Kara no Kyoukai: Shiki Ryougi (ISTP)

Ti:

“They should’ve picked a way that wouldn’t bother anyone, if they were going to kill themselves.”

“Hey now, humans don’t die like that. A person who didn’t end his life like a human isn’t human anymore. A person removed from the boundary line is deprived of all his meaning. Common sense can’t deal with things like that corpse, or like you.”

“You’re an idiot. That’s why you’re too nice.” – to Mikiya

“I guess it’s true that stupidity can’t be cured.”

Shiki gives off the appearance of being empty and emotionless, a tendency that Ti dominants are known for. She rarely demonstrates any kind of emotions, or acts on emotion. Rather than replying to people, on many occasions she just gives them a blank expression. Of course, Shiki also comes out with sharp opinions on occasion or generally blunt statements when expressing her thoughts. For instance, she tells Mikiya that he’s too nice because he’s an idiot. She also tends to ignore people doesn’t want to answer, versus outright stating her refusal to answer, which lends itself more to Ti than Te. She generally doesn’t appear to make any effort to control her external environment.

Lastly, Shiki demonstrates a solid example of Ti logic when she declares that a human isn’t a human anymore if the person didn’t end their life like a human. Te logic would state that by definition a human is a human, whereas her Ti redefines the meaning of a human based on their actions. This is subjective logic.

Se:

“Shut up. I can do what I want.”

A lot of Shiki’s Se shows up when she is doing something like fighting. She has a rather impulsive fighting style, erring more toward the side of improvising and going with the flow of the battle rather than devising anything in advance. She is mostly content to rely on her sensing to attack and counter attack fast enough to have the edge on her opponent. Even when she takes her enemies by surprise, it is usually because she did something crazy like jump off the roof after them. Other examples of impulsive decisions she has made include sacrificing her arm originally to get the edge in a fight, cutting off her replacement arm because it was being controlled, and attempting to gouge her eyes out when first awakening her death perception.

There is a lot of other evidence for Se beyond impulsiveness. Shiki loses interest in a fight quickly if she doesn’t find her opponent to be enough of a challenge. She is shown losing the desire to kill certain other characters after finding out they aren’t enough of a challenge on multiple occasions. She also deals with her frustration in a physical manner. When upset by the fact that Mikiya had left for a whole month, Shiki stabs her pillow while venting to Enjou about the absence. In addition, one of the first things she wants to do after coming back to her senses after being in a coma is to cut her hair because it was in the way.

Ni:

Shiki views the world in a very linear fashion. She doesn’t spend time speculating about different possibilities or what could be. All throughout the show you see her silently listening to the others present information until she finally draws her own conclusion and acts upon it. She usually does so without any kind of explanation to anyone, frequently just leaving the room to go do whatever it is that she decided upon.

She also gets on Mikiya for generalizing and missing the point (whether on purpose or accident) when telling him that she likes to kill. She also seems confused by different actions Mikiya takes and struggles to make sense of the different connections or conclusions he draws. She, for instance, thinks that his explanation for bringing her strawberry ice cream (because it reminded him of her) is dumb.

Fe:

“He’ll come marching into my place whenever he pleases, yet all he’ll give me is his phone number. And this summer, he stayed in bed for a month. Why do I have to be irritated about this crap?”

Shiki’s general lack of empathy is indicative of inferior Fe. She’s also easily embarrassed when she does force herself to make any type of statement that hints at her own emotions. For instance, when she tells Mikiya that being with him at the moment was enough. Additionally, she gets irritated with Mikiya for being gone too long, but can’t really understand why, which could indicate inferior Fe’s failure to understand one’s own emotions.

Shiki’s second personality also makes a crack about how Shiki had a hard time dealing with Mikiya’s straight faced jokes. This is actually a really good example of an inferior Fe’s weakness, because inferior Fe will attempt to read into one’s expression and body language to know how to respond to something; a straight faced joke can be confusing, since there are no visual cues to indicate what reaction is appropriate. Lastly, Shiki relies on Mikiya as her moral compass.

SHIKI

In regards to Shiki’s second personality, SHIKI basically appears to be an extraverted version of the original. The second personality is more impulsive, expressive, talkative, and friendly. SHIKI’s actions or words never appear to be out of line with something Shiki might do or say. Touko actually makes an interesting observation about the two when speaking with Shiki:

“The two of you don’t exist as something as simple as a dual personality. The two of you exist at the same time, each having their own experiences and will. And yet, the actions you take are the same.”

Therefore, it is our opinion that SHIKI is simply an ESTP.