering: She is rather sensitive.
- Kill the Ones You Love: She ends up killing adoptive family, including her husband and son because she wanted to try and turn them into Shiki like her. Unfortunately, none of them rise up and Nao starts breaking down when she realizes she killed the only people who ever loved her.
- Mercy Kill: In the anime, Hasegawa mercifully stabs her so she doesn't die in agony when the villagers leave her to be burned in the sunlight.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After she kills her entire family and none of them returns as a Shiki, Nao comes to deeply regret what she did to them and realizes that not only did she end up alone anyway, but she destroyed the only happiness she ever had.
- Offing the Offspring: A more sympathetic version. She kills her own son in a failed attempt to turn him into a Shiki.
- Parental Abandonment: Her real parents were addicted to alcohol and gambling. They ended up practically committing fraud and ran off somewhere. They left without her when she was six years old.
- Our Vampires Are Different: She rises as a Shiki.
- Self-Made Orphan: Her in-laws were pretty much her parents and killed them only because she believed they would come back.
- Teen Pregnancy: Was about 18 when she had her son.
- Transhuman Treachery: Whilst most of the Shiki are guilty of this, Nao is a particularly good example. She goes after her family before anyone else, hoping that they will rise too so that she won't be alone anymore.
Kanami Yano
Voiced by: Tamako Nohama (JP), Stephanie Young (EN)
Owner of the restaurant Chigusa. She lives with her mother Tae.
- Action Survivor: Despite losing her mother and being betrayed by her childhood friend, she manages to live to the very end.
- Agent Scully: Thinks what Motoko is saying is crazy. Until her own mother dies and rises up.
- Disappeared Dad: Her dad died when she was young.
Motoko Maeda
Voiced by: Satomi Sakamoto (JP), Dana Schultes (EN)
A young extremely neurotic, xenophobic, and unhinged housewife from lower Sotoba and Kanami's childhood friend.
- Break the Cutie: Her children dying while no one listens to her and finding out Kanami’s mother has risen utterly breaks her.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: She's not quite right in the head, being very paranoid (which ironically proved to be a case of Properly Paranoid).
- Chekhov's Gunman: While she never was the most minor character even in the beginning, a few would suspect that, in the end, it's her actions that will arguably be the most meaningful and impactful of all, probably being the only to really matter, and that she'll be the one to destroy Sotoba and decisively decide it's fate.
- Childhood Friends: With Kanami. But they eventually fall apart when Motoko subconsciously unwittingly betrays Kanami and Tae to the villagers, leading to Tae's death at their hands and Kanami leaving the village. They never met each other again, as Motoko herself stayed in the village and died after this and Kanami survived.
- Curtains Match the Windows: Blue hair and blue eyes.
- Cute and Psycho: Motoko is pretty cute and charming at her best times and maximum composure. Even when intensively worrying, she's still cute, but she becomes increasingly worrying, creepy, disturbing and downright horrifying the further she goes in that direction.
- A Day in the Limelight: She gets her own episode dedicated to her story and overall role in events.
- Defiant to the End: Upon learning she was right about the outsiders being the cause of her suffering all along, she soaks a majority of Sotoba in gasoline and burns it to the ground, laughing about how she finally beat the "old man" (her father-in-law) who was the catalyst for her children's deaths by destroying the village he called home.
- Die Laughing: She only has an extremely sinister grin and goes "I win" as she douses Sotoba in flames.
- Dissonant Serenity: She frequently slips in it at her worst, in a stark contrast to her usual jittery self, the two being her polar extremes. It becomes permanent after the death of her son and she remains completely unfazed and detached even amidst the ensuing slaughter.
- Driven to Suicide: In the end, after losing her entire family to the Shikis, she sets herself on fire along with the village, though her actual thoughts and intents while doing this is debatable.
- Heroic BSoD: Regularly goes through it, it mostly being her normal state.
- Insane Equals Violent: Averted, as Motoko is one of the most unviolent characters, never having killed anyone, while also arguably being the most mentally deteriorated.
- Madness Mantra: "Damn you old man..."
- Mama Bear: Attempts to protect her children from harm. While it’s sadly rendered useless, she attempts to find and kill their murderer, none other than her father-in-law Iwao.
- Nervous Wreck: Oh so very much, it's her defining trait, from constant worrying and panicking, to nervous jittering and twitching and, in manga, chewing her fingers when especially anxious, to physically harming herself in a crazed panic.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: She really doesn't get along with her husband's parents, though her relationship with him isn't what you'd call a happy one.
