Review of Shiki

SPOILERS: Only recommend reading this if you're done, almost done, or gave up. Since I break down some of the characters in the story to explain why I disliked them so much. Overall: 2 - Nothing much could have saved this show, from beginning to end I never really cared for the story or most of the characters. Story: 2 - New people move in, people start dying left and right. Why? So we can have a village. Shiki side wonders why no one will accept them, then continues to murder people. Humans wonder why everyone's dying then continues to not care about people dying. Both sidessuck, neither really has any real motivation going into the meat of the story outside of "we don't want to die". As the story progresses we learn that only a couple of the "main" characters are even involved in the story.

Art: 4 - Bit strange on episode 1, takes a bit to get used to. By the end I think the art team did a good enough job to bump this up. Not good, but not terrible.

Sound: 4 - We had voices, music(?), and sound effects. Nothing to write home about. Some others say the music was amazing, but honestly I can only remember the annoying first intro music from the first half the show. Nevertheless there was sound.

Character: 2 (1.5 honestly, but we'll round up) Where to start...
Megumi, a high fashion girl caught up in a small village, for no other reason than to... well there isn't really a reason and doesn't actually matter outside of episode 1-2 and ~10 minutes near the end. She didn't exactly add much outside of being a stalker to prove Shiki exist, removing a character, and taunting a couple others, oh and kicking the worst character in the face +2 for that (writer seemed like they really wanted a Yuno from Future Diary thing, but fell flat).
"Main" character, Yuuki. Provides almost nothing to the story outside of a few cheeky things in the second half. Why was he even added? He's a supporting character to his own cover. He's "OP" for the sake of having a young boy main character.
Real main character, Toshio. Ok, now we've got a real character doing something. Kind of annoyed that he just lets so many people walk off without talking to them in any way, but it's not as bad. Without many spoilers, this guy is actually one of the 3-4 characters you can give a s*** about (Along with Tooru, Tomio, and Ritsuko)
"Bad people", none of them matter, none of their stories are compelling in the least. In fact, why are there so many bad characters? It's like some bad fan fiction where someone wrote their story to have 100 characters who were interesting to them, but literally never developed them outside of "here they are". On that note, why are some of these characters even in the show? Masao is easily the most annoying character, and how I see the story boarding for this anime started, make the least enjoyable characters as a meme and see how many people love the show.

Enjoyment: 1 - Watching this and pushing through as part of the yearly challenge, and boy did the SO and I find it hard. The only thing that appeared to make some sense is the rules were mostly followed for the Shiki. Why did X get character development when they're just gone? Why is Y so stupid? What was the point of the overarching story about the priest's book? Did I just miss half the show and somewhere we tied in good/bad? Really rough I expected way better for such a highly rated anime.

Overall again 2 - If you like it, that's great. If you don't, I completely understand. This show could have been much better if the team sat down and cut out over half the cast, and built up the rest more. Cut the length down to 12 episodes, put some thought into people in the show actually f***ing talking to each other instead of just deciding that the dumpster fire going on was A-okay.