Shintaro Kisaragi

Shintaro Kisaragi (如月 伸太郎 Kisaragi Shintarō) / Shintaro (シンタロー Shintarō) is the main protagonist and the seventh member of the Mekakushi Dan. A digital girl named Ene that lives inside his computer causes him to go outside for the first time in two years.

Shintaro became a shut-in NEET after his three only friends all died on the same day. He blames himself primarily for Ayano's suicide due to several incidents and his behavior before her death.

Appearance

 * Shintaro is a young man with short black hair and narrow, dark brown eyes. His character designer, Sidu, has stated that his eyes are drawn with their unique shape because "drawing them normally would make him look like any other light novel protagonist" and she wanted to make him look "uncool". His hair is supposed to be not voluminous and short near the back of his neck. When illustrated by Sidu, his eyelids have epicanthic folds.


 * In most Routes, including Route 1 of Losstime Memory, he wears a red jersey jacket that has white stripes on its sleeves over a black v-neck shirt and light brown pants. At home, he normally wears a pair of red slippers with gray socks. Outside, he wears a pair of red sneakers with a black trim. In the Novel Route, he wears his jersey zipped up to the collar on August 14th, including during the terrorist incident at the mall. In the manga, he wears the ends of the sleeves of his jersey up to his elbows. He also wears this jersey during his visit to Takane's Headphone Actor booth in the manga and novels.


 * In Route XX and in a scene of the anime, he wears a black pullover hoodie with gray pants and remains barefoot.


 * Back in middle school, he normally wore a common black gakuran uniform with a white shirt underneath.


 * In Summertime Record, Shintaro wears his usual red jersey over a white shirt, black pants, and red shoes that have a white trim.

Personality

 * Shintaro is a young man with an IQ of 168. Thanks to his high intelligence and likely the latent use of his eye ability, Retaining Eyes, he has perfect photographic memory. However, likely due to subconscious memories of past Routes, he finds that everything in the world is predictable and has obvious answers, and he would get perfect scores on his exams and even games he has not played before. Because of this, Shintaro grew up with an apathetic personality. In middle school, he was openly selfish and arrogant and showed signs of depression. It is implied that his loneliness prior to meeting Ayano is a significant contributing factor to his depression and also his personality.


 * During his first year in high school, he became close friends with his upperclassman Haruka Kokonose, and they would spend time with Ayano and Takane often. He becomes distraught after learning about Haruka's imminent death by his illness. On the night of August 15th of that year, he meets Ayano, whom he doesn't know is actually Kano using his eye ability. Kano tells him that "everything is your fault". The next day, he learns about Ayano, Haruka, and Takane's deaths, and afterwards he drops out of school and becomes a NEET. He also does not go outside for two years until the present plot. A year before the present plot, Ene emails herself to him, and he is unable to remove her from his computer.


 * In Route XX of the Music Route, he is still depressed and refuses to let go of his guilt over Ayano. He forces himself to remember Ayano and is afraid of forgetting her, and because of this he purposely avoids contact with people and refused to move forward. When Ene wakes him from a dream about her, he kills her before stabbing himself in the throat with a pair of scissors.


 * In other Routes where he is wearing his red jersey, he has changed drastically. Since he is actually very weak, Ene's presence was so overwhelming that he could not do anything but accept her. He has also become hopelessly addicted to the internet and even states that he would die without it. He is very fidgety and gets scared easily by horror themes and social situations. However, he often shows courage when he needs to, even against imminent dangers such as a hand around his throat. His intelligence also allows him to create complex plans with likely good results even when stressed.


 * Despite his past and usual reluctance, he quickly befriends the Mekakushi Dan in most Routes. He shows sympathy towards Hibiya when he sees him distressed over losing Hiyori and usually gets along well with Konoha. He also does not hesitate to risk his own life to protect those that he cares about, especially his younger sister, Momo.


 * In Manga Route 2, Shintaro does not meet Ayano in middle school and instead closely befriends Haruka while he was staying in the hospital. He becomes a NEET after learning about Haruka's death. Afterwards, he tells Momo that he feels that the world "betrayed" him because he made a friend and blames himself for Haruka's death.

Eye Ability

 * Retaining Eyes (目に焼き付ける Me ni Yakitsukeru): Shintaro's eye ability, given to him by Marry after promising long ago to "never forget this Tragedy", allows him to remember everything he sees. Unlike others, he does not visit the Kagerou Daze each Route to gain this ability and instead has it since before birth. When his ability is fully activated, he can remember events of past Routes and directly speak with the Snake of Retaining Eyes. In Manga Route 2, Ayano trades her life to become the snake for this ability.

Songs
Main: Minor:
 * Jinzou Enemy
 * Toumei Answer
 * Children Record
 * Losstime Memory
 * Summertime Record
 * Remind Blue
 * Mekakushi Code
 * Konoha no Sekai Jijou
 * Kisaragi Attention
 * Ayano no Koufuku Riron
 * Otsukimi Recital
 * Yuukei Yesterday
 * Outer Science

Trivia

 * His jacket is based off of one that Jin wore when meeting Sidu for the first time about Kagerou Project.
 * Because of this, many find similarities between Jin and Shintaro, including Jin's own sister. He has expressed distress over this, as he finds Shintaro to be a considerably unpleasant character.
 * He currently lives in Kashiwa City, in the Chiba prefecture of Japan.  His and Momo's mother is from the Hokkaido region of Japan.
 * His favorite manga is Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne.
 * Haruka was the person that introduced soda to Shintaro.
 * He actually wrote a lot of lyrics, but despite his plans to write songs he never finished any song before the one mentioned in the manga, which Ene threatened to delete.
 * He owns a female pet bunny named Tono, as seen in the manga and Losstime Memory. Tono translates to "My Lord".
 * He has a Vocaloid and probably knows English because he is seen using the Vocaloid Editor in English.
 * Shintaro's standard online password is 4510471, a Japanese wordplay that translates to "I don't work" (4-5-10-4-7-1, when read with different forms of Japanese number reading, is pronounced shi-go-to'o-shi-na-i, the same as 仕事をしない).
 * Unlike the other media, in the anime, he lives on his own in an apartment with Ene.
 * He is surprisingly cheap, as he carries around a pouch of 1￥ coins (around 1¢ USA money).
 * According to Jin, Shintaro's father wanted to name him "Momotaro", but his mother disagreed strongly, so his name was changed to "Shintaro".
 * Shintaro is the second character to appear in the anime.
 * He and Momo also have an unnamed grandfather, referred to in Kagerou Daze VI -over the dimension-:
 * (in Shintaro's POV): This was the sound used on TV shows to represent someone's pulse. Some kind of EKG ...? I had heard it who knows how many times before. When my grandfather was admitted to the hospital. When my sister almost drowned in the sea. That, and one other time.
 * His gamer username is shown to be Red_S_7 in the 2019 gamer merchandise.

Quotes

 * "Please, I beg you… ENE! - ( Disintegration Book )
 * "The warmth of the sunlight was like what I felt the times I dozed at the classroom window seat, and it seemed as if "that familiar voice" was talking to me." - (-in a daze- novel)