- Only Sane Woman: Amazingly, despite generally being pretty much bonkers, she was also at the same time one of the most rational people in the village as she was the only one to correctly blame the deaths on suspicious new arrivals when everyone else were completely trusting and she was also the only one to make a wise decision to take a more active stance in their defence against Shikis and lock up inside the house when she learned about them, instead of passively sitting, waiting for wonders to happen.
- The Paranoiac: That's pretty much her cue.
- Properly Paranoid: She was completely right about not trusting outsiders and Kirishikis being the ones to blame. She was also right when she thought that Shikis are going to come for them and prompted to lock herself with her son in a bathroom.
- Sanity Slippage: Motoko was severely unhinged and unstable even from the beginning, but her condition only worsened as people around her started to die. As her usual, Motoko always seems to be in a half-crazed state, having intense constant paranoia, numerous fears and obsessions and frequent twitchy shrunken eyes, while remaining somewhat detached, shifting from twitching in panic to uncanny calmness and serenity, speaking in monotone with a blank face, but still having crazy eyes. As a side effect, she also seems to be mostly numb to physical pain. Ironically, while she seems to be the most unstable, she still probably is the most "sane" in some sense and less violent of the villagers as she's one of the few to never actually kill anyone, human or Shiki, and her increased overall paranoia, suspiciousness and awareness also allowed her to deduce the nature and cause of deaths in the village relatively early on all by herself, being pretty much the only known person to do that.
- Twitchy Eye: Very frequent. That's her normal defining type of behaviour.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: After losing her entire family and what little scraps of the sanity she had, Motoko sets herself and the village on fire, commiting suicide and burning it down, along with the large chunk of its surroundings.
The Kirishikis
A mysterious family who move into the Kanemasa mansion at the start of the series. They are the original Shiki group. Sunako Kirishiki
Voiced by: Aoi Yūki (JP), Cherami Leigh (EN)
The young daughter of the Kirishikis. In reality the progenitor of the rest of the Shiki in the village.
- Affably Evil: Sunako usually shows herself as very polite and friendly to those she doesn't want to attack, such as Seishin. Sometimes it's easy to forget she is trying to kill all the humans in the village.
- Berserk Button: She does not like to be addressed as "Sunako-chan" (Miss Sunako in the dub). Anyone who attaches that honorific with her name risks her wrath.
- Big Bad: The leader of the Shiki and the reason behind the events of the series. Masterminds the plan to turn Sotoba into Shiki Heaven.
- Black Eyes of Evil: She has creepy hollow black eyes, emphasizing her inhuman nature.
- Bookworm: She confesses so to Seishin, expressing her great admiration for his novels.
- Churchgoing Villain: Whenever she takes a break from leading the usurpation of the village, Sunako visits the local church where she quickly befriends the priest Seishin. When things get bad for the Shiki and the humans start killing them, her first impulse is to go to an abandoned church and ask God for forgiveness and protection.
- Creepy Child: Her major case of Black Eyes of Evil combined with her cutesy voice and Elegant Gothic Lolita fashions open up a big ol' box of creepiness.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Sunako was originally a beloved daughter of a well-off family. One day, she was bitten by a vampire Western noble, who was a guest of her family, and died. After she rose as a Shiki, her family kept her confined and sent her servants to feed upon. After some time, she finally escaped her "refuge" and, after discovering her family had moved, went on a journey to find them. For many years, she searched to no avail. As time passed, and decades went by, Sunako realized that, by now, all of her family must have passed. She lived many years alone, but slowly created a family of Shiki. However, they had to keep moving or were hunted.
- Despair Event Horizon: In the show's climax she is confronted by Tomio who proceeds to give her a verbal smackdown that ends up mentally destroying her and her will to live. The only reason she didn't burn in at the church was due to Seishin bailing her out.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: She has long dark hair and ghostly pale skin, which is a befitting for an undead.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: She mostly wears different kinds of Lolita fashion with accessories. Her "Queen of Hearts" dress was actually designed by the real-life Lolita brand Angelic Pretty.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Even though her plan is to kill and replace all the villagers with shiki, she's capable of unselfish love and genuine devotion to her family.
- Family-Values Villain: Everything she does is for the welfare of her family.
- Femme Fatalons: She has long red nails.
