Review of Shiki

In all honesty, Shiki was a very good show for most of its run. In fact, for a while, I was going to give it a nine. So what happened? Well, a couple of things, really. I'll explain. Story: This started as the strong point of this anime. For the most part, Shiki is a mystery anime. It isn't that hard to figure out what's happening, but there are enough twists to keep it interesting. The pace is slow at first, but after a few episodes, the show became fairly good at holding my interest. It kept me uncertain of how things would be resolved until thelast few episodes.

However, in the last episode, I pretty much guessed how one of the main issues would be resolved. This wasn't a bad thing really, but how it tied up side events was. The thing that really bothered me were a few key occurrences that had little to no explanation. A couple seemed like they were pulled out of a hat. I can't really talk about it without going into spoilers, but a few scenes might make you question how something happened, and then the anime never bothers to explain it to you.

Art:
For art, Shiki will either be a hit or a miss for you. The character design isn't at all conventional, and as someone pointed out in their review, some of the characters look as if they could use their chins as weapons. As you might have guessed, the designs have essentially no logic. The hair of almost every character merely laughs in the face of physics, and every character has these light rings around their pupils that seem to exist to make you wonder if they have some symbolic meaning or plot significance. They don't, but hey, they could've.

Oh, if you omit character design, the art's fairly nice. They did some fairly cool scenes throughout the show, and the show's design is artsy in a way that really adds to it's atmosphere.

Sound:
I don't have much to say about the sound but the acting in Shiki was good. Not the best I've ever heard, but it was convincing. As for the soundtrack, it never seemed out of place, and always added to the atmosphere.

Characters:
This was probably the worst part of the show. Many, many characters were interesting, but there was only one character in the entire show I felt the audience got to know really well. Many of the others would barely get a minute or two per episode if they were lucky. They would also usually be lumped in with a large group of other characters. It was actually depressing at times. Times when the less significant main characters were given a decent amount of time, I felt, were few and far between.

Overview:
All in all, I enjoyed Shiki. I found it a refreshing view on a worn topic, and one that can generate a discussion or two to boot. Anyways, While Shiki isn't the greatest anime ever made, it's worth a look.