Kiri Nanaya

is the real father of Shiki Tohno. He was the most recent head of the Nanaya family until their destruction orchestrated by Makihisa Tohno and his death at the hands of Kouma Kishima.
==Profile==
===Background===
Born into the Nanaya family, Kiri was only given a small, traditional Japanese room as his free space. Due to his Pure Eyes, he could see the inner side of people and tell what they were thinking without talking. He did not learn words until he was much older, as he considered learning such an incoherent method of communication to be useless, given that the words people used to communicate did not really match their emotions. This caused him to dislike being around others, so he was satisfied with his small space, even once going so far as to complain that it was too large.
He was taught one thing, which he repeated while left mostly alone in the room for a year, given he had nothing else to do. He eventually became bored, so he modified it so that it was easier for him to accomplish. After being taught a second thing, it was discovered that he had already learned it, allowing them to realize his talent. It is likely that not having an active teacher was beneficial so that he could use his body without being restricted to common sense. He knew it was a way to kill people since his birth, and he knew that it was the nature of his family, an obligation he could not escape.
That made his life exceedingly simple, so he accepted it and kept on polishing his techniques. He thought of that as the meaning of his existence and felt that anything else would have been troublesome. He simply kept going forward, and even as a child he knew that he was just going to think about how well he can kill someone all his life. He eventually became the head of the Nanaya family, only called in the worst of situations. He was known as a taboo within the hybrids, called a Demon God by them.
===Personality===
Kiri does not find pleasure in killing unlike his older brother, and he does not have his younger sister's fear or high sensitivity towards Demons. He simply took the path he was born into and happened to be suited due to being more physically fit than his siblings. He can be called the type of person who dedicates himself to one thing: how skillfully he can put a stop to a human body. As a duty for those born into the Nanaya family, he simply purses that path single-mindedly, and he eventually noticed that there was no one better than him. After being chosen as the head, he simply keeps on killing mixed-bloods every day for many years, but never once considers it a burden. While that is all there is to his life, that is the only thing on his mind and the only meaning to his life, as he was born a Nanaya.
He does not experience enjoyment or pain while killing, and he lacks such emotions completely. He is suited to being the head because he does not enjoy or fear murder, allowing him to concentrate his focus on the natural talent of a killer. The only time he ever makes a single personal murderous act is when he stabs out Kouma's eye, all in an unconscious preparation for fighting him years later. He is excited, letting his personal murderous intention destroy his precise rationality for the first time.
He believes he is a person who concentrated in one thing, chipping off everything needed as a human being. He is a person who only looks at what he likes, an inexperienced child who only knows about one thing. The turning point in his life was the birth of Shiki. Seeing the lives of people rather than their deaths interests him greatly. He calls them "very well made", and as everything about the ways of making people live is new to him and difficult for him to grasp, he finds he is no longer bored of his life after many months and years.
==Role==
Nanaya Kiri only appears directly in the Kagetsu Tohya side story, Red Demon God, which tells his story. Tsukihime itself does not even mention his name, and his appearance was shown for the first time in Plus Period.
===Red Demon God===
Red Demon God begins sometime before Shiki's birth, following Kiri's assault on the Saiki family of hybrids, sold out to the Demon Hunters by a rival family. Slaying over thirty guards, he makes his way into their mansion, seeking out the head of the family. He encounters a strange presence while making his way to the target, a deep crimson to his Pure Eyes, that comes in the form of a chained young boy, Kouma Kishima. He is alienated even by the hybrids, so there is no need to kill him as long as he is not meant to guard the target. He should have been able to simply walk past him without issue, but he instead quickly trusts his weapon into Kouma's face, completely crushing his eye. He does not understand why he did such a thing, and only comes to realize it years later at the end.
He leaves the room without any further interference, and then finally encounters his target. He quickly eliminates Saiki in a gruesome, direct manner that is unlike his normal self due to his excitement for encountering Kouma. He also delivers a blow to the informant who sold out the family, but fails to kill him due to his excitement. He leaves the mansion without even bothering to check if he is alive or dead.
He eventually has a child sometime later, Shiki, but much later than either of his siblings. They generally make the generations transition early in order to maintain the precision of being assassins. This allows for the child to be fully matured by the time their physical condition begins to deteriorate and pass the name of Nanaya to the next generation. His siblings already had children training to be the next successor by the time Shiki was born, but Kiri didn't originally want a child.
Due to his siblings' children being suitable for succeeding the title, he felt no need to have a child. He, who only had in interest in how to kill people, felt that he was a person who grew up while still remaining a child, so a thing such as a child was beyond his understanding. He figured a child could not raise a son, and was unable to imagine it, making it excessive and not necessary for him. That was only his thinking before seeing his son, and his world flipped over after that point. Thinking he shouldn't feel anything over something he never needed and bothersome like a son, he was planning on only seeing him once and leaving everything else to the mother.
