(A repost of my okbuddyrintard post. I thought maybe I can stir up more discussion in this sub.)

No, this is not a joke. As one of the grand 3 people who have read KnK (there used to be 7 and I ate 4 of them), I am here to finally shed light on the most underrated Type-Moon antagonist. Of course, the most unknown one would be Kurogiri from 6 but Lio holds a very special place in my heart.

The human, Lio Shirazumi

Lio is a loser. Absolutely. All the cuck jokes about him are mostly because he gets up to some freaky stuff with both Shiki and Mikiya, yeah yeah, but in truth, he wouldn’t have the resolve to actually try and pursue either of them in a meaningful way. In his first big POV chapter he outright kills a man out of impulse, and thinking it to be natural to eat the body in order to get rid of it, he tries it.

Now, I want to clear something up: At this point, Lio notices his Origin, but remember: His Origin is consumption. He has no business going around killing people, doesn’t have a reason, or deep impulse for it like Shiki has. Him going “yummers” is a way to become abnormal, and as KnK might say, “beyond the boundary”, that being the line of common sense and normalcy. Araya butters up Lio with this talk, and Lio accepts awakening his Origin.

Something I like to say is that you should view Lio as having his own split personality (SHIKI and Shiki) to better understand his character, but it ultimately circles down to those two contrasts being fake. Lio, having no innate impulse to kill, simply does it because he can get away with it. As a parallel to Shiki (female), you’d think he’d actually love murder, but unlike Shiki, who feels alive in the act of murder, I wouldn’t even say Lio enjoys it enough to make him feel complete. He detests being lonely. He tries to garner sympathy by blaming it all on Shiki in front of Mikiya. Even Touko and Mikiya know he doesn’t have split personalities (bro was faking it), but I think half of what he says about himself is true. This part of Lio, who genuinely cares about Mikiya, is not removed from his bloodthirsty self. He confesses everything to him, and yet Mikiya accepts him as salvageable. Mikiya grounds him, so even though he is abnormal, he can feel accepted. At this point in the Shiki Stalker room, Lio has no reason to kill Mikiya. All he had been searching for was someone to love him no matter what.

But he had no way of backing out of his meal.

The beast, Lio(n) Shirazumi

The more intense part of Lio is that he eats people. Mmm. This makes him a very endearing character, but the bigger question is: Why does he eat people? Why not big animals or something?

Besides the fact that Lio is a little stupid and should’ve asked Mikiya out when he had the chance to stay sane, he literally eats people because he can. He can get away with it. He can feel “normal”. He set his own bar of comfort and expects Shiki to walk straight into it, sharing a drink of blood. His “SHIKI” personality isn’t real. It’s Lio running purely on hunger and cowardice. The former, which his Origin helped output, and the latter, which he always had. He has no idea and doesn’t care about what SHIKI or Shiki went through, and neither does he actually want to. He’s like a festering FGO gooner (never played the game, hope the more down-to-earth gooners will forgive me for comparing them to Lio) who wants to be endlessly complacent with his behaviour. His idea of fulfillment is to 1. Make Shiki a true killer (when he himself is not one) and 2. Eat her (not in a sexual way, but cannibalism is hotter anyway).

“Shiki is my side chick, and I only have eyes for you!”

Now we know that Lio is:

A pathetic cannibal

A kimono-chasing hypocrite

All this would make a decent antagonist already, but here’s one more

The most closeted Type-Moon villain ever

I mean this, in full seriousness. Lio is gay. He might be bisexual too, but he is most DEFINITELY gay for Mikiya. It is not even implied. This ties in nicely into his relationship with him, and his final scene as Shirazumi Lio.

Let’s address the lion in the room, though. 10x weed. Okay, we know it’s stupid, Nasu knows it too, but you’ve probably never thought that Lio thinks it’s stupid too. In spite of this strange plot point, Mikiya and Lio’s talk is an amazingly written scene. Lio completely ditches the pitiful senpai act and goads Mikiya into becoming abnormal. Kokutou Mikiya, in response, kills a man.

Lio tries his utmost to convince Mikiya that being normal sucks. You’ll never be able to reach those higher heights of happiness and be special, unchained by society. Good deal, right?

> "Why? I don't understand you. Why are you capable of saying such a thing? I know you aren't lying. You aren't saying that because you want to put on a facade, or because you feel a sense of inferiority. Youーyou truly wish for such a thing from the bottom of your heart. You're mere moments away from dying. Stop trying to put on airs, goddamnit! You're broken. You aren't a normal human being. You're absolutely demented!"

> "You're the one who isn't normal, Lio."

Mikiya, in this scene, tells it to Lio, straight. He’s a coward. He’s a pussy. He awakened his Origin to get away with eating people without thinking of the consequences. Even then, he still would’ve done it just to feel special. The super weed doesn’t matter as much as the fact that Lio would’ve killed Mikiya himself if he didn’t agree to his terms. To that end, he sincerely did want Mikiya on his side. More than Shiki, really. Why have someone who loathes you as a representation of their sins over someone who’d just accept you despite who you are?

In the end, Lio doesn’t get either of those people on his side. Mikiya, by exposing his wannabe fraud ass, effectively killed the human, Lio Shirazumi. The last nail in the coffin for Lio though, is that he didn’t even stab Mikiya to make Shiki a killer. He did it out of anger, at the fact that the only one in the world who could give him support no longer believed in him. Everything afterwards is Lio coping.

Then, he pisses Shiki off and spews a lot of bullshit. I interpret it as him truly giving up on companionship. He says Shiki is the only one that grounds Shirazumi Lio, but the truth is, nobody can now. He’s done. The person called Shirazumi Lio is gone.

It’s only fitting that Shiki, full of humanity and love for Mikiya, kills Lio while he dies as a wild beast, both in mind and body.

TL;DR (You SHOULD read KnK if you haven’t, though)

Lio is gay for Mikiya but Shiki is what gets him hard.

Welp, there’s my ramble. I’m sure most of this context isn’t in the movie, so it helps to clear things up. He’s a great antagonist and is basically proto-Satsuki. Bye bye. Keep up your reading comprehension.

I AM NOT READY FOR THE GREATEST SHADOW KILLER CAST!!! SHOW ME QILIN!!!!

Artist is Lofter ID: ziland603

There is a HUGE Katana Zero Chinese fanbase surprising. It is mostly Fifteen x Zero arts but it is big.

Lofter ID: sixingfanyingdui

https://skeb.jp/@egoshiki/works/28

I've only read No Longer Human, but glad to know Hisao and Hanako have great taste in novels.

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