Review of Shiki

WARNING this is less of a review as it is a rant. I think most people get the message of this anime wrong. The question being asked isn't who's good and who's evil, it's: "what makes someone an other?" What is it exactly that separates "our team" from "their team"? The real punch of the anime is seeing how and why characters justify killing the "other side". People generally don't want to see their friends and family as evil, even if they are blood sucking monsters. The whole small town, everyone knows one another premise is geared around this. Toshio sees it as an infection, Kaori asa horror, Tomio as a faceless evil, others as the murder of their children, Seishin has difficulty making them the other at all.

This is an absolutely awesome premise that i have never (to my memory) seen before.

PLOT outline:

Seishin is a deeply troubled monk living in a constrained oppressive environment that he himself does not recognize as oppressive. Then Sunako comes and offers him an escape not just from his way of life but from the crippling moral responsibility that life as a human and especially as a monk puts on him. His childhood friend Toshio however sees the coming of the shiki as nothing more than an infection that he as a doctor is obliged to root out and destroy. Like a surgeon he works delicately and decisively without any moral qualm against something that to him has no more personality or humanity than a malignant tumor. Toshio present him with the "right" choice save the village as you are honor and duty bound to do. Obey your teachings and your upbringing and stand in the way of this evil. However Sunako offers him understanding and freedom from a world that he fundamentally despises. With her he belongs, but in doing so he will destroy everything, and i do mean everything, that has ever been kind to him.
Its a simple but clever premise that would have been awesome if only he was more developed.

So what went wrong? 3 things:

1: character glut. There are too many goddamn characters. We don't have time to develop Natsuno, Megumi, Sunako, Toshio, Seishin, Chizuru ,Tooru, Akira, Masou, F**K i don't even have the patience to list all the characters that got a backstory.

Q:So how deeply were the characters developed?
A: Valley girl depth. The sort of puddle you might not see and slip on.

Q: How likable?
A: About as likeable as a pitbull with a rash.

Q: How long does the setup take?
A: Eons.

There are actually two plot arcs here, Natsuno Megumi and Tooru. And then there's Toshio Seishin and Sunako. If the makers of this had simply picked ONE and stuck with it this story would have been a hell of alot better. Especially since these two stories are incredibly similar.

Except the Natsuno storyline has far less bearing on the plot, handles its themes badly, (was he even tempted ever?) and just generally sucks. It doesn't help that Natsuno is a poorly developed nothing person whose motivations are a complete mystery half the time. Hes an ice cube trope. starts cold melts very easily and stays watery until the end.

2: The second problem is that Shiki tries to say too much. The whole "look how evil the humans can be" trope is overused. And in this instance it is badly used. Noone cares how much they gossip, no one cares about the witch lady, (GOD why was she even in there?!), And noone really needs their whiny bullshit. Humans can be horrible, I get it, we ALL get it, we've seen ISIS behead people. This isn't shocking anyone.

3: The third problem is that it breaks a cardinal rule of writing in a few places: "show, don't tell"
Shiki tells. It tells us that Seishin is suicidal, it tells us that pink hair is shallow. (god what was even the point of having her THAT shallow?) It shows how vulnerable Sunako really is, and then promptly ruins it by telling us what we just saw a second ago. It does the same thing with the good doctor, we don't need to be told hes unfeeling when that nurse throws a hissy fit because he wasn't concerned one of them was missing admits the mountain of bodies he's dealing with. The episode later Spoilers( he tortures his own wife).

All this hearkens back to the character problem. Not enough time to do the original source material justice.