Melty Blood/MBAACC/Shiki Tohno

Introduction

Shiki is the main hero of Tsukihime and Akiha's older brother. Due to a traumatic event in his childhood and his bloodline as a demon hunter, at a very young age Shiki became able to see 'lines' superimposed on all things. When he traces these lines with a knife, the object is destroyed utterly. In Melty Blood, Shiki assists Sion in destroying the Night of Wallachia.

Shiki Tohno's strengths are built into his neutral game. With his long-range and powerful 2C sweep, amazing ground dashes, low-profiling 214X specials, invincible DPs, generally great spacing and high defensive statistics, Shiki has a huge number of options at his disposal in almost any situation. Unlike his evil counterpart Nanaya, Shiki doesn't need to thread the needle and break his opponent's defenses in order to start working his game - indeed, oftentimes it's Shiki's opponent that is the one flustered by their inability to get in. With great defensive ability, respectable damage, good speed and great normals, Shiki is a complete package of everything Melty Blood has to offer. His biggest weakness in all three moons is his consistently mediocre okizeme game, where he must sacrifice big damage to get a workable hard knockdown, and overall his mixups are not especially tricky even by Melty Blood standards. In Crescent and Half Moon, his mid-screen damage is also consistently quite poor even if he sacrifices okizeme completely and spends meter, though his corner damage remains high. Shiki is a great choice for players who want options in any scenario and who aren't afraid to play a highly adaptive neutral game to fluster their opponent into submission. He consistently ranks as a "high mid-tier" character on tier lists and is generally considered a solid choice for players of all skill levels.

Stage: Classic

BGM: Wonderful Boy

Moon Overview

To avoid naming confusion with Shiki Nanaya, Shiki Tohno's moons are abbreviated as C-Tohno, H-Tohno, and F-Tohno.

Moon Style	Description
Crescent	Crescent Moon is the most popular moon for Tohno, and for good reason. In this moon, he has the most tools for the neutral game, with multiple options to choose from in any scenario and good mobility to force situations in his favor. With Crescent Moon's Shield mechanics, Circuit Spark and a great DP, his defensive options are similarly top-notch. C-Tohno's pressure requires more unsafe resets compared to his other moon styles, and he must take more risks on offense than average with limited reward mid-screen. But overall, he's well suited to most styles of play and is easily the most versatile choice overall.
Half	Pressure-oriented with forward-moving normals plus a quick horizontal airdash, as well as a slightly faster walkspeed and forward dash. Heavily momentum dependent character with a surprising number of gimmicks and setups that can overwhelm opponents not familiar with the character. Relatively poor choice compared to Crescent as he loses most of his conventional high-damage conversions (low damage character), several special moves, and has poor meter management, though worth considering as a counter-character for matchups where Half’s system mechanics and his overwhelming mobility are desired. Also a decent choice for matchups where you feel he can oppress with 5A6A and 6C as they let him move forward and mix up his Reverse Beat pressure, but overall you should stick with Crescent unless you really want a Tohno for the Nero and C-Roa matchups - he has to work way too hard.
Full	Full Moon is a different take on the Tohno formula. He has much higher average damage than the other two moons and the token strong plus frames that a typical Full Moon character receives, making his pressure game quite solid once he can start working his frametraps. His 236X specials are powerful space-controlling tools that many slower characters simply can't get past safely, and his air normals have all been changed into extremely powerful air-to-airs which are among the best in the game with huge rewards on hit. He loses any kind of strong meterless reversal option, so his comeback ability is somewhat limited compared to the other Tohnos that have much more threatening defensive options and rushdown. He generally doesn't have many uses for meter, apart from using his reversals (623C and 214C) and going into Initiative Heat, meaning how you manage your meter will be a crucial part of performing well with this character. Whilst he can open up the opponent by more dirtier means thanks to 22[A] and 22C, the damage you get from both of them is much more lower compared to his damage from frametraps and anti-airs. Overall his gameplan is quite linear even by Tohno's standards, usually relying on frametraps or anti-airs to start combos, but his options in those departments are some of the best in the game and he only needs a few combos to take down even the most resilient opponents.

Statistics

Stance	100%	75%	50%	25%	Net Health
Jump	0.809	0.766	0.758	0.756	14,773
Stand	0.920	0.871	0.862	0.860	12,990
Crouch	0.993	0.940	0.930	0.928	12,037
Average					13,266

Palettes

1) Default

5) Banana Shiki

7) Boy with Earring (Megami Ibunroku Persona)

17) The Joker (DC Comics)

External Links

• Shiki Tohno forum at Melty Bread