Review of Shiki
What starts off as an innocuous looking show about a typical pink haired teenager wanting more from her humble country town turns into some of the darkest, most immersive vampire lore you’ve ever experienced. Unlike your usual vampire shows (such as Twilight), that just assumes the watcher is a dribbling idiot, Shiki puts in the effort to reward their audience’s intelligence with subtle hints and a surprisingly human approach to the entire situation. It has us all asking the question, “who is the real bad guy?” In a vampire anime, you’d expect the vampires to be the bad guys. In 99% of cases you’d expect it.But Shiki delves that gap between the two races, and has us thinking that maybe they’re just trying to survive too. After all, these vampires are crippled by sunlight and can only thrive by drinking the blood of a human. To put it in perspective, would you consider yourself the bad guy for eating beef? That little niggle of doubt adds so much more to the realism than any kind of antagonist who is merely evil for the hell of it.
Most horror anime rely on jump scares to shock us all out of our seats. Shiki doesn’t even try this. Instead, it instills a constant sense of oncoming dread, with subtleties and inflections that make you feel to uneasy that, instead of jumping from your seat, you’re damned near unable to remove yourself. Every episode (past the first) is a visceral, morbid roller coaster ride, and when the horror hits, it’s terrifying.
Shiki does have a bit of a lull in the first episode, mostly due to two dull main characters living their vapid lives and complaining for more. But that quickly changes when a mystery disease spreads throughout the village, turning people into vampires over the course of a few days.
The soundtracks are a bit hit and miss; some exceptional, some forgettable. However, the ones that hit the target get the bullseye, purveying the mood perfectly. Be it slow and ominous, or high-pitched and desperate, it reflects a vampire attack brilliantly.
Overall, Shiki is an experience, perhaps the be all and end all of vampire anime. Just have a bit of patience at the start, because like with all things vampire, it takes the main character to die, for the show to come alive.