Review of Shiki
I went into this with no expectations what so ever. I had never heard of this one before and didn’t do my normal research for it so had no idea what I was getting myself into. All I knew was that it was of the supernatural and so wanted to see this for myself. The story starts out with a woman, Megumi Shimizu, that died and then goes back about 11 days before she died. The whole time, it felt like a mystery like When They Cry and I think that’s why I fell in love with it more. Now I didn’t like this character verymuch when she was alive. She was a total bitch in every since of the word and always trying to dress up in these really dressed up clothing. She was mean to everyone in the town except Natsuno Yuuki who she had a very large crush on. I hated the character Masao even more then Megumi. I don’t know exactly why though, it was just one of those things that kept making me think he was going to die.
As the story goes on, it introduces us to a bunch of characters that are in the town. When they got to Toshio Ozaki, I really thought he might be related to Yuuki because there hair looks almost exactly alike.
In a way, this also turned out to be like Durarara or Baccano in the way that it hops from character to character, to show little pieces of the story. The story is fast and they show dates for what time has gone by luckily. I kind of see it as a dairy of sorts like the book Dracula. It is also very talkative, not action based although there a lot of times it has an air that something will happen and pretty much blow up. About half way threw, there was a lot more going on and it actually gets more and more fast passed.
The show luckily tries to give you enough information to know what’s going on and for you to try to figure out for yourself but just like a lot of detective shows, it doesn’t show it all.
The opening animation feels a lot like a James Bond movie with how the artwork is placed. The animation looks a little odd, but it’s hard to actually explain what is off about the animation. It seems a bit soft with not many black lines about it. A couple of characters look almost the same and seem like they are actually related but they don’t seem to show that they are related. And what is up with Natsuno’s hair? It’s all over the place and a mess. It’s like he is always walking around with a bad case of bed hair. Actually, everyone has strange stiff hair. Its ether bed head or stiff turns in the hair.
Music is pretty good, a very hunting sound and keeps the tension. This show doesn’t have any comedy really and so in turn, the music doesn’t leave you much to relax. The first opening is rather catchy but the second seems to lack just a bit. The English voices are well put and work with their characters. I found none of them to be really annoying or bothersome except one that showed up in ep 3. The guy is really creepy anyway and I’m happy he hasn’t shown up much.