- Hypocrite: Perhaps her most driving flaw, she wants to be trusted and accepted, but doesn't trust and accept in turn. This leads her to act rashly and to jump to conclusions about others. As Tomio points out, had she just tried a diplomatic solution then, just maybe, a lot of tears and bloodshed could have been prevented. This is also reflected in her breakdown after the villagers fight back, she caused the deaths of plenty of innocent people yet clearly couldn't handle suffering the same fate.
- Improbable Hairstyle: Like Ritsuko's, her hairstyle doesn't seem to be affected by gravity.
- Interspecies Friendship: She admires and gets along well with the human priest Seishin.
- Interrupted Suicide: She decides to stay and die in the fire when her plan and the village burn around her. Seishin arrives and convinces her to escape with him.
- Karma Houdini: Downplayed. Despite all the people who die because of her, she gets out alive in the end. But she loses everyone she ever cared about save Seishin, and although she seems to get past her Despair Event Horizon, it's likely she still won't be able to forgive herself for her sins.
- Lack of Empathy: She is genuinely sad that she had killed many people, but she spends the majority of her mourning time finding excuses for herself and her actions, and never even tries to minimize the deaths. She's the one who planned to slaughter an entire village, and to kidnap random innocent people from the next city, just so she could have a village of her pawns to keep her company.
- Morality Pet: To Tatsumi. His only redeeming trait is his genuine loyalty, affection and admiration to Sunako.
- A Mother to Her Men: She genuinely cares about her Shiki underlings. She refuses to run away right away after Ozaki exposes the Shiki to the village because she doesn't want to abandon the newly turned Shiki.
- Never My Fault: Her defining trait. She constantly makes up excuses over the deaths of the people she and the others are responsible for. Tomio slams her for this and would've killed her had Seishin not intervene.
- Non-Action Big Bad: She's the leader of the Shiki, but her body is that of a fragile little girl. She could never stand a chance against a group of humans and she knows this. In the climax, Tomio would have easily killed her if not for Seishin's intervention.
- Oh, Crap!: When Tomio finds her and is unable to escape.
- Ojou: She gives off this image, being a young girl with sophisticated manners living in a huge mansion. It's later revealed she was a legitimate example when she was human.
- The Older Immortal: She's the oldest of the Shiki in Sotoba.
- Our Vampires Are Different: She's a Shiki, which is essentially a vampire.
- Parental Substitute: She serves as a mother figure to Chizuru rather than the other way around.
- The Pollyanna: Until things start going sideways, she's never seen without a smile.
- Punch-Clock Villain: How she sees herself, she has nothing personal against humans and even befriends one but believes that killing them is the only way she can survive.
- Really 700 Years Old: Despite her appearance of a 13-year-old girl, she's at least two centuries old.
- Religious Vampire: She's fairly religious and wrestles with the hypocrisy of being a vampire who kills people to survive when murder is a great sin. She also makes several references to The Bible, especially Cain and Abel.
- Undead Child: She may look like a little girl, but she's actually the leader of the Shiki and is at least two centuries old.
- Vampire Lolita Archetype: Sunako was turned into a vampire at a young age, lived for two centuries, her family tried to house her but moved without telling her, leaving her by her lonesome. She loves to dress in Lolita clothing, has long hair and, though she poses as the daughter of the Kirishiki family, is really the head vampire. Even though she's trying to kill all humans at a village, she's a sympathetic Anti-Villain whose goal is creating a place where she and her kindred can live peacefully. She also manages to form a close friendship with the town's priest.
- Villainous Breakdown: Goes through one as the Shiki hunts get closer to her location, trying to justify her actions to herself as she attempts to avoid death.
- The Woman Behind the Man: She's the real leader of the Shikis.
- Womanchild: Played with, it is averted for most of her screentime despite her childish appearance as she's both very well mannered and cunning, but her reaction to the villagers hunting down the Shiki comes across as less like one of an immortal centuries-old vampire and more like one of a scared child who can't understand why this is happening.
- Would Hurt a Child: She's the main instigator of the Shiki attack in Sotoba and doesn't show a lot of guilt in the deaths of children and teenagers.
Chizuru Kirishiki
Voiced by: Ai Orikasa (JP), Lydia Mackay (EN)
The supposed mother of Sunako and wife of Seishirou. In reality, she's another Shiki and is actually younger than Sunako.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Chizuru was a total bitch and ruthless killer, but it's hard not to feel sorry for her when she is getting lynched while begging for her life when she was discovered as a Shiki by the villagers.
