Series Synopsis
Something is happening in the village of Sotoba.
During a particularly hot summer, a strange new family moves into town.
Almost instantly, villagers start to succumb to very mysterious deaths. Like a
plague, it spreads through the community. With each passing day, the tiny
village begins teetering on the brink of annihilation.
Sotoba’s resident physician, Toshio Ozaki (voiced by Toru Okawa),
suspects these deaths to be the result of a new kind of epidemic. The young
doctor becomes desperate as more people die due to his inability to find a
cure.
Incapable of discovering the source, Dr. Ozaki starts to fear that the
village will be lost. With little else to go on, he begins to suspect the
calamity may not be the result of a disease. After investigating the matter, he
comes to the conclusion that the villagers are not dying from an infectious
virus, but instead they are being killed by dark creatures known as the Shiki.
Series Positives
Shiki wanted to do a lot of cool and impressive things, but it stumbled a
lot in the beginning and even fell down the cliff many times. Luckily the show managed
to keep pulling itself up again and again. The series was able to charge
forward once it finally found a focus.
The Characters
The show has a rather large cast. You get acquainted with many
different people. However you never get to know most of them. So when I say Shiki has
really good characters, what I mean to say is Shiki has a really good cast with two truly outstanding characters.
The first is Dr. Ozaki.
 |
| Dr. Ozaki |
He wasn’t the one who initially discovered what was going on, but he was
the first person with the means to fight back. Because of this, the Shiki consider
him to be their greatest threat.
 |
| Sunako |
Though he full heartedly wished to save his home from disaster, in no
way would I call Dr. Ozaki the hero of the show. His obsession with the Shiki
began to slowly eat away at his sanity. While never fully losing his
rationality, he did lose the ability to feel compassion towards the people that
were once his neighbors and patients. He became incapable of seeing the Shiki
as fallen loved ones. Instead Dr. Ozaki could only see test subjects.
One of the best and most disturbing moments in the entire show was when
Dr. Ozaki’s wife turned into a Shiki. Unlike the other villagers, Ozaki was
able to monitor his wife’s condition from beginning to end and was able to keep
it a secret from the rest of his staff. This allowed him the freedom to perform
a variety of “experiments”.
This scene was hard to watch, and from this point onward that became a
common theme. During the procedure Dr. Ozaki kept telling himself he was
conducting necessary tests that would help even the odds. But no matter how you
look at it, this was a torture scene and a brutal one at that.
It was at this moment when Dr. Ozaki stepped out of his morality grey
zone. His world transformed in true black and white. He developed a harsh
"if you're not one of us, you're one of them" mentality.
Shiki's second great character is Sunako Kirishiki (voiced by Aoi Yuki).
Whereas Dr. Ozaki cannot be described as the default hero of the series,
Sunako cannot be described as the de-facto villain. Despite having the
appearance of a thirteen year old girl, Sunako has lived for many years as a
Shiki. The first time you saw her, she was insanely creepy. The more time she
had on screen and the more you got to know her however, the more you started to
like her.
Sunako was the epitome of the show’s ambiguous nature. Yes she had and
did go around killing people, but you came understand why she needed to do
this. You felt sorry for her and could help worry about her.
It's something that's hard to explain without seeing it, but by the end
of the show you are ready to forgive all that she had done. She had only
managed to continue living with herself because she had to rationalize why
killing people was a necessity. It was all about survival, so how could she be
blamed for just wanting to live? When others refused to accept that perspective
and only saw her as a monster, Sunako's world began to fall apart. It was
heartbreaking to the point where you can’t bring yourself to hate her, no
matter how many people she may have hurt.
Creepy
While I’m not immune to being scared me, it’s a sensation that is few and far between. However I can still respect when a series does do all the right things and how it would be terrifying to others. Therefore I can confidently say that Shiki struggles at being scary (more on that later). But it's without a doubt creepy.
You know when the show was going to start getting creepy too.
Everything turned very stylized. There were a ton of shadows with splashes of
bright and vibrant colors. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the eyes of
the Shiki.
They were so unnatural; very soul piercing and gut wrenching. They were
the kind of eyes you don’t want to see staring at you at the end of a dark
corridor or God for forbid at the end of your bed.
A show cannot be scary without being creepy, but a show doesn’t need to
be scary in order to be creepy.
So what’s the difference?
When something is creepy, you get a strong unsettling feeling. For
example, you’re home alone, it’s at night, and you’re sitting at your computer.
From the corner of your eyes you can see the entrance of a hallway or into
another room. You slowly start to feel a little uneasy when the thought of
someone poking their head around the corner e\enters you mind. What do you do
to fix this? You get up and turn on a couple of lights and go back to what you
were doing.
Now use this same scenario, but with one difference. For whatever
reason you can’t bring yourself to get up and turn of on the lights. You’re
determined to stay in the space that you know is safe. You do everything in
your power to not look outside your peripheral vision. Suddenly the power goes
out and the comforting glow of your computer screen vanishes. You’re now left
there sitting alone with every little sound seemingly getting closer and
closer.
