Page 1 | (Spoiler Page) | Page 2 | Riho Poll
Special Abilities
At the beginning of the series, Riho demonstrates no real special abilities of any kind; she does have the ability to cook, albeit not all that well (according to her). In fact, she is more of a liability as far as Shido is concerned since she makes an easy target for possession by the night breed. However, things take a definite turn after Shido's sire Cain comes back to haunt him.
Cain uses Riho's life as a bargaining chip of sorts, fatally wounding her. Shido is left with the decision between letting her die or turning her into a vampire like himself in order to keep her from dying. Riho spares him the pain of making this decision by voluntarily asking him to do that for her. Shido hesitates momentarily, but then complies with her request since he did not want to lose her.
This marks a very pronounced change in Riho's life. She has to come to terms with being a creature of darkness and severs her ties with her friends since she can not truly be one with the human world anymore. She seems to be torn between memories of her previous life and her newfound immortality... which also comes with the need for human blood. As she was a cheerful person in life who never wanted to harm people, she tries to deny the urges for blood until she realizes that she can not overcome them; this causes her to fall into a state of depression. Her only consolation is that Shido is truly her "family" at this point.
Her appearance changes a bit after her vampiric side takes hold;
she chooses a vaguely "gothic" clothing style which seems to represent
her gloomy mood, and physically she becomes paler and her eyes become
brown rather than their previous blue. (Note: The character
designs used for the first four episodes differ from those used in the
rest of the series. Riho retains her blue eye color at the end of
episode four although she is a vampire at that point, and the film her
former classmate plays in episode five shows her with brown eyes
before she became a vampire. This is an inconsistency due to the
changed designs, and this explanation is only a way of attempting to
reconcile the appearance changes with the plot. Shido's eye color
change from gold to green, Yayoi's hair color change from red to blue,
and Cain's complete redesign can not be "explained away" quite as
easily.)
Riho does gain some abilities by her transformation into a vampire,
such as a limited flying ability and the ability to defy gravity and
run along completely vertical facings (she appears to have little
weight and can float on air somewhat), increased agility and speed,
the ability to exorcise night breed from human hosts by drawing blood
from the possessed victim, and like the other vampires in the series
she has the ability to use her blood as a weapon. Also, as a vampire
she has a sort of limited immortality - she can not die by natural
causes and will never physically age, but she could be killed by the
means used to destroy vampires (although these methods are not clearly
noted - vampires in Night Walker seem to be able to survive
everything from impalement to beheading). Silver bullets and direct
sunlight can cause aggrivated damage, but items like crucifixes and
garlic are usually only used for some sort of comic effect (Shido is
subjected to both at points but his reaction seems to be more one of
play-acting than of actually being harmed by them). Granted, Night
Walker does take some creative liberties with the vampire mythos,
such as Shido and Riho being able to go out during overcast days as
long as they wear sunglasses (and even without on darker rainy days),
and there are some inconsistencies otherwise. For the most part
Night Walker uses the parts of the vampire mythos that are
convenient to the plot and ignore the rest.
For all of the abilities she gained from this conversion, all of
this comes with a price - she is technically undead and one of the
night breed herself. If pushed far enough she could easily become
what she and Shido constantly fight against - their inborn nature of
being amoral killers. Riho seems to cope with this quite well, but
she is reasonably safe from having bouts of uncontrollable desires for
blood due to Yayoi being a "sponsor" of sorts for her and Shido.
However, if she was ever separated from a willing blood donor for too
long her vampiric instinct would take over and she could conceivably
become a wanton killer unable to control her urges for blood.
Continue to page 2 of Riho's profile...
