Review of Shiki

Shiki does an excellent job at telling a compelling story that keeps you entertained thoroughly throughout, but fails in the fact that there are many shortcomings to follow. I have seen many bad reviews for a majority of reasons, but I'm going to focus on the key reasons of why someone may not like this anime. For starters, the characters in this anime are a bit cliched, with the only interesting character being the doctor himself. Most characters follow a very specific pattern that you would see in various generic "horror vampire" movies. For example, you have a few people die here and there andthey play it off as an "epidemic" of sorts. Or you have people refusing to believe anything at all until it's too late and then so and so dies over blah, you get me? Another huge letdown personally is that (spoiler) many GOOD characters die throughout the anime that should have gone on living. It's sad to see so many good characters die but have so many boring, cliche assholes that nobody cares about live toward the end. That's by far the biggest gripe of mine.

Now enough of the bad, let's talk good. For starters, like I said before, the Doctor is by far the most interesting character in this anime. He shows the most common sense and is the most rational when it comes to the heat of the moment. Another good character would be Tatsumi. While we don't see much of him, he is a very interesting character that I would have liked to see more of, same goes for Natsuno and Akira with his sister. All good characters with interesting personalities.

Now if you don't already know, this anime is about a town in the mountains called Sotoba that has a small population of around One Thousand or so people. In the beginning we see a family called the Kirishikis' move in and then slowly after a so called "epidemic" arises causing a suspicion through the village. What we later figure out is that these Kirishikis are none other than your classic vampire that is diminishing the population of the village. It get's pretty in-depth.

Now onto the art and sound. I personally love the art-style of this anime and would watch it a bunch more times just for it. The OP's are good and stick with you for a while, but they aren't the best. Ambient sound is great, as well as the music and OST.

Now would I recommend you watch this? Yes, 100%. Is it as bad as people are saying? No, not at all. I think that this anime has a special "vibe" to it that only it exhibits. I didn't get bored not once while I was watching it. Give it a shot; and for extra points, watch this one close to Halloween, you won't regret it!