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musical-chick-13 · 6 months

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Thinking about Shiki again, and how Sunako is meant to deconstruct the idea of eternal youth because "youth" includes "being stuck as a child" and not just "sprightly and 24 years old forever." And how despite appearing as a child and, in several respects, retaining the personal qualities of one, she's still given an incredible amount of depth and complexity and a rich internal world (like actual children), wrapped up in these layers of self-conflict and a genuinely sympathetic desire to be loved and understood while still clearly being The Antagonist™ of the story and an architect of a truly terrifying situation for the villagers involved. All while having an incredibly interesting relationship with Seishin that is central to the plot and themes of the show.

ALSO thinking about how they easily could have left Chizuru as a one-dimensional femme-fatale, but they spent an entire episode showing us that she, like every character in this, is still a person underneath everything she feels compelled to do. They didn't have to give her any complexity, but they did! And then when we see the villagers' reactions to her, we're left wondering if it's really worth it to meet monstrosity with monstrosity, and if there are some things that, regardless of what kind of person you are, no one deserves. If perhaps there is a limit to what we are allowed to do to protect ourselves and preserve our humanity, and if humanity is something it's even possible to lose in the first place. We have to sit with these questions, and the show provides no concrete answers.

Everyone loses when you fully dehumanize the enemy (which is something both sides of this conflict do, albeit in different ways), and anyone is capable of carrying out that dehumanization.

#shiki #sunako kirishiki #chizuru kirishiki #PLEASE WATCH THE SHOW. PLEASE. I'M BEGGING YOU.#shiki anime #meta #(ish?? that tag is more for blog organization purposes)#behold! a creation!

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unholyfangirling · 10 months

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Choose

A different last meeting between friends turned enemies.

The look on Seishin's face is wide-eyed, shocked. A strange thing to see on his normally neutral visage.

"...Toshio." he says, as if the wind has been knocked out of him.

Toshio takes out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one on the nearby flame covering a wall, "Yeah, did you miss me?" The man puts the cigarette in his mouth and inhales, "I think we've both been up to things since the last time we properly saw each other."

Toshio is doused in blood, just like the night they went their separate ways. Seishin grits his teeth, knowing what the other man is here for.

(A short AU where Toshio decides to join the search party for Seishin and Sunako, can be read as platonic or romantic Toshio/Seishin.)

Choose

Sotoba burns all around Toshio Ozaki. The small, isolated village of barely 1,300 people that had been his home since birth turns to ash before his eyes. Toshio rushes to hide all the Shiki’s bodies he had convinced the other villagers to massacre; before outside authorities see the fire. In an alternate universe, Toshio is asked to hunt down his childhood friend. A monk who had sympathized with the Shiki and was helping their leader escape. He declines.

In this world, he hesitates.

He thinks of their little village, overrun with Shiki. People dying or “moving out” every day. A village surrounded by death. Toshio, the village doctor by birthright as the only Ozaki left, has seen so much grief over and over and over again. Grandparents, mothers, sons, fathers, children, infants. Wasting away in merely a couple of days, hypnotized to refuse medical attention. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. Gone. Toshio decides he wants to kill the traitorous bastard himself. He finds that he agrees with another Shiki who had tried to kill him a few days ago. Wasn’t it better to be killed by a friend than a stranger?

Toshio goes to hunt down Seishin Muroi with the other men in the forest. He and Ookawa are soon the only ones left as the other men run from the fire. Toshio hears the gasp of a child and the men give chase, losing each other in the dark forest, his only source of light the flames lighting up the night. When the doctor finds the other man again, it's in an old rundown church, already feeding the flames. Arriving in time to see Seishin killing Ookawa to save Sunako Kirishiki. Toshio quickly hides behind the wall. The leader of the Shiki in the body of a child cries and contemplates suicide, ruminates on what she had done to live for so long. Toshio listens in to what he tells Sunako to convince her she was justified in killing humans to survive. His teeth gritted harder with every word, every comforting parole.

But also with the knowledge that Seishin was right.

"Whoever you are hiding behind the door, show yourself or I'll kill you." Seishin says suddenly. He must have waited to finish comforting Sunako before revealing Toshio’s presence.

Toshio tenses up, pressing his back harder against the burning hot wall. He realizes Seishin shouldn't have known he was there. Not within normal human senses anyway. It makes his heart clench with a desperate no not you I can't have lost you to them too- but for only a second. Toshio wasn’t going to stop now. He had killed his own wife after all, and recorded the experiments(torture) he’d preformed on her to prove the existence of the Shiki. He held no regret for it in his heart. Seishin wouldn’t get special treatment.

Toshio realizes he lost Seishin longer ago. Whether the man was turned Shiki or not, the doctor would have lost him anyway. All because of the monk's goddamn bleeding heart.

At the irony, Toshio chokes out a mockery of a laugh as he answers, "Oh yeah? What makes you think you won't kill me anyways?"

