I want to get into Onibi so badly! The songs are gorgeous and the community seems so great! But I have listened to the songs and I just can't figure the history up. Everyone seems to know the name of which character and It's driving me crazy not to be part of such an amazing and complex community, would you care to help me to get to know the story a little better? Please (And sorry about mistakes! English is not my first language so I might have made a mistake)
For the time being, and I can’t express this enough, we barely have enough information to create a solid story or plot. Masa has released a vague report with a few small details, but it is so vague that it does not blatantly name a single character.
The songs take place in this order:
1. The Spider and the Kitsune-Like Lion
3. The Beautiful Shadow of the Demon’s Frenzied Dance Performance
4. Demon Child in the Clear Mirror (at the same time as #3, in a different location)
6. Death, Misfortune, and the Amanojaku
8. Star Lily Dance Performance Capital
Most of what we know about the characters comes from Masa’s twitter. I can at least tell you about that, so here:
She has two designs. The green-haired one with the bow was how she was first drawn, and its only purpose was to make her recognizable as Gumi. Her canon appearance is the one with long brown hair. I think that she is, symbolically, the “Demon” mentioned throughout the series.
Mai is a member of the esteemed Shishikusa clan, and after being mistreated by some men when she was very young, she ate them and left one of their heads at the scene. I’m still uncertain on the development of her cannibalism from that point on, but I do know that at some point, her ate her parents Tomonari (father) and Ryou (mother) Shishikusa.
We do know for a fact that she is the girl in the purple robe only in The Spider and the Kitsune-Like Lion.
In The Fox’s Wedding, she is kidnapped by a character named Zhu Li, as well as Zhu Li’s brother. She is forcibly fed human flesh (which probably made her cannibalistic tendencies permanent), and it’s likely that she may have been molested, too.
In The Beautiful Shadow of the Demon’s Frenzied Dance Performance, Mai goes crazy and begins to devour more and more people.
She is seen as a doll in Death, Misfortune, and the Amanojaku.
Star Lily Dance Performance is a dream, a figment of Mai’s imagination. She dreams of a place where she and Zhu Li can be happy together.
She also has two designs. She is the character with red or white pigtails, and her canon design gives her short white hair. I believe that she is, symbolically, the “Kitsune” mentioned throughout the series.
I don’t know as much about her as I know about Mai, so please bear with me. Zhu Li is Chinese, unlike most of the characters, and she is a former member of a clan (I think they are referred to as Buddhists at some point). She imprisoned a violent and evil character named Tsukuyomi inside of an altar in the basement of her home, and I’m fairly certain that this altar is what was commonly being referred to with that recurring line, “Open it?”
In The Spider and the Kitsune-Like Lion, Mai kidnaps her and tortures her until she dies. At the end of the song, Zhu Li curses her family, saying that Mai’s “strange habit of eating people” must be continued for a hundred generations or something like that.
In The Fox’s Wedding, Zhu Li has returned (as an Onibi, I personally believe) and with the help of her brother, she kidnaps Mai and takes revenge. I don’t know for certain, but I think they might have been secretly married at this time.
Zhu Li is also seen in The Beautiful Shadow of the Demon’s Frenzied Dance Performance and Death, Misfortune, and the Amanojaku, but I’m not certain what her purpose is in these two.
I strongly believe that she is the Onibi in Will-O-The-Wisp, talking about how her “discarded body was carved up” and how she eventually took revenge for what happened to her.
Now, very little about her is known for certain, so I will tell you what I learned about Emi from @shishikusas and her very impressive theory.
If this theory is correct, then we can say that Emi is the Gumi character in the purple robe with red trim. She is not Mai, even though they are both portrayed by Gumi.
Emi is, symbolically, the “Doll” mentioned throughout the series. Her ancestors were evil gods, and thus, everyone came to hate her. She bears a grudge against these people, but tries to ignore their feelings at the same time.
Assuming that she is purple-robed Gumi, she sings about her own personal hatred in Will-O-The-Wisp, saying that the doll will not forgive.
In Demon Child in the Clear Mirror (commonly mistranslated as The Clear Demonic Mirror), she sings of a “masked killer” who birthed a baby bathed in cheap red wine (meaning blood. A miscarriage is described here).
She appears as a doll in Death, Misfortune, and the Amanojaku, possibly being the one to deliver the line “It’s our sovereignty; we don’t need such things as gods.”
Her name was only learned recently. This is the Amanojaku mentioned in (you guessed it) Death, Misfortune, and the Amanojaku.
The beings known as Amanojaku are known for bringing out the deepest and darkest desires of people they interact with. If the aforementioned theory is correct, Shikyou approached Emi and offered to help her take revenge on the people that hated her. Needless to say, Emi still hates Gods (she is likely an atheist, according to my dear friend’s theory) and denies assistance. Hence, that line “It’s our sovereignty; we don’t need such things as gods.”
Shikyou is also somehow controlling Mai’s fate. Masa said that Mai and Zhu Li were “doomed never to meet.” It’s incredibly likely that Shikyou was behind this, which would explain why she screams and appears to be very distraught in The Beautiful Shadow of the Demon’s Frenzied Dance Performance. If those two hadn’t met, many lives would have been spared from Mai’s cannibalistic tendencies.
The official name for this character is not yet known. We know that she appears in Will-O-The-Wisp, Demon Child in the Clear Mirror, and possibly Beheading Dance.
This next part is a personal theory of mine.
Masa recently released a song called The Secret Goldfish, which features two characters that closely resemble Mai and Etsuko(?). Masa did tell me that while the song itself was not part of the Onibi Series, it IS related to the story.
It mentions collecting body parts and keeping a secret in a box (think back to Mai’s cannibalism and what Zhu Li has in her basement.) Thus, I think Mai and Etsuko(?) are the girls in this song. I could be wrong, but this is what I believe for now.
This is all I have for now, and this is the closest I have to a theory. I hope this helps, and thanks again to @shishikusas for her brilliant theory regarding Emi and Shikyou! ^^
