Review of Shiki

Overview: Shiki is an unusual anime. This is an anime that tries to tell a very Western style vampire story, but set it in a small Japanese village. The entire first episode follows this obnoxious, bratty girl that it wants the viewer to think is the main character...then kills her off. In fact, there is no one main character. You see things from the perspective of several characters on the human side and several on the vampire side. It is up the viewer to determine which side they sympathize with and want to root for. Horror factor: Shiki is first and foremost a horror anime, so is itscary? Honestly the answer is no. Not in the slightest. Shiki lacks the atmosphere, psychology, and pacing to be actually creepy. It doesn't have effective jump scares. Even the 10 year old girls that scream in every Paranormal Activity movie or "The Bye Bye Man" wouldn't be scared by Shiki. Instead, Shiki has a sort of cheesy charm to it that reminds me of the old Hammer Dracula films. Sadly, it doesn't have Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee to carry a lackluster script.

Addiction factor:

What Shiki DOES have going for it, is that it is compulsively watchable. You end one episode and just have to see what happens next. Even though I disliked most of the characters and I wasn't a huge fan of the series, I just couldn't put it down. That's actually a skill to make your series so addicting and Shiki pulls it off.

Story and characters: (SPOILERS if you haven't seen Shiki and are interested!)

People are just dying in droves in a small Japanese village and a local doctor named Toshio Ozaki must solve the mystery. Ozaki is our Abraham Van Helsing stand in and is by FAR the most likeable character in the series. The vampire faction is being led by Sunako, who takes the appearance of a little girl, but is actually centuries old. Sunako plans to wipe out a village of around 3,000 people and turn several hundred of them into vampires. She wishes to establish a paradise for vampires where they don't have to live in fear of human reprisal. Shiki is a 24 episode battle between these factions and viewers are often fiercely divided between them.

The biggest problem with Shiki is that it tries SO hard to emotionally make viewers sympathize with the vampires, but gives no logical reason for doing so. The vampire faction's plan is bullshit and is horribly thought out. I know I'm not the first reviewer to say this, but it's SO true. There are a few higher vampires called "Jinrou" who are able to eat normal food and survive in sunlight. Over 95% of vampires including their leader Sunako, must eat around 1 human victim a week in order to not starve to death. They are shown drinking glasses of blood, so apparently they COULD survive on medical blood, but Sunako has no consideration for human lives. Sunako's village won't be able to just live in peace, free of human discrimination. If you establish a village of 300 vampires, they will require roughly 15,600 new human victims to not starve to death in just the first year. In Shiki, roughly 10 percent of all vampire victims come back as vampires. That means the first year will produce 1,560 new vampires. In order to survive just the 2nd year, the vampire town would require 96,720 new human victims. The problem snowballs from there and keep in mind the vampires are immortal with infinite life expectancy, so they require infinite resources. Sunako's "plan" is completely unsustainable and would wipe out all of Humanity and thus all vampires as well within just 50 years. One vampire is moral and desides to starve to death rather than eat humans. However, the other vampires make the decision that their own lives are worth an infinite number of human lives to sustain. Since they still have free will and voluntarily make such a selfish decision, it is unarguable that every vampire displayed in this series deserves to be staked.

The series ends with the worst character in the anime, a human monk turned Jinrou Vampire, saving the life of Sunako by killing the villager that was finally going to put an end to her. Even Sunako was willing to admit her fault and face death, but the Monk convinces her that a righteous God would never allow vampires to exist. Since God must not exist, there is no evil in the world and everything is permitted. I hate you shitty anime Smerdyakov. I hate you SO fucking much. The worst vampire leader ever flees into the woods with bootleg Smerdyakov to kill more people and start this whole saga again. The village burns during the final battle, so Dr. Okazaki stares off and wonders if it was all worth it. YES! Are you fucking kidding me!? Saving humanity is worth one small town burning down. What kind of a philosophical question is that?!

Lets look at another vampire series that did this plot WAY better. There is a manga called Dance of the Vampire Bund. The vampire leader is a many centuries old "little girl" just like Sunako. However, Mina Tepes is a strategic mastermind whose plan to establish a vampire utopia actually makes sense. Using hundreds of years of medical knowledge, her scientists create an artificial blood that can be mass produced. The vampire population is kept strictly in check so that they don't over consume resources. She uses 800 years of stored treasure and compound interest to amass an absurd fortune that she uses to bribe politicians and create an ultra influential lobbying force. Her plan is fully sustainable and meticulously calculated. She is not a moral paragon, but due to her intelligence and not simply being evil, there is no reason for human readers not to sympathize with her and support her. Mina would impale Sunako and all of the Shiki in this series for being idiots and bringing human wrath down on vampires. She would be absolutely right to do so.

Art and music:

The art is fine considering this was a 24 episode anime made on a budget by a small studio called Daume. Even larger studios often see the budget stretched by a 24 episode run time. For a small studio to pull this off without the animation going to total diarrhea by the last quarter of the series, is actually impressive. Toei would have fucked this up. Those guys simply can't go more than 13 episodes and have it not be a visual disaster. The music is fine. It's the lady that did all the music for Naruto and Fairy Tail. She's not my absolute favorite of all time, but she's pretty good. Look at it this way. If she was a bad composer, she wouldn't get hired to score the most popular and lucrative anime in existence.

Overall:

Shiki is an anime that grabbed my attention and held onto me...even as it careened over a cliff. At the end of the day, Shiki just isn't a good anime in my book. However, it isn't simply a horrible anime. It does enough things right that it deserves at least an average rating. I've seen so many bad anime that I've learned to appreciate basic competence and reward it when I see it. If you loved "Let the Right One In", own 5 Hammer Dracula movies, and REALLY want to see a Western Vampire anime, you could do worse.