Retro-Review: Shiki

 Looking for a good anime to watch this Halloween? Look no further then this right here. No seriously, go watch this series if you haven’t. I did put spoilers in here. However, if you don’t care and just want to know what this show is about, or have seen it and are looking for someone else’s opinion.

Shiki really represents the moral grey area in anime, a true battle of what’s right and what’s wrong. The first half the series paints the humans as the people in the right, while the second half of it paints the vampires in a better light. It’s all left up to the viewer and in the end, I can truly say that I believe that both parties had their merit but were ultimately in the wrong.

The series takes place in the small town of Sotaba which is sectioned off from everywhere else by thick forest of Fir trees that they use to make tomb markers. The narrator, Seishin Muroi, often says that the town is surrounded by death. It’s a