Review of Shiki

Buckle up! I have a lot of thoughts. Story - 6 Shiki is kind of hard to evaluate because it took a horror topic that is usually not done well in anime (horror doesn't tend to be that scary in anime in general) and actually did it well. If the pacing and plot holes were fixed, this anime could have been a masterpiece of a story. But unfortunately, Shiki has its faults. So starting with the good - if you want a psychological or horror anime that actually feels creepy and unsettling, Shiki will do that for you. It also isn't all high schoolers, the castis an entire village basically, so it is more mature and the characters are more mature. This anime is great at building suspense - which some may see as it being slow, but sometimes for a story to be realistic, you can't have the characters go from 0 to 100 in one episode.

Some people say, "The pacing in Shiki is slow, it takes way too long for the village to discover what has happened!" - I agree that it is slow, but this is necessary. Imagine if there were mysterious deaths around you and people urged you that it was some fantasy thing causing it, not a disease or killer or some other cause. I'm sure you would need some convincing too. Now that leads into my next point...

Others say along with it being slow that it was partly slow because "The doctor made that video of his wife... and then didn't show anyone!" - So I felt frustrated with this at first too, but honestly it is kind of a logical decision from the doctor. What he did to his wife could be seen as pretty cruel, even if necessary. A lot of people would just instinctively see the doctor as terrible from that point on. His plan to expose what was happening in the village by basically making the villagers discover it themselves (having them realize the woman had no pulse and was very cold on their own) was really smart, and then he offered to show his video of proof if the villagers weren't satisfied yet and wanted more evidence before taking action. Honestly, pretty smart move.

Now with the bad - The pacing in Shiki is the weirdest I have ever seen. Basically we view the perspective of the kids who are unraveling the reason behind the mysterious deaths, as well we the perspective of the doctor and junior monk as they discover the reason themselves. But what happens a lot of times is at the end of an episode there will be a huge cliffhanger for what's happening with the kids, but then their situation won't be revisited for another like two episodes. And one of the cliffhangers is completely dissolved, basically two of the main-ish characters get put in a very hard to escape situation, and then they just disappear from the anime for like 5 episodes until the ending where they show up in a completely different place. So how they escaped is literally never shown even though it seemed like they would die at that point. This was majorly frustrating. In general, it was just frustrating to see characters loose screen time randomly. It's hard to even say who is a main character, I mean I see if you said just the doctor and the junior monk, or if you said there is a huge cast of main characters, but this is not a show like Steins;Gate where you have a clear set of main characters and then some supporting characters. No, there really isn't a single set of characters that get the majority of the screen time, except maybe the doctor. Now I don't see this as a huge negative since I did like getting to know a lot of the village. But I feel like some characters had to have more screen time to make it feel normal. Otherwise, as did happen, cliffhangers just end up never being solved because they move to different characters for episodes at a time.

Also, along with the pacing, the ending was kind of abrupt. Again, it was a bit ruined for me since it involved two characters who literally were last seen in a situation where they would almost 100% surely die, and suddenly they are fine now, but other than that it still felt incomplete. I feel like they needed an entire episode on "a few months later", or at least more than a minute.

I will say though that the episodes leading up to the finale, including the two specials, were GREAT. They really amped up the drama and made it exciting. Just wish the ending delivered more.

Now one thing I want to say about the story is that I do think it brings up some really interesting psychological ideas. We see the human race start to go mad because of the reason behind these mysterious killings... but we still root for them. It is rather unsettling since it often seems as if they are killing each other (and sometimes they do kill their own) because of the reason behind the mysterious deaths (I'm avoiding spoilers). I will talk about this more in the characters section since we see the perspectives of the situation through the characters.

Art - 3
By far some of the worst character designs I have ever seen, specifically with the hair. I am typically someone who likes anime where the characters look more realistic like in Death Note. I know that lots of anime have funky hair styles and colors for characters, but this anime takes it pretty far. And in my opinion it really takes away from the horror element. It makes everything look more cartoonish and not scary. And some of the hairstyles outright annoyed me, like Sunako's, even though hers isn't that crazy I just hated how it didn't move it all, it is like they are wearing stiff wigs that defy gravity.

I also don't like how all the characters look like they are drawn in different styles. Some have big anime eyes with normal hair, others have the opposite, one guy who is just in the background literally looks like he is from bojack horseman. Sure it helped me be able to differentiate the characters, but it really, really hurt the horror element. It just looked so childish.

