Shiki Misaki

**Shiki Misaki** (美咲 四季, *Misaki Shiki*) is one of the main characters of *The World Ends with You*, as well as one of the game's playable characters. She serves as Neku Sakuraba's partner during his first Reapers' Game.

## Appearance

In *The World Ends With You*, Shiki is first encountered with the appearance of her best friend Eri, who has long red hair which flares up at the ends, and brown eyes. Shiki also dons Eri's clothing. She has a brown newsboy cap which has three buttons on the right side (although due to sprite flipping, she incorrectly lacks buttons when she looks right). Her attire consists of a yellow and white stringed hoodie vest; the piece is layered over a pink crop top, which is worn over another black crop top. Her neck is adorned with a puzzle piece pendant. The outfit is paired with an olive-green miniskirt that goes extremely far past her hips; over her hip is a brown fanny pack. Her knee-high boots have yellow stripes running down the sides. She wears a a yellow wristband on her left wrist, and she has a silver ring on her pinky finger.

In reality in her true body, she is a young woman with short brown hair, matching brown eyes and eyeglasses. (As of the TWEWY anime revealing her clothes and in an interview with the character designers) She wears a green cardigan over a beige dress with black straps that fades to tan with oak-leaf patterns and she she completes the look with black leggings and half rimmed glasses while wearing sandy-brown converse-like shoes with no shoe laces

## Personality

Shiki is a talented seamstress, even making her own clothes and Mr. Mew, her stuffed cat doll. She is interested in fashion and wishes to become a fashion designer one day. She has such a keen eye for detail, that she even notices one of Neku's buttons on his shorts are loose, and quickly fixes it for him. It is heavily implied Shiki, Eri, or both of them had a preference for the brand D+B. In *NEO: The World Ends with You*, Shiki and Eri open up their own clothes line together, Gatto Nero, which has a store within 104. This brand has grown to take Shibuya by storm becoming a favorite among its inhabitants notably including Shoka Sakurane.

When Shiki is first met within the story, she has just taken on the appearance as Eri. Because of this, she spends most of the first week acting as what she sees Eri as. This causes her to act incredibly bubbly and upbeat, always trying to make the best of a bad situation. Near the end of the first week, Shiki begins to become her true self again and stop trying to be Eri, although even prior to that, her real traits can still be seen.

Shiki is still incredibly compassionate. Shiki tries to the best of her abilities to help others and her kindness becomes the catalyst for Neku changing his perspective of other people as 'just holding [him] back'. Shiki's kindness is evident throughout the first week, where she always suggests that Neku and she make use of their abilities to help other people: for instance, purging Noise possession and freeing people from the negative emotions overwhelming them. She is also excited when Beat suggests working together, along with him and Rhyme, despite being 'rival' Players. Rhyme, Beat and Shiki quickly became fast friends, which suggests Shiki has a particularly affable nature.

She tries to befriend Neku but her cheery attitude clashes with his rather cynical view about other people at the time. In the early parts of week one, the two frequently argue when he shuts down her efforts to get to know her partner. In the Japanese version, Shiki tries to get him to know her on a first name basis when they first meet, resulting in offending Neku. Nevertheless, Shiki continues to make the effort to work alongside Neku since she believes in them both and is determined that neither of them get erased. Even after Neku attempts to erase her at Uzuki's command, Shiki quickly forgives Neku and even attempts to shift the blame to herself.

However, Shiki is also very outspoken and rarely hesitates to vocalize or complain about things which annoy her. When she is upset, she can be stubborn and headstrong, even if she doesn't mean to. Shiki sometimes does something with good intentions, but comes across as plain rude to Neku, such as when she took off Neku's shorts to fix his button against his will, despite his protests. While she viewed this as a kind action, trying to help him, Neku saw it as an invasion of privacy. She can also be viewed as disregarding Neku's feelings occasionally; for example, when Neku says he does not care about wearing trendy clothing and will wear what he wants, Shiki tells him, "Ugh, no, you can't do that!" As time goes on, Shiki becomes less controlling and learns to respect and value Neku's feelings and boundaries more.

Shiki is an incredibly loyal person, as seen by the very fact she sticks by Neku even after he upsets her greatly - such as when he tries to kill her, or lashes out at her after Rhyme's death. This is also displayed with how she waited three years to be reunited with Neku following the events of the original game. She is loyal to her best friend, Eri, too, despite the fact of her deep jealousy and that their last words were ones of anger. She frequently consults her phone in the early days of the first week, addressing the phone's wallpaper that is a picture of herself and Eri, speaking to it as if she is talking to Eri.

Shiki is quite observant, often picking up on small details and emotions that overlook. For instance, she notices Rhyme's pendant and praises her brother - not realizing that this is Beat - for being so thoughtful to be able to buy such a rare gift for his little sister. She enjoys people-watching the diverse population of Shibuya, and the various perspectives that come with it. This observancy makes her also quite resourceful: she is able to solve problems as they encounter them, such as finding the exit in A-East on Day 3, and the ability to interfere with decision-making in the Realground on Day 5.

Despite her cheerful attitude, Shiki feels inferior and useless to others, making her extremely jealous of her friend Eri. It is eventually revealed that Shiki hated herself. She had such low self esteem that she lacked self-compassion. She tells Neku she was "never pretty or smart" and that there was nothing special about her at all. Additionally, Neku lashing out at her, despite her best efforts, causes her to further blame herself for their communication difficulties, worsening her self-esteem. Shiki's struggle with feeling inferior to Eri made her become obsessed with her identity to the point her identity became the most important thing in her life.

On Day 6, after being mocked by Higashizawa over her self-loathing at the end of the previous day, Shiki is thrown into such a state of despair that she does mind letting herself get erased; when Neku tells her they need to do the mission, Shiki replies, "...So what? There's no point... Even if I come back to life... I'll still just be me." After Neku discovers Shiki's secret, he encourages her and she feels reassured in who she is, becoming more cheerful, especially after hearing how much Eri missed her and how Neku likes her the way she already is. Shiki then chooses to embrace her own identity, making a promise to herself not compare herself to other people so much, and she becomes determined to live again.

In *Another Day*, Shiki is an avid player of Tin Pin Slammer, like everybody else in the alternate universe. She joins Neku to help him find the stolen pins during the Tin Pin Tournament. While she seems to have inexplicably kept Eri's appearance, *Another Day*'s Joshua explains that she does in actual fact look like her Realground self, and the player simply sees what they expect, even though it isn't the truth. He also hints that he is aware of the real-world development process of *The World Ends with You*, and obliquely claims that creating battle sprites of Shiki's RG appearance exclusively for the semi-canon bonus chapter would have been a lot to ask of an already-taxed development team, for not much added value.

## Role in Sora’s Adventures

Shiki is one of Sora and Riku's classmates, and knows who they are from the Mark of Mastery exam. Both of them were surprised to see her nerdy true appearance when she confirmed that she was Shiki.

In Sora's First Day Back, she, along with the other TWEWY friends, reveals that she is in fact real and in Radiant Garden High School after the Quadratum incident. Sora and Riku are surprised to see her true appearance, but Neku and Joshua assure them that this is in fact the real her. She is later shown with her friends as members of the Radiant Garden Town Defense Committee with the cards Squall gave them for entry.

In Happy Valentine's Day, Sora, Shiki and Neku are revealed to be going to the Sweetheart Valentine's Dance after dating for a bit.