- Ax-Crazy: She's…more than a little unhinged.
- Black Eyes of Evil: As typical of older Shiki, she has solid black eyes.
- Dark and Troubled Past: When she was alive, Chizuru was a loving wife until her husband died during war, and she was later turned into a Shiki and wandered around lost without love until she found Seishirou.
- Devoted to You: Seishirou is hopelessly devoted to her.
- Even the Girls Want Her: Kaori blushes when she first sees Chizuru and Megumi compliments her beauty.
- Femme Fatale: She likes to seduce her victims before draining their blood and killing them.
- Femme Fatalons: Her long black nails.
- It's All About Me: She'll cause trouble if she feels like it and doesn't really care if she gets called out for her behaviour.
- Karmic Death: Ever since her introduction, she victimized villagers without restraint, gloated over her ability to enthrall many of the male villagers, and showed very little (if any) remorse when Tatsumi and Yoshie addressed her careless behavior. In the end, she was publicly destroyed in front of most of the village in a humiliating way.
- Locked into Strangeness: She had light brown hair when she was human. It presumably changed to platinum blonde after she became a Shiki.
- Ms. Fanservice: She's an extremely sexy and seductive woman and likes to wear some alluring ridiculous outfits.
- Oh, Crap!: After realizing that Toshio tricked and outed her.
- Our Vampires Are Different: One of the Shiki.
- Out-Gambitted: For a long time, she was sure she had Ozaki under her thrall thanks to having bitten him. In reality, thanks to Natsuno having bitten him before she got to him, he was playing her like a fiddle, taking advantage of her conviction in order to gain her genuine trust and use her as a springboard to start the Shiki hunt by providing irrefutable evidence to the other villagers.
- Shout-Out: Appears in one episode dressed like Lady Gaga.
- The Vamp: Uses sex appeal to tempt the villagers out of their homes. Lampshaded by Seishirou when he helps her once, remarking that he can't believe he's helping his wife to have an affair.
- Villainous Breakdown: After Ozaki exposes her as a Shiki and has the villagers turn against her, Chizuru is reduced to a state where she's screaming for help and begging for her life like a defenseless child.
- Womanchild: Not quite as mature as her daughter. Yoshie flat out says that Sunako is the mother in their relationship.
- Would Hurt a Child: Was responsible for Megumi's death. After putting the two and two together, her father wastes no time killing her.
Seishirou Kirishiki
Voiced by: GACKT (JP), J. Michael Tatum (EN)
Sunako's supposed father. Except not really.
- Actually Not a Vampire: It's easy to assume that he's a Shiki since he's the "father" of the Kirishiki family, but he is completely human and apparently the one who funds Sunako.
- Badass Cape: He wears a cape in the final part of the story when the war between the humans and the Shiki starts.
- Badass Normal: He is a normal human whose power lies in his financial assets. However, he is particularly deadly with firearms, controls a pack of dogs, and is respected by all the shiki as the master of his family.
- Brainwashing: Is bitten by Natsuno and ordered to hunt down and kill the rest of the Kirishikis.
- Driven to Suicide: In the manga and anime, he commits suicide after being bitten and hypnotized by Natsuno.
- Exact Words: Thanks to Natsuno ordering him to "kill everyone who lives at the mansion", he was able to use it to kill himself.
- Face Death with Dignity: In the anime, he smiles as he willingly walks into the castle where he dies in the fire.
- The Gunslinger: He fights with a rifle.
- Token Human: The only human Kirishiki.
- Unusual Eyebrows: His eyebrows look like caterpillars.
- Vampire Vannabe: Really wants to become a Shiki, but due to the fact that neither of his parents turned, the possibility of that happening is zero. However in the manga he was more happy that he could be with Chizuru and be with people who actually cared about him.
Tatsumi
Voiced by: Wataru Takagi (JP), Ian Sinclair (EN)
Sunako's right hand man and the most dangerous of the Shiki due to lacking their various weaknesses.
- Anime Hair: His hairstyle makes it look like he has wolf ears on his head.
- Ax-Crazy: It's not apparent at first, but it becomes clear he's rather unhinged.
- Battle Butler: He works as a butler for the Kirishiki and is also their strongest fighter.
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: He has pretty thick and furry eyebrows.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When we first see him, he appears to be friendly and harmless. Of course this is all a lie, but it's only around Episode 7 that he shows his true colors as a cold, cruel master manipulator.