I will give points though because the scenery is good, the gore is good for anime, and the colors aren't all dull and grey like some horror anime. I like that the blood isn't glowing red or pink like other anime, which to me always makes it look funny and not scary at all.

This kind of goes with sound too, but I will say that the first opening is pretty cool. The art is VERY symbolic if you actually look at it closely after watching the show, clearly a lot of thought was put into it, and I like how the chimes at the end go along with the animation.

Sound - 6
I actually thought the ost was pretty okay. I think that there were some good creepy soundtracks and there weren't any overused too much, though maybe I just liked the ones that were used a lot. I thought the first opening was okayish, the second opening and both endings weren't that good to me.

Characters - 6
The characters are a bit of a mixed bag. Again, they suffer from weird pacing, and randomly getting screen time and then none for a few episodes. I like that there are some for basically every different perspective you could have on this issue, but I dislike how they aren't explored as much as they could be. Here I will talk about the reason behind the mysterious killings so that I can talk about my opinion on it, but this reason is basically clear from episode 1, but if you want to go in blind, don't read ahead...

Again, if you want to go in blind, skip to my enjoyment rating...

The doctor holds the most logical perspective of a human in my opinion. He sees that there are Shiki actively killing and basically destroying the human population. He thinks of a logical way to prove this to the villagers and get them to form a plan to end these killings with him. He doesn't want any more killing to happen then necessary, but he knows that all the Shiki must go since they are literally going to wipe out the village, and this is now self defense. He is putting the dead back in their graves, and I agree with this.

The junior monk holds a perspective that I think was good to have in the anime, but isn't shown well. He basically seems to think that killing is never right, so the doctor is wrong in killing the shiki. But he does more than that, he literally joins the Shiki and helps them. While he is offering himself up as a human sacrifice, he doesn't have to shun others for not wanting to do the same, which is why I don't like him. He also doesn't try at all to convince any of the villagers that killing the Shiki is wrong (even though it is literally self defense, does this guy not believe in self defense?) he just turns away from them. If he really wanted to find peace, he would try to convince the villagers not to kill.

Yuuki is kind of the middle ground character, and has the best viewpoint in my opinion, probably because he sees things from both perspectives at different parts in the anime. He thinks that there is probably some type of compromise that could be made - basically, Shiki don't have to kill all the humans in order to survive, people could donate a healthy amount of blood every so often or some other type of solution. But he sees that the Shiki seem to literally not consider this for a second and just go straight to killing humans and he decides to kinda help the humans kill all the Shiki since he disagrees with them. Now I really wish Yuuki had had more screentime because his idea was the best and should have been debated on more.

The general conflict is handeled well and is interesting to see unfold. I honestly don't see how people could side with the Shiki though. Even though some Shiki say that they have to kill to eat, there are ways they could eat without having to kill, like biting different people every night. Also, the higher up Shikis literally said there plan was to basically kill the whole village so that more people become Shiki and then they can have a community. So, if they really recognized how terrible it is that they have to feast on human blood, they wouldn't try to intentionally make more people into their kind.

Enjoyment - 8
The anime was generally pretty enjoyable. Again, it got the eerie feeling for a horror anime done really well, something anime tend to struggle with. I really liked the story, it was interesting, and the last 5 episodes are especially exciting, although it is fun to see everything build up in general. The pacing issues bring my score down.

Overall - 7

Clearly I have written a lot about this anime, because it is very thought-provoking, which is partly why I give it a high score. However, with pacing issues, I really have to lower the score. Those characters being seen in a deadly situation and then suddenly out of it and alive a few episodes later was kind of unforgettable and really left me upset.

Overall though, I think this is worth the watch, especially just to talk about. It is pretty interesting and one of the best horror anime out there (I would argue the best with an adult cast, since The Promised Neverland is better, but has a younger cast).

Note: If you are going to watch Shiki, I highly recommend watching the Shiki Specials in their chronological order within the Shiki series. This means watching the first episode of Shiki Specials as episode 20.5 (after episode 20, before episode 21) and the second episode of Shiki Specials as episode 21.5. Some sites will not even list "Shiki Specials" and will literally just have them under the Shiki tital as episode 20.5 and episode 21.5. I really recommend this, I didn't even realize they were specials until I came to MAL, and I'm glad I watched them where they chronologically fell instead of after the ending. They added a lot to the anime.