Review of Shiki

When vampires descend upon a quiet mountain town, a death spreads like a plague tearing apart friends, families, and the entire community. I have always been a sucker for the "bad things happening to a small community" trope. It's always fascinating to explore how a tight knit "know everyone in town" community would fare when a clan of vampires come to town. There are probably one hundred characters or more shown throughout the series, with their own lives and relationships. You meet the entirety of the hospital staff, elder social groups, and frustrated youths. You watch as characters major and minor drop dead. You learn to feelfor these characters as you meet them, watching as their community collapse around then, descending into hysteria, chaos, and to some disbelief at the whole ordeal.

The character designs are amazingly strange and unique. In my opinion there is a bit of a grotesqueness to the design of some characters.

While I could talk all day about the townsfolk, the vampires in the story are also very interesting characters. I highly reccomend watching the OVAs as they explore both the town perspective and add empathy to the vampires.

It's an amazing slow burn anime that starts as a murder mystery transitioning into an invasion of the body snatchers-eqsue horror, culminating in a bloody and violent final episodes.