Shiki wakes up not remembering the accident that nearly killed her, and the film doesn't rush to fix that or explain it away. Instead it sits with her emptiness, lets you feel what it means to be alive but not believe you are, then slowly rebuilds her piece by piece through Touko's quiet insistence that she matters. The animation doesn't showboat, it serves the story of a woman learning to inhabit her own body again, and by the end you realize this was never about what attacked her; it's about what she had to become to survive the person she was before the coma.

Shiki Ryougi wakes in June 1998 after two years in a coma from a traffic accident, with no memory of her past and little sense that she is truly alive. A deep loneliness weighs on her, and she begins seeing dark lines across everything around her. Touching them takes objects apart, which frightens her badly. Her friend Mikiya Kokutou turns to Touko Aozaki, a mage who runs a studio called Garan no Dou, hoping she can teach Shiki what these Mystic Eyes of Death Perception can do and how to control them. Meanwhile, mysterious beings start attacking her. The film is a supernatural mystery thriller with action.