With creepy you can still function, but scared makes you vulnerable.
The End *Possible Spoiler*
I’m not a fan of Shiki's
beginning; that will be very evident soon. I was just about ready to tear into
this show. Fortunately, I guess, the story was able to stay interesting enough
and things got better. Then everything started slowing down again and all those
negative feelings reared up. Finally the endgame hit…and it was good. Holy hell
was it good.
I was blown away by Shiki’s
final episodes. I thought I had seen all there was to this show. Never in a
million years would I have predicted this ending.
As a word of warning, things do get
really violent really quickly.
Shiki messes with your mind. It shatters your whole perspective on whose
side you were supposed to be on. For the entirety of the series you saw the
Shiki as blood thirsty killers. There were a few examples of hesitation and
remorse, but for the most part they all seemed, and that's the key word, to
take great pleasure in killing.
Before entering the final few episodes you have to keep in mind what had
happened in the show up to that point. The Shiki had killed people, there were
Shiki that enjoyed killing people, and every single Shiki (with the exception
of one) killed someone. This is important to remember because the ending then
asked the question "Why did they have to do that?" At any other time
during the show the answer would have been "because they were soulless
monsters". Then the series punches you in gut because you realize that
you’ve been making a horrible assumption.
Take a look at the other side.
As it is, killing a human is easy, but killing a Shiki is bloody work.
Once the villagers realized what was going on, they were finally able to fight
back and they were totally justified in doing so. Think about it. The Shiki were
responsible for killing their loved ones. But here's the catch, who were the
Shiki? The villagers had to re-kill some of the same people they already lost.
There were a few that couldn’t bring themselves to do that, others managed to
rationalize why they needed to do it, and of course there were those who found
pleasure in doing it. At first you were on board. That feeling didn’t last
long. Eventually you start thinking, "Oh my god, is this really what I
wanted to see happen?"
It was all about survival and survival doesn’t care about morality. Ask
yourself what happens when two sides with the right to exist, are unable to
coexist?
This ending is not easy to think about, and it was sure as hell not
easy to watch. There were no bad guys, there were no good guys. Everyone had a
reason to kill and fear the other. In a messed up kind of way...it is
beautiful.
Why wasn’t the rest of the show like this?
Series Negatives
I can go all day listing why I love Shiki’s
ending, but despite that I still can't give this show a stellar recommendation;
more of a hesitant one. The ending simply couldn’t pull the show out of a
massive hole.
The Beginning
I can’t stand the start of this show. While watching, I could feel
myself getting annoyed. Now having seen the ending, the beginning flat out
infuriates me.
Almost everything that happened within the first few episodes didn’t
make sense. There was no reason for the story to be told the way it was.
Then by the third episode, any and all horror and mystery elements were
dropped. Yet the show continued to act like it still had them. However, you
knew what was going on, but the main characters did not. You found yourself in
a position where you knew more than everyone else.
HOW IS THAT SCARY!?
When it comes to horror, the less you know the better. The unknown is
scary, not knowing what is coming next is scary, and being left in the dark is
scary. You want to discover, not be told.
There was one episode involving the creation of a new Shiki. The show
thought this would be a good place to list all the Shiki's weaknesses, explain
how a Shiki could be killed, and it even went into why they needed to drink human
blood. Why tell the audience this when the next half of the series would be
about Dr. Ozaki learning everything we were just told?
That’s not scary, that’s not horror. It added nothing but frustration.
The show held your hand and only started getting good when people started figuring
out what you already knew.
Adding to this, there was no reason why the Shiki should ever have been
discovered.
It was maddening when Dr. Ozaki was able to notice the many symptoms a
person displayed before turning, but always failed to see two very distinct
puncture marks on the victim’s body. If these marks were always on the neck it
might have made a little more sense as to why someone could keep missing them.
But often times they were on the victim's arm right where the doctor took a
blood sample. They should have been impossible to miss.
Eventually, Dr. Ozaki did notice them, but to him they looked like bug
bites. So following that logic the answer must have been vampires.
Wait? What? Why?
To be fair it didn’t happen quite like that, but the vampire realization
still came out of nowhere. Why would Dr. Ozaki, a rational, well-educated man,
come to the conclusion of vampires at all; let alone without any piece of
evidence pointing in that direction? It’s irrelevant that he was right. In what
world would it make sense to take that leap?
That’s really the underlining question of the beginning of Shiki, why?
Final Thoughts
I ask you to bear with Shiki
because in the end it is a solid anime. It had plenty of creepy moments and the
story was actually quite entertaining. The characters were strong and the
animation was well done.
But if for nothing else, experience the ending. It's truly something to
remember. It will make you forget (almost anyway) all that is wrong with the
rest of the series. I know for me at least, my eyes were glued to the screen
during those final moments.
To all you anime fans out there, go right on ahead and check this one
out.
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