- Chessmaster Sidekick: Is very competent and in charge of doing everything the Shiki need during the day, but is fiercely loyal to Sunako to the point of dying so she can get away in the end.
- Cool Shades: His glasses.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Bumbling fool one moment, horror on legs the second.
- Daywalking Vampire: Unlike other Shiki, he's immune to sunlight.
- The Dragon: Sunako's right hand man.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Is noticeably disgusted by how Hayami is doing his job running the funeral service. Though this could be more because it threatens to expose the Shiki’s existence to the world.
- Faux Affably Evil: His jovial personality hides how dangerous he truly is.
- The Heavy: He's working under Sunako's orders, but Tatsumi is the main active villain in the story with Sunako rarely taking part herself. He's the biggest threat to the human side and the one to lead the newly risen Shiki.
- I Have Your Wife: He forces Tohru to kill Natsuno by threatening to go after Tohru's family if he doesn't do it.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How he dies in the manga.
- Jerkass: He sends newborn Shiki after their loved ones and punishes anyone who doesn't.
- More than Mind Control: We see him doing this with Masao after digging him up (doubtless he does the same with every new vampire that falls into his care).
- Mr. Exposition: He explains the Shiki's nature and weaknesses to Masao after he rises.
- Non-Indicative Name: Sunako calls him a werewolf rather than a Shiki, but that doesn't mean he can turn into a wolf at all; he's really just a human-like Daywalking Vampire. According to him, Sunako just thought it would be funny to call him a werewolf because vampires often have a werewolf Familiar in movies.
- The Nose Knows: His sense of smell tells him whether a dead human will rise as a Shiki.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: It's hard to tell how much of his goofy persona is an act.
- Rasputinian Death: The guy gets shot and driven over multiple times before falling into a fissure. What finally kills him differs between the manga (staked on a stalagmite) and anime (blown up by dynamite).
- Ridiculously Alive Undead: He's a very rare kind of Shiki that retains human qualities after being transformed. Besides his immunity to sunlight, he can eat human food and his eyes and skin tone are normal in contrast to the regular Shiki's Black Eyes of Evil and Undeathly Pallor.
- Sadist: He enjoys tormenting his victims and putting others through terrible agony. Megumi even calls him a sadist.
- Straw Nihilist: Reveals in his final moments that he is a nihilist in the manga. Knowing that Sunako's actions were futile, he just wanted to see the Shiki and mankind wipe each other out.
- Undying Loyalty: He's completely loyal to Sunako, to the point of readily risking his own life to protect her.
- Villainous Valour: Acts as a decoy to the villagers and gives Sunako a chance to escape.
- Would Hurt a Child: Ties up Akira when he’s in front of the Shikified Iwao Maeda and might’ve succeeded in having him killed by the latter in the original novel. Fortunately, this isn’t the case in the Anime and Manga, where Natsuno saves Akira. He also threatens families of risen Shikis, and is therefore not above harming children in general.
Hayami
Voiced by: Nobuo Tobita (JP), Sonny Strait (EN)
The Shikinote responsible for the Funeral services when Seishin ends up busy.
- Agent Peacock: He’s far more extravagantly dressed compared to the rest of he Kirishikis, but he’s damn lethal for sure.
- Speak Ill of the Dead: Makes the Tanaka siblings’ father and Atsushi’s funeral look like a party. Everyone is understandably horrified. Tatsumi isn’t exactly thrilled.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Vanishes near the end.
Other Shiki
Shizuka Matsuo
Voiced by: Mayu Iino (Japanese), Alison Viktorin (English)
Creepy, eccentric little Shiki girl, who appears to be one of the older senior Shikis.
- Bare-Handed Puppetry: When she throws her bunraku puppet out of anger, she keeps talking through the other "puppet" she has drawn with marker on her right hand.
- Creepy Child: Being a Shiki little girl naturally makes her creepy, though she stands out even among others with her unsettling mannerisms.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: She's an Undead Child with long straight black hair in anime and chalk-white skin like most Shiki.
- Undead Child: Similar to Sunako, she was turned Shiki as a child. Her innocent looks heavily contrast her creepy vampire behavior.
- Vague Age: She looks like a little girl even younger than Sunako, but due to being a Shiki, Shizuka might be much older. Her speaking in old Japanese is an indication that she could be one of the older Shiki.
- Ventriloquism: She shows her abilities as a ventriloquist by talking through her bunraku puppet.
