Death
Reiko's death is one of the most shocking and sad events in the entire series. It's sad to me for a few reasons. First, she was never understood. She was finally able to tell Shinichi what she thought, and what she was learning before she died, but it changed nothing. Reiko was killed for being a parasite. It didn't matter what she thought or how she acted. Second, Reiko could have escaped with her life or fought back, but she chose to guard her baby instead. Finally, Reiko finally realized that she cared about her baby, and she got no more time with it.
It all started with Kuramori. After parasites killed his family, he seeked revenge on Reiko, the only parasite he knew, by kidnapping her son. He left a note in her baby's crib saying to meet him at a park the next day. I think Reiko knew that something bad was going to happen because she asked Shinichi to meet her there twenty minutes after the time she was going to meet Kuramori. It's unknown what she wanted to meet him for. Maybe to trade information again, but what she ended up doing was betraying her species.
She had killed Kuramori before she talked to Shinichi. In her eyes, she had to. She thought he was going to kill her baby. Kuramori fell over the railing of a bridge and was dying below when the cops found him. He described Reiko to them before he died, and they went looking for her in the park.
Reiko told Shinichi that there was so much she wanted to say, but that she had a feeling she needed to keep it short. You can read what she told him here, but it was basically that she was trying to learn how to coexist with humans. She also warned him about Goto, another parasite who wanted to kill Shinichi. She was cut short by the cops who showed up.
A Lieutenant named Hirama saw Reiko and decided he had to shoot her. There was no reason to him for her to speak, explain her side, or anything like that. She was a parasite, she had killed Kuramori, and she needed to die. Reiko was pleading for him to stop.
This isn't funny! What's wrong with you?
He shot her straight in the center of her forehead. When she didn't die, he told his men to fire upon her.
Bullets were flying everywhere, and Reiko could have taken the cops out with no trouble, or even escaped, as Migi noted, but all she did was cover her baby. She used her hair as a shield over his head.
She tried to think of a way to approach Shinichi. She was walking toward him, but he started backing away.
She then remembered his mother and knew that that would get him. She transformed her face into that of his mother's and started walking toward him.
Hirama ordered his cops to stop shooting because she was too close to Shinichi and they would hit him if they continued firing.
When they stopped shooting, Reiko changed her face back.
All this time I kept thinking... Why was I born? Why am I here? Every question I answered brought more questions. I was looking for a beginning... looking for an end... walking on and on... No matter how far I went, things might be the same, so maybe I should just stop. Even when I know it's all over, I still won't understand. But today I found an answer to another question.
She handed Shinichi her baby and told him that it was not experimented on. She asked him to put it in human hands and see that it's raised well. And then she said one more thing before she died.
The other day, I stood in front a mirror practicing how to laugh. That was so much fun.
Reiko's body is shown laying on the ground, bleeding out. There's something weird about her, though. There's a smile on her face.
I think Reiko died satisfied. She had a couple reasons to be happy. First, she had told Shinichi that parasites and humans were just alike, and that they were both humanity's children. By being able to laugh, she was in touch with humanity. I like to think of the second reason, though. Reiko saved her baby's life. Even though she died, she died for a reason. Her life and death had purpose.
Shinichi gave Reiko's baby to a children's services worker. Before he did, though, they both cried.