Review of Shiki
What if you died and woke up one day, discovering you needed to consume the blood of humans to survive... Could you do it? Could you kill your friends? Your family? Strangers on the street? With all your faculties and emotions intact, could you handle the guilt? The pain, the disgust, the pure torture of having to commit atrocities just to survive? Shiki is a slow burn mystery that turns further and further into psychological horror as the episodes go by. Animation / Art / General Visuals - 8/10 ----------------------------------------------- The show looks great The scenery is especially well done, making you truly feel like you're in the Japancountryside. The animations are well done, and the facial expression capture a lot of emotions perfectly. The show also doesn't hold back with extreme amounts of gore. Before the show is done, you'll have bathed in the blood of hundreds...
Sound / Music / Voice Acting - 9/10
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Good OP's and ED's, and a beautiful, melancholy OST captures the essence of the show perfectly. The sounds are solid, and the voice actors put in great work. You can hear the pain, the torture, the grief, the sheer frustration as if it was you that was feeling these emotions.
Story - 9/10
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A small village in the Japanese countryside goes about its business as normal, until suddenly, odd deaths start happening. A beautiful teenage girl, frustrated with the boring life in the countryside, is found dying in the forest. Many others soon follow suit. A big city boy, the local priest, and a local doctor all get highly involved in the mysterious happenings that threaten the entire village.
The core of the story isn't overly original, but the execution is excellent, if maybe a bit too slow for some. None-the-less, I find the ultimate pay-off to be well worth the slow burn intro.
The show explores the meaning of life and death, of family and friends, of colleagues... what does it truly mean to be alive, and what does it mean to die. Should we be afraid? Should we welcome it? If nature has other plans, should we fight it? Should we fight for others?
The story holds little back in the form of tragedy and sadness. Among the countless wholesome and happy ending anime, this show certainly dares to diverge from that path. There are no truly happy endings. There's the harsh reality of the choices we make and the circumstances that were forced upon us.
The genre of the show morphs as it progresses. There's mystery, there's the supernatural, there's action, there's suspense, there's psychological horror that will leave you scarred...
Characters - 8/10
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Shiki takes an interesting approach to characters, as there isn't a clear cut main character in the entire show for most of the runtime. You can eventually point to one individual, but in truth the burden is shared by several characters in the limelight.
This works great, as it removes the over used "plot armour" mechanic that's so prevalent in most shows. But not here. There is no real main character, and you can never be sure as to who lives and who dies. It is refreshing, though also stressful to watch at times.
There are also no true villains as you might expect. The story blurs the lines between good and evil, between what's natural, what's instinct, what's survival. Superficially there is a X vs Y conflict, but it goes deeper than that. The lines are blurred, and no character is truly on one side or the other.
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Total - 9/10
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Shiki is an interesting anime that I would recommend to just about anyone. It has solid production values, a good story and characters. It may be a slow burn to start, but in the age of single cour fast food isekai's, a full season show like this feels like a proper full course meal.