Review of Shiki

Disappointing at best, with dumb/insulting/untrue message (no spoilers) I had heard about Shiki a lot for several years and I always hesitated to watch it because of how ominous and creepy the cover art was - then recently, I wanted a horror fix and thought it would be the perfect option. I was wrong. Story 3/10 This story has been done to death - a normal village starts experiencing strange occurrences because of monsters and people slowly start dying. To be fair, it did take a bit of a new spin on it by having the Shiki be somewhat unique to Japanese culture, but that’s about as uniqueas they are. The same rules to nearly every vampire story apply here - they’re afraid of crosses, religious symbols, sunlight, wooden stakes, can’t enter homes without being invited, and their wounds regenerate. They either kill their victims or bite them so that they eventually turn into Shiki. This would not have been a problem, however, if a new spin had been taken with it, like maybe the Shiki had completely new weaknesses that hadn’t been used before in media or they were hunting in a big city instead of a small village - I don’t know, just something to make it feel fresh. Plus, everyone that likes this anime uses the excuse that there’s “moral ambiguity” and you don’t really know who the bad guys are. This is ridiculous because it’s incredibly obvious who the bad guys are - THE MONSTERS MURDERING THE VILLAGERS. I remember watching it and thinking “I swear if they try to make me feel bad for those things...” Towards the end, they try to demonize the human villagers by making them seem evil whenever they kill a Shiki because the Shiki are “just trying to survive”. Firstly, how can they survive if they’re dead? Secondly, the Shiki were the ones instigating the villagers by killing them first, so how is it “morally ambiguous” when they fight back? And possibly my biggest problem - IT WASN'T SCARY.
There were probably 4 moments in total where I was actually frightened - 80% of the show is just normal characters talking to each other and 20% actual scary stuff. There is, however, one particular scene (no spoilers) where a Shiki woman is brutally tortured so they can find a weakness for the monsters. It was by far the most disturbing scene in the show because of the imagery and the context, but if I'm honest, it was probably my favorite scene in the show. Why such a nasty scene, you ask? I liked it BECAUSE it was nasty and disturbing - it had a different feel from any other moment in the show and legitimately made me feel sorry for the Shiki at that moment, plus when you watch it with the context of knowing the relationship between her and her torturer, it's even sadder, but again, I won't spoil it. But of course, after that, it goes right back to boring. Even if just a few more scenes had carried that same repulsiveness of that one scene, it may have raised my rating slightly, but of course, as you can see from my rating, it didn't. Not to mention the ending was so flat and unsatisfying that I didn't even bother looking to see if there was another OVA to end it off with.

Art 3/10

I’m sorry but the art style ruined most of the horror for me. The character’s designs are ridiculous even for an anime and don’t fit the horror genre at all - one female character has hair that legitimately looks like a snake. "oH bUT tHaT wAs ThE aRtIST's chOiCe aNd HaIr iNdiCAtEs tHeiR pErsonAliTies" tell me how green snake hair contributes to the personality of a kind supportive nurse who, for the most part, acts completely normal. Designs like that should be saved for either a comedic show or a fantasy/sci-fi genre where the creator can get away with using crazy designs for either a funny or alien/unworldly look. They don't belong in a horror where the entirety of it takes place in a real-world town - it's distracting for the viewer and makes us take them less seriously and reminds us that what's happening isn't real, which is counterproductive for horror. However, the art style when the scary stuff actually happens, like when Megumi crawls out from under a bed, was actually pretty scary. It would have been great if the entire show carried that amount of horror in it, but unfortunately, it didn’t. I think if the art style had been more realistic and the character’s hairstyles were toned down a bit, it would have made it slightly more freaky since we tend to fear things that resemble reality but are distorted enough to make us unsettled or afraid for our lives, such as clowns or dolls. The shiki’s designs are also very basic (they just have black and red eyes and fangs, and that’s pretty much it) and they’re only ever truly scary when the mood changes when they’re about to kill someone. It also doesn't help that they act like their normal selves after they've died and the only difference is that they suck blood, which doesn't make them very threatening, at least to me. Maybe to some people, the fact that they act normal as monsters would be scarier to them, but it didn't for me. Plus, most of them have wacky hairstyles too, which makes them less threatening in appearance and diminishes the fear of them. I'm sure there was effort put into the art (there usually is), but it was just the wrong call for this show if you ask me. Not saying appearance is the only thing that matters, but if you're going to try and make something scary, they should probably LOOK and ACT scary, and Shiki fails at the first part and only achieves half of the second.

