About

• Gender: Female
• Age: 16
• Hair: Burgandy
• Eyes: Violet
• Nationality: Japanese
• From the anime series Revolutionary Girl Utena, property of Central Park Media.
• First Appearance: Chapter 17

On the surface, Shiori Takatsuki and Juri Arisugawa seemed to have the perfect friendship. Having known each other since they were quite young, the two were as close as sisters, closer indeed to each other than they were to anyone else. But there were secrets neither could bring themselves to tell the other, and in time those secrets caused their relationship to rot from within.

Shiori could never quite bring herself to believe that she and Juri were equals. Juri - so strong, skilled and athletic, intelligent and beautiful, always seemed to outshine her friend, and even when Juri would stick up for her, there was always the suspicion in the back of Shiori's mind that it was more out of pity than anything else. Eventually, when the two were in junior high, Shiori's feeling of resentment had deepened until she thought she had to do something, anything, to put herself on a more even footing with Juri. A mutual friend, a boy on the same fencing team as Juri, provided that opportunity. The boy was in love with Juri, but Shiori convinced him that Juri didn't love him, and started going out with him instead. What happened immediately after that is not known, but Shiori and Juri had a falling-out, and shortly after Shiori transferred away from Ohtori Academy. Ironically unbeknownst to Shiori, the true target of Juri's affection, the person she held the picture of in the locket next to her heart, was not the boy but Shiori herself.

While her plan had theoretically succeeded, Shiori didn't experience much benefit from it. In fact, rather than feeling like she had somehow beaten Juri, she felt even more miserable and pathetic than before, blaming herself for what had happened to their relationship. She broke up with the boy, although she didn't inform Juri of this, and it seems the childhood friends did not speak much afterwards until Shiori recently returned to Ohtori. She attempted to reconcile with Juri, even admitting her own fault in the matter, but all her attempts were coldly rebuffed. What might have happened naturally from there is unknown, as due to the intervention of an outside force, almost immediately afterwards Shiori stumbled across Juri's locket... and saw who was actually inside.

Shiori is a generally pleasant person. She makes friends easily and is sociable in a low-key way. While she at first comes off as timid, those who know her quickly realise Shiori is more impulsive than she seems, and aggressively seeks out what she wants... still in a low-key way, though. What even her friends don't realise is the extent to which Shiori lacks any sort of self-esteem. Shiori honestly finds it hard to find any virtue within herself, considering herself to be dull, boring and ugly. This is made worse due to her automatic habit to compare any of her accomplishments to those of Juri, which furthers both her resentment and her guilt. The result is a poisonous mix of self-loathing and resentment, which can cause Shiori to act erratically, at turns both blaming herself for all her perceived faults and lashing out at Juri for being the perfect person Shiori sees her as. She is also fairly emphatically not homosexual, which did not help her receive the shocking news of Juri's true feelings for her any more easily.

Shiori's athletic ability is unknown, though it is plausible she was also an alumni of the fencing team.