Lio Shirazumi

"April 1995, I met her."

- Lio Shirazumi

Lio Shirazumi is a villain from Kara no Kyoukai, first appearing briefly in the second chapter, and later appearing again as the main antagonist in the seventh chapter.

April 1995
An older schoolmate and a high school upper-classman of Mikiya Kokutou and Shiki Ryougi, Lio first fell in love at the sight of Shiki at the start of April 1995. After a month, Lio would then go on to befriend Mikiya, finding great comfort in having him as his only friend, even meeting up with him on occasion. His initial love for Shiki slowly became an obsession that consumed his daily life. Unable to confront Shiki about his feelings, instead he begins to stalk her, regularly taking photos of her as well as recording her daily activities using a video camera. On July, he finally confessed his love to Shiki but only to be rejected due to Shiki's supposed dislike for "weak people".

Feeling depressed after being rejected, Lio decided to seek out an infamous schoolmate who was known for bullying others over arcade games. As a way to vent his frustrations, Lio plans to provoke said schoolmate through a series of arcade matches, in hopes of confronting him afterwards to prove his worth. Lio challenges the schoolmate in an arcade game, winning against him in consecutive matches for almost an hour until the schoolmate prompts Lio to follow him in a dark alley. Before the schoolmate could react, Lio hits him on the head, instantly killing him in the process. Surprised, Lio breaks down as he fears the consequences of his actions.

With no means to dispose of the body, his origin partially takes effect and he concludes that the "natural" course of action would be to eat the body to remove the evidence. He begins to devour the body, initially sucking out the blood to drain it. However he begins to feel sick, thus unable to continue further. Here he encounters Souren Araya who praises him for developing an awareness of his origin.

Araya claims Lio to be insane, and thus prompts him to continue eating for he claims that it is only natural for an insane person to do so. Lio overcomes his moral paralysis and in one hour, he is able to devour his schoolmate's whole body, causing his lower jaw to break in the process. Araya asks Lio if he wishes to have his origin awakened as a way of becoming a transcendental man, to which Lio consents under the belief that it would help reliquish his state as a "weak" person. With his origin awakened, Lio begins to manifest a carnivorous hunger for human flesh.

1995-1996 Murders
Starting from September 1995, Lio would begin his murderous campaign while continuing to stalk Shiki by taking photos of her and recording her activities using a handheld camera. Due to his connection to Araya, he is somehow able to discover about Shiki's murderous impulse. Finding relief in the fact that Shiki, the girl he loves, is suppressing a similar murderous instinct like his own, he begins to orchestrate his crimes with the intention of influencing Shiki's mental state so as to allow her to succumb to her murderous impulse. He decides to conduct his murders at night, while picking his victims based on location so that Shiki would be able to come across them based on her daily routine and activities.

His first murder involved cutting off the victim’s hands and feet, leaving the victim to die. His second victim was vertically sliced in half from the crotch to the head with the other half being stuck to a wall. His third victim had his limbs cut off, in which the arms were sewn to the legs. The fourth was cut into pieces, with what looked like a Yin-Yang/Taijitu symbol carved onto the body. It was at this point that Lio drops out of school while attempting to manipulate Shiki into thinking that she is the real killer. He would then conduct his fifth murder, arranging the severed parts in such a way that the arms and legs formed a manji symbol.

At some point in time he would have dinner with Mikiya in a restaurant until Mikiya decides to visit the Ryougi estate. Lio would then conduct his sixth murder on the path covered with bamboo trees near the Ryougi estate in an attempt to bring out Shiki's murderous impulse while framing her for the crime. Lio hides behind the bamboo trees, as Shiki discovers the victim on the path with Mikiya witnessing the whole scene.

Due to Lio's murders and its influence on Shiki's mental state, Shiki gets involved in an incident where she nearly kills Mikiya as well as being caught in a car accident. Having nearly driven Shiki to her death, Araya stops Lio from conducting his murders in order to prevent him from causing further problems for his plan. It is at this point that Araya deems Lio to be a failure, resorting to using other powered individuals to divert Shiki's attention while keeping Lio at bay.

Lio halts his murderous campaign, and on occassion, he would stay in the Ogawa Apartment Complex while continuing to observe Shiki's activities after she had recovered from her two-year coma.

Appearance
Lio originally had brown hair and brown eyes and he often wore simple casual clothes. His hair would later turn blonde and he would also gain reptilian/feline red-orange eyes, and retractable claws. This is due to his awakened origin causing his body to mutate and restructure itself. He would later change his hairstyle and wear a red leather jacket, a dark purple shirt and skirt (originally black in the novel), causing his overall appearance to drastically change. He sports this image with the intention of appearing visually reminiscent of Shiki, even to the point of using a military combat knife as his weapon of choice.

Personality
Lio was originally a socially withdrawn and quiet individual. He had befriended Mikiya Kokuto and initially had a crush on Shiki Ryougi. When his love for Shiki turned into an obsession he began to stalk her, taking photographs as well as recording her activities using a video camera. Aside from this, he keeps a personal diary and is depicted as an amateur artist, having sketched portraits of Shiki. Lio developed an inferiority-complex as he internalized Shiki's given reason for rejecting him, in which Shiki claimed that she dislikes "weak people". Lio's motivation for initially wanting to confront the infamous school bully in a fight was based on his misguided perception that he can only prove his worth as a "weak" person based on a real fist-fight. Upon realizing that he had killed his schoolmate, Lio instantly became distressed as he feared the responsibility of his crime.

Despite his introverted nature, Lio is actually very manipulative, having nearly convinced Shiki that she was the true killer of the 1995 murders. After awakening his origin, Lio developed a superiority-complex, albeit prompted by Araya's words of praise. He subconsciously recognizes his guilt as a murderer, but chooses to live in denial. As such, whenever he killed someone he blamed his origin as the cause of his actions as well as the fact that he is supposedly insane to begin with. Despite his claims of insanity, Lio only became insane based on how his willful experiences affected his mentality, as opposed to Shiki who was truly "insane" since birth.

Recognizing himself as the only "special being", Lio grew frightened of his solitude, deciding that he would only be content if he sought out and created companions of his own. With Shiki being the girl he always loved and Mikiya being what he considers to be his only true friend, Lio interchanges between wanting to convert either Shiki or Mikiya to his side either as a murderous killer or as a "special being". Despite his preference in recruiting either Shiki or Mikiya, he is not above recruiting other teenagers as he slowly grew desperate in seeking out a companion. It is eventually revealed that his goal of creating murderous companions is prompted by his desire to share the burden of having a guilty mind. His carelessness in regards to his life and his risk-taking behaviour can be attributed to his subconcious fear of living with a guilty mind, though this does not mean he harbours any suicidal tendencies as he simply relishes in tempting his fate in battle.

Lio's desire to devour Shiki is not inherent of his personality as it is derived from his origin of "consumption". This provides a pseudo-split personality on his part as Lio is depicted as switching between different moods from being feral to suddenly becoming calm and collected. In this regard, his obsession towards Shiki manifested into a desire to devour her, glorifying her as his "special" meal. It was only near the end before his final battle that he begins to doubt his need for companions as he deduced that a special being is only "special" if it were truly alone, though this thought process could be attributed to his sanity breaking down after Mikiya's "death". His original personality had been described to completely fade away after he had finally realized the guilt of his crimes when he "killed" Mikiya. During his final battle with Shiki, Lio's mental state becomes primarily dominated by his carnivorous instincts due to his origin of "consumption" slowly taking over his mind, meaning that he had truly intended to kill and devour Shiki during their final fight.