Review of Shiki

A family of vampires move into a small, rural village by the name of Sotoba. They move into a very posh, over-the-top mansion that looks like a castle. The family is extremely private and this makes many of the villagers skeptical and suspicious of them. All of a sudden, villagers of Sotoba start dying mysteriously. In the beginning, most of the villagers believe that Sotoba is going through a pandemic. Watching Shiki in 2020 was a pretty surreal and slightly jarring experience. It was interesting to see how an epidemic effects people in a small village from a 3rd person perspective. Shiki does a goodjob at portraying human nature and how people have a difficult time coping with a deadly situation like this. Some of the things that these people go through is unnerving and sad. Shiki also does a good job at asking the question of "What is truly evil and what isn't?" The theme of morality is present, but the show doesn't explore that idea for too long.

I'm a little reluctant to call Shiki a horror anime. It's more of a mystery thriller than anything. Suspense thriller would also be a fitting term. Shiki has elements of horror, but most of the series is just the characters trying to figure out what's happening to the villagers. Shiki can be legitimately creepy throughout the entire show. You never feel completely safe when watching, and you always have that gnawing feeling that something horrific is going to happen. The real horror doesn't start until a little past the halfway mark and onward. That's when shit really hits the fan and it's just a non-stop train of gore and insanity.

The characters in Shiki are okay. Most of them are well-crafted characters, but I don't like most of them as actual people. Most range from cold-hearted monsters to sadistic freaks to annoying gossipers to just ordinary everyday people who just simply lose their minds. It's quite sad, really. They're all great characters from a writing standpoint, but you shouldn't like any of them. There's no real main character in Shiki. Technically, Toshio Ozaki and Natsuno Yuuki would fit into that category, but the perspective changes constantly throughout the show. They do however get the most amount of screentime. The real main character is Sotoba itself. How poetic.

Shiki has great music. I especially love the first OP. It sounds like a Penicillin song that I can jam out to at anytime. It's really a Buck-Tick song. And the ED, "Walk no Yakusoku" is also pretty great. It's a much more slow and somber song compared to the OP, but it's still a good song. The second OP is not as good as the first, but it's not bad. And finally, the second ED is sung by Gackt! I was shocked to hear his voice again and it completely caught me off guard. In Shiki of all places. Now with the animation and character designs, it's nothing too special. Well, the characters look insane, but the animation is nothing spectacular. The hair styles of these characters are so strange, and I've never seen it anywhere else before. Other than that, they look like ordinary anime designs. Shiki was a rollercoaster of madness. I highly recommend this anime if you're a fan of creepy things. It was fantastic. My scores:

Story: 8/10
Art: 7/10
Sound: 9/10
Characters: 7/10
Enjoyment: 8/10
Overall: 8/10