There's a pause in the air after Toshio speaks. Seishin would know his voice anywhere, even as the church burns around them. Toshio pushes himself off the wall and puts himself in the doorway.

The look on Seishin's face is wide-eyed, shocked. A strange thing to see on his normally neutral visage.

"...Toshio." he says, as if the wind has been knocked out of him.

Toshio is doused in blood, just like the night they went their separate ways. Seishin grits his teeth, knowing what the other man is here for.

"You don't have to do this. I wont hurt you if you leave now, but I will if I have to Toshio."

The doctor only grins, taking out two stakes from his bag, "So? What are you waiting for? Aren't you planning on getting out of here alive?" The doctor pauses in mocking consideration, "Or undead I suppose." His eyes drift to Seishin's hand, protectively holding the girl's, Sunako. The Shiki leader. That's all he needs to know to feel not an ounce of regret as he lunges without warning.

Then Seishin is holding him aloft by the neck in half a second, Toshio chokes.

"Don't touch her." the monk growls, actually growls. Toshio supposes the transformation must have changed his character quite a bit. The doctor is unheeding of the hand at his throat and lack of air in his lungs. Though still struggling quite a bit, he tries to injure Seishin with the stake he had not dropped. The doctor wonders at the speed at which his friend had moved. Almost lightning quick. Even the speed the Shiki ran from the villagers couldn't compare; Seishin had scaled half the church in less than a second. The doctor had barely seen him move.

Seishin wasn't like the other Shiki. Toshio thinks and paws at the man's arm. Feeling the still throbbing, if weak, pulse underneath the flesh; no, his friend had become something quite like what Natsuno had shown him.

"You're-" Toshio chokes out, "Jinrou-"

The monk masks his surprise slower than he normally would, "I suppose I am."

"Heh- guess I wouldn't-" The doctor gasps out, "have wanted to die- by any other- hand-"

Seishin frowns and loosens his hold, "And what makes you think I'll kill you? I’m a Shiki but I still care about you."

"I'm your biggest enemy right now. Sotoba won't survive this, I'll spend the rest of my life hunting you down, wherever you go." says Toshio, breathing a little easier.

"Toshio-"

"I'm not willing to let you go so easily, you're going to have to kill me, old friend."

Seishi's grip tightens, "No. I've made up my mind, both of us are getting out of this mess alive."

Toshio scoffs, the doctor’s words are harder to get through his captive throat again, "That- wont be possible, I can tell- you've made up your mind- on whose side you're on. Choose- Kill me now- or live to regret it later. It's all about survival- isn't that what you told Sunako?"

"Curse you Toshio, I won't do it!" There's a hardness in Seishin's eyes that had taken hold of him through all this devastation, "I'm not losing you too, not by my own hand."

"It's not that you're afraid to kill- You killed Ookawa like it was nothing," Toshio glances to the body hanging halfway out of a shattered mosaic window, already eaten by the flames, "As I said: Choose."

Seishin raises his voice, "And I said NO!"

Toshio fights Seishin as much as he can, stabbing him with the stake, for all the effect it seems to have on him. Seishin only looks at him though; with things in his stare the doctor doesn't want to decipher. They stay in a momentary stalemate until Sunako urgently tugs at Seishin's robe, "Please we have to leave now. I don't want to die anymore, you've convinced me. Let's go. Please."

"Maybe you'd rather- the both of us burn to death," Toshio grins with cruelly twisted lips, "Choose."

Seishin looks scared of him, as if their positions were switched, eyes wide but calculating. Then after a second's hesitation, resoluteness in his voice, Seishin speaks.

"I won't."

That's the only warning the doctor gets before Seishin drops him. The other man uses Toshio's surprise to execute an upwards strike to his chin. Hard.

It knocks the doctor out cold.

When Toshio wakes up- five minutes later because Seishin's newly enhanced speed and strength- he's in the back of a moving truck. He is shaken awake by the other passengers. They tell him the man carrying him had jumped in front of the truck. Telling them Toshio was injured and that he had to run back and get more people, but not to wait for him to come back.

Now, as Toshio sits in the back of that truck, smoking a cigarette and nursing his jaw as he watches Sotoba burn to the ground, he wonders how long it will be before he meets Seishin again.

And if by then the man will have made his decision.

#SPOILERS IN THE ATTACHED IMAGES!!!!#spoilers #shiki spoilers #spoilers for EP 22-The Final Hunt #1000 word count #reading time: 5 minutes #shiki #shiki anime #toshio ozaki #seishin muroi #sunako kirishiki #this was written because I needed a more satisfying ending to the series #my writing #open to criticism #I would like to get better at my writing #I was literally so pissed that the last time they see each other is through a fucking car window as they're driving past each other #AND THE ENTIRE TIME I'M THINKING this cant be it this cant be it this cant be it this cant be it this cant be it cuz bruhhhhhhhhhhhhhnnoooo #my posts

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