Sound 4/10

The soundtrack wasn’t bad at first, and there are some pretty haunting and ominous songs in it that really help with the atmosphere. However, I don’t know how many songs are on the soundtrack, but OMFG it felt like they played the same 5 songs for the entire time I was watching. By the time I was a little over halfway through I was sick of listening to the music and just wanted the story to be done. The first intro song was very good, though. It was probably the only one I liked. The second one is not as good, however - it’s just your average orchestral/j-pop anime intro and doesn’t fit the mood of the story at all.

Character 6/10

A lot of people hate the characters in this show - I didn’t mind too many of them, but I didn’t like them either. There were only a couple of characters I legitimately hated. The only character that I actually really liked was Toru (the best friend) because he was really sweet and I actually felt sorry for him. But all the other characters are just stereotypical anime characters - the cool guy, the supportive best friend, the fashionista, the chain-smoker, the kuudere, there’s almost nothing unique about them (Toru's a stereotype too, but it's one that I tolerate because I find it adorable). I get it, it’s anime, there’s going to be doppelgängers in pretty much any show you see, and maybe if the story and other factors had been better I wouldn’t have minded it so much.

Enjoyment 4/10

It’s not unbearable to watch, I was mostly disappointed because I had expectations going into it and expected the monsters to be much more hidden and creepy, and I expected to be scared throughout the entirety of watching it. If you removed the Shiki from the story entirely, it would be a normal slice of life anime about friends and families living in a small village, which I would rather watch than this. I’ve seen other horror anime’s like another and corpse party and both of those were MUCH better and enjoyable that Shiki (even though corpse party is very unpopular it was still somewhat scary) Another managed to carry the suspense through the entire show which made me scared to even watch the next episode. By the time I was halfway through Shiki, I was already pissed by how disappointing it was and only continued so I could say I finished it. If you like slow-burn horror with 10-minute long dialogues between boring characters every episode, along with short bursts of mildly scary anime girls sucking people’s blood, this is the show for you. Maybe my opinion is more negative because I had higher expectations, but who knows.

Overall 3/10

It’s annoying/bad at worst and dissatisfying at best. The story is average, the characters are all just anime tropes and nothing more, the art style is distracting, the horror barely exists, the soundtrack is repetitive, and the only reason I finished it is because I didn’t want to drop it. Are there any GOOD things about it? Well, only a few in my opinion - the torture scene, Toru's character, and the first intro song. Those three things were, to me, the only salvageable things in it. It’s not horrible, but it’s by no means good. I wouldn’t recommend nor would I rewatch.
I know I keep comparing this show to Another, but I think this show failed where Another succeeded - Another had a consistent atmosphere, the characters were interesting but didn’t stand out physically, and it carried the suspense throughout its entirety. Shiki didn’t have any consistent atmosphere and wasn’t scary enough to keep me on the edge of my seat. Too much time is spent on the human characters instead of the lore or the deaths of the villagers, and yet somehow the human characters are STILL uninteresting. I think it tried to focus on the “moral ambiguity” as it’s main source of the horror, but it just didn’t work in this situation - the Shiki are too inhuman to be relatable.
But the main reason that I gave it such a low rating was because of the message of the show - they actually try to tell the viewer that the will to survive makes you bad. That part pissed me off so much that I wanted to stop watching. There's no moral ambiguity like all the 13-year-olds that like this show say there is. It's not like Death Note where the main character does bad things for a good reason and you kinda don't know whether to like him or hate him - these are unlikable monsters that probably shouldn't exist telling their prey and even convincing some of them that trying to fight back makes them the bad guys. I'm not even kidding, that is the message. I'm pretty sure anyone that has seen Attack on Titan and agrees with ITS message of "fight back no matter the odds" would punch someone in the face if they were told that. But no, in this show it's "if a vampire tries to eat your entire village and you fight back, YOU'RE the bad guy". Tell me, is a bear evil if you shoot it and it attacks you? If you hit a dog and it bites you, does that mean the dog is the one that deserves the blame? Humanity inherently has a will to survive and telling someone that that instinct, which has kept us alive for so long is a bad thing, is not only insulting, it's also untrue. I also don't think that there's room for negotiation with a species of living corpses that feed on humans - more likely they're some freak accident of nature that need to be eliminated before they kill other innocent people, like zombies. Yes, I get that some of them didn't choose to be Shiki, but neither did the Titans, and they're still a threat that can't be negotiated with. If they're dead, then they should stay dead. Put them out of their misery. The message is so pathetic, slapped-on, and fairytale-ish that no rational human would ever take to heart - at least I pray so. And with that imma end this review so it's not too long.