Ginshi Shirazu

Shirazu is a lean youth, his hair a light shade of orange, with a mouthful of sharp, jagged teeth usually locked into a threatening grin. Six helix piercings climb his right ear, a single stud marks the left, and a ring rests on his right middle finger. Rather than the standard CCG uniform, he favors a dark jumpsuit and rides a motorcycle between missions. His hair, unusually long for an officer, once brushed his shoulders with two strands parted and knotted at the crown, until he later buzzed it down to the scalp as an act of atonement.

Like his squadmates, Shirazu holds his mentor Haise Sasaki in high regard, though that never keeps him from charging into missions without permission, often tagging behind the former leader Kuki Urie. Capable and ruthless in combat, he is nonetheless plainspoken and easily steered, and Urie manipulates him with little effort. He fires up fast and talks loud, throws his whole body into every gesture, and struggles with anything that calls for study or careful investigation. His entire reason for enlisting was quick money for his hospitalized sister, Haru.

For all his brutish surface, he proves one of the most tender-hearted of the Quinx. When a dying ghoul sounds achingly human, it rattles him, dredging up his sister's situation and leaving him unable to see the kill as anything but the death of a person. His devotion to the team runs deep, and he warms easily to gentler souls such as Tooru Mutsuki and the informant Chie Hori.

Shirazu first turns up drenched in blood and plainly enjoying a fight, then trailing Urie through the city on his bike during the hunt for Torso. His recklessness earns him an impaling from the ghoul Akashi Kobayashi, a wound he shrugs off to set up Urie's finishing strike. As his Rc levels climb from overworking his kagune, a launcher-like ukaku that spits claw-shaped projectiles with poor aim, the squad's supervisors grow uneasy. The Torso case draws in the photographer Chie Hori, whom Shirazu takes to at once, and it culminates in a brutal encounter with Serpent that leaves the whole team outmatched until Sasaki arrives to save them.

In the aftermath, Sasaki names Shirazu the new squad leader, a promotion he never anticipated and doubts he has earned, protesting that he is not clever enough for the job. Heading the Nutcracker investigation, he bullies the lazy Saiko into working and even hauls her, still asleep, to CCG headquarters, something not even Sasaki could manage. During the Auction Mopping-up Operation he corners Nutcracker in a control room, tricks her into impaling herself on one of her own traps, and delivers the killing blow, only to be haunted afterward by her final wish simply to be beautiful, an echo of words his sister once spoke. Promoted from Rank 3 to Rank 2, he cannot bring himself to touch the quinque forged from her body and vomits at the sight of it.

In the Tsukiyama Family Extermination Operation he faces the monstrous Noro, at last committing to the Nutcracker quinque and hurling it into the ghoul's chest to blast him apart, then spamming his kagune until his kakuhou bursts its frame so Urie can land the final blow. Noro's last attack wounds him fatally. Unable to regenerate quickly enough and terrified of dying alone, Shirazu asks for someone to hold his hand and begs his squad to let his sister pass peacefully if he cannot be there for her, then slips away. His body is stolen by Aogiri and delivered to Akihiro Kanou; years later Urie recovers the remains on Rushima and lays them to rest in an empty grave among the CCG's honored dead.