The instant he actually sees the child, he makes up his mind to quit his career as an assassin. The transformation felt like something fell in its right place, or possibly that the thing possessing him since birth disappeared. He believes that he didn't quit out of love for Shiki, and possibly doesn't even carry such an emotion for the child. He quit for himself, just feeling that he needed to do so, and changed his lifestyle completely. As a man who only knew how to "kill people", he was now trying to "make people live."
He could call his child a "duplicate copy of one's self", so he wished to see if Shiki was able to take a different path than him. Many opposed his decision to leave the organization, but he used force to silence them. He returned to the mansion where he spent his childhood, so they were locked in the dark forest.
Sougen Jinan remarks that even though he doesn't realize it, the emotion that Kiri feels for his child must be love.
==Abilities==
Kiri is a human specialist, hated like a poisonous snake by those who inverted. He doesn't get along well with those who weren't fundamentally human, and it could be said that he is invincible against those of mixed blood. His power wielded as a Demon Hunter, the power of a single human, is no match for Demons that can link to the world and change the environment. He has no specific offensive abilities to give him an advantage against a lair of monsters able to reverse the temperature and freeze opponent with their glares. For most Demon Hunters, their ESP are only "thin threads" meant to give a small edge in a surprise attack; however, for Kiri, his abilities give him much more than just a thin thread.
Psychics of the Demon Hunters are normally combatants that hide their existence in the beginning of a conflict, using that surprise to catch the hybrids off guard by having them appear in the middle of the battle. The support from the psychic can be called a stone thrown between two people glaring at each other, utilizing their unusual abilities, to just once, create a decisive opening in their opponent. It would be a one in million chance that a psychic could defeat a Demon that can be called nature itself without the use of a surprise attack. The Nanaya are superb assassins that far surpass the limits of normal psychics, and even among the Nanaya, Kiri stands out as one such "one in a million" Demon God.
===Combat===
He wields a steel stick similar in shape to a drumstick that can be used to easily kill even those of mixed-blood with a single strike. It is his preferred weapon that he uses to thrust into the vital spots of the human body. It is a savage way of killing far inferior to assassination skills like the pressure point. The point of the stick, which is neither thick nor thin, is used to crush bone instead of muscle. He can thrust downward towards a person's head, causing it to be pushed down into the body. Its usage is much more like that of an awl than a drumstick, as an instrument for piercing holes rather than cutting, in a similar manner to the meaning of his name, to drill. Since it can only make holes rather than cutting, it is rare that he is stained with the blood of his enemies.
He works against hybrids by spreading the thin thread around, changing the monster's lair into his own hunting ground to kill his prey one by one. He is able to move easily throughout a complex without any presence or the reek of murder, all while killing a large number of guards of mixed-blood. Crushing through the tight defense of the inhuman bloodlines, he kills twenty men outside and ten inside without being detected. He can kill two guards in an instant without letting them even see his figure. While one dies from a crushed neck, he does the same to the second only an arm's length away. Such quick work makes one of them believe it was a familiar skilled in hiding its presence or an unknown demon, but his shape, presence, and smell reveal him to be a normal human. Having his neck crushed by such a small weapon from only a regular human, an even more surprising fact, is incomprehensible.
The main reason he is able to prevail over the hybrids is through assassination rather than direct combat, but that doesn't stop him from directly facing Saiki, one capable of killing a dozen Demon Hunters without effort. He is able to annihilate him in an instant, quickly sliding under a wooden table, catching Saiki off guard, and dragging him under by his foot. The instant he is dragged under, his head is already rolling over the floor and the rest of his body parts soon follow. Kiri was able to perform such a brutal dissection in a space so small that one person could barely hope to fit, emerging drenched in blood.
He has Pure Eyes that allow him to "see the flow of people's thoughts", but it is only an auxiliary ability that provides little help in slaying Demons. They are able to vaguely see things that could not be seen, such as other people's thoughts and feelings, but the ability didn't help him much in actual battle. Thoughts are waves, and most of them have a dull transparent color that allows him to lightly read emotions by the speed of their flow. There are some with their own color, monsters that are too horrifying to be described as a "human." He recognizes such people with "divine colors" like blue and silver, and there are only a few in the Demon Hunter Organization that have them. Kouma is recognized as vermillion from far away, and a clearer red up close, which is the strongest and most wicked thought he has ever witnessed.
==References==
Category:Characters in Tsukihime
Category:Nanayas
Category:Heads of household
Category:Authorities
Category:Psychic
Category:Humans
Category:Demon Hunters
Category:Introduced in 2001