Review of Shiki

Shiki - The long boring road. Shiki is an anime about vampires. You know this right from the get-go, as the intro pretty much lets you in on that right off the bat. Unfortunately, the anime is a long slog towards the subject matter, and it's a fairly mediocre production except episodes 19-21. The ending is pretty meh. Story. The problem I have with Shiki is that it is too long. It has a good story, but tries to pretend that you don't know it's an anime about vampires, and spends 10 episodes pretending that it's about a "epidemic" of Anemia, which isn't even a thing. A lotof time is spent on random 1 shot characters who stop going to work, get tired, then "mysteriously' die. While I like big character rosters, there isn't really a main character in Shiki, so it's hard to know what you should be focusing on.

Art.

The visual styles are pretty different. They do a few things I don't like, for example large stiff hair that defies all nature, even for anime. The eyes of all the vampires switch from being large charcoal scribbes to LED red light rings, so there's hardly any suspense wondering who is who.

They do some good things too. There's a lot of color, they spend extra animation time on important scenes, and some character designs are pretty good and varied. Not much moe here, except for 1 or 2 exceptions.

Sound.

The sounds and music were okay after the opening and ending songs switched midway through. The voice acting was good, especially on some characters. On the flip side, when it was poor, it was very poor. This anime introduced me to my new most hated voice (and drawn) character in anime, so there's that.

Characters.

There are a ton, but no one really has a focused story. You get random scenes of random characters, and some are very powerful. A doctor comes to grips with realizing that his wifes been bitten, and he hasn't had a single vampire to study. A little girl fails to grow old because of the affliction, and struggles with her relationship with god. A monk questions how far he values life, all life, including those of the risen.

In spite of some great character pieces, some times you can't help but feel like your wasting time onscreen with some random people who really don't affect anything in the story, and not to set up a following scene either.

Enjoyment.

4 is decent, and that's the best word for this. If it were 12 episodes, I might not have disliked as much of it as I did. There were moments I thought, "Finally! It's gotten good!" , then realized it was happening on episode 19.

There were times I caught myself skipping 5 minute chunks of screen time waiting for the plot to continue and to get out of old lady rice-cake's inn where her dog was sad at her sick husband.

Then the ending, which did tie up most things, was unfulfilling. Every character decision and resolution basically turn out to be for nothing, and things continue on much how they began. Unlike well written "here it all starts again" endings, this one executes poorly.

Overall.

The anime -was- okay. Decent, or good. I suppose I should rate it somewhere between a 5 and 6, but there were parts I liked. I would prefer this as a novel, as opposed to a manga or an anime.

If you like.

-Vampires who aren't really superhuman, and are more human than not.
-Lots of information about lots of characters without a real focus on any one.
-"Skinny-body" art style with "spiral loopy hair".
-Slow burn plots.
-Light fighting. (Seriously, there's violence, but maybe only 10 punches thrown.)
-"Is it evil if I have no choice" moral quandaries.

This anime might be for you.