Megumi Shimizu

"Making someone I hate suffer feels really great!"

- Megumi Shimizu

Megumi Shimizu is a secondary character, one of the main antagonists and one of the most frequently appearing characters in the manga/anime series Shiki.

She is voiced by Haruka Tomatsu in the Japanese version, and by Tia Ballard in the English dubbed version.

Background
Megumi is a 15-year old girl living in Sotoba. She always felt like she didn't fit in the village where everyone was closeminded, knew one another and criticized the way she dressed. She felt like she was better off in the city and it was her dream to go to the city and become an idol in show business where she would hang out in clubs every night. Her only friend in Sotoba is Kaori Tanaka, whom she actually doesn't like at all like the others. Megumi has an unrequited crush for Natsuno Yuuki, a guy the same age as her who moved to Sotoba from the city. Like her, he also wishes to leave Sotoba and go to the city. Megumi writes him a late summer greeting card but she's too shy to post it. In her free time, she either takes walks around the village, showing off her fancy dresses or she sits near Natsuno's bedroom window in the bushes admiring him from afar.

Appearance
Megumi was a beautiful, relatively tall and attractive young girl, and appeared to be quite thin. She had long wavy pink hair of length to end of her back which was parted down the middle with messy bangs on her forehead and framing messy hair by her cheeks. She always kept her hair in two high twin-tails and was never seen without it styled, except for when she fell ill and died. Megumi's large eyes were a cool shade of cherry pink. She had a thin nose and beautiful plump red lips. When she turned Shiki her eyes took on the common midnight black and crimson red colour of her kind. She kept her skin pale and was cautious of her appearance.

Life
Megumi was born on August 26, 1978. She was born and raised in Sotoba and was slightly spoiled by her parents as their only daughter and child. Ever since she was younger, she hated living in Sotoba and enjoyed watching fashion reviews on television and reading fashion magazines, though her parents and the other villagers didn't support it and called it ridiculous. Megumi always hated living in Sotoba and studied hard in school with a goal of leaving the village and going to university in a city once she graduates. The year she began high school, a big city transfer student called Natsuno Yuuki moves to Sotoba and actually doesn't like it there at all. Megumi falls in love with him, though her love is unrequited as he appears to ignore her whenever she tries to strike a conversation. Aside from preparing for her future career, Megumi likes taking long walks around Sotoba showing off her outfits and stalking her crush Natsuno from the bushes near his bedroom window. She also enjoyed writing love letters for Yuuki but would never actually send them to him because she was a very self-critical person. When a new family moves into the Kanemasa mansion, Megumi is intrigued. She decides to visit them hoping they'd accept her city girl personality but never returns home. A search party is organized for her and after searching they discover Megumi's body deep in the mountain woods. The doctor concludes that she suffers from anaemia but should be fine. However, a few days later, Megumi dies of heart failure, shocking everyone.

Death and Resurrection
At Megumi's funeral, most people gossiped Megumi calling her a capacious girl and only her and Kaori's family seem to be devastated. Kaori presents Natsuno the late summer greeting card that Megumi wrote for him but Natsuno refuses to accept it considering he wasn't really close to her. When burrying Megumi, Kaori leaves a good-luck charm that she had planned to give Megumi for her 16th birthday in Megumi's coffin. After Megumi's death, Natsuno begins to hallucinate and thinks he still sees Megumi watching him at night.

After receiving an invitation from Tatsumi to Tohru Motou's house, Megumi and Tatsumi visit at 2 AM while Natsuno is staying over. Megumi enters Tohru's bedroom where Tohru is sleeping with Natsuno awake near Tohru's bed. She says she hates Tohru for being closer to Natsuno than she ever was. She reveals her fangs and goes in for the bite. Natsuno wakes up covered in sweat and believes it was all just a bad dream. Or was it?

When Tohru dies several days later, Natsuno knows that Megumi has risen from the dead. He gathers her friend Kaori and Kaori's younger brother Akira, whom both were already suspecting something of a supernatural nature was going on, to dig up Megumi's coffin and confirm if she was truly dead. And they are right, Megumi coffin is in fact empty causing Kaori to break down in tears.

After this, Tatsumi, who had been spying on them the whole time, orders Megumi to go after Kaori and Akira's family starting with killing their father. She does so and threatens Kaori for being close with Natsuno despite knowing about Megumi's feelings for him.

Some days later, Natsuno also dies and Megumi hears a rumour that Natsuno is cremated because he originally came from the city. These news devastate her because she knows that Natsuno can't rise from the dead if cremated.

Megumi's End
After the humans finally discover the vampires, a war breaks between the humans and the vampires. Megumi at first fights together with the senior Shiki members but after Sunako commands them all to retreat and hide, Megumi decides to escape and wants to go to the city. The humans were killing the Shiki during the day when they are vulnerable. Megumi hides her coffin in the bushes, deep in the mountains where she sleeps for the day. When the night comes, she goes with her plan of leaving for the city. When she reaches the final obstacle before being free, a group of villagers holding flashlights was still doing rounds so she couldn't cross it. As the group gets distracted by seeing fire spreading around the mountains, Megumi takes her chance. While crossing the road where she once used to wait for the bus with Natsuno, Megumi sees a nostalgic flashback of him waiting for the bus. She gets distracted by nostalgia, causing her to get caught by the group. She escapes into the darkness, running into a dark grass field. Soon then, a bunch of tractors turn on their lights and locate her on the ground. She is ambushed and cornered by the humans. Megumi gets chased by the villagers but cannot run anymore so she tells them her plan and tells them she won't hurt anyone. Megumi gets hit by a truck again, causing her to fall on the ground, getting her arm crushed. Megumi is still alive and rants about how much she hates Sotoba and its residents and how she was never happy being born in a village where everyone gossips and judges each other. In the anime, her head is crushed by an oncoming tractor and Megumi is then staked by the humans. In the manga, Megumi gets hit by a car and then gets staked with around five stakes sticking from her chest. As she is dying, she thinks she made it to the city and sees a vision of Laforet and Harajuku, but it was actually just a magazine of hers near her head. She dies happy thinking about the fun life she is going to have in the city, which puts her at peace, indicating her soul has been set free, as is the case with other vampires.

Trivia

 * She is one of the two only characters to be shown in Lolita Fashioned dresses.
 * The other being Sunako.
 * Megumi is the only character with pink hair.
 * Megumi also shares her last name with Takashi Shimizu, director of the Ju on horror movies.
 * She has probably the most grotesque and saddest death in the anime, while in the manga her death was rather emotional and standard.
 * Megumi's birthday is August 26, 1978.
 * Her parents were emotionally abusive causing her to have family troubles which could be one of the reasons why she desperately wanted to leave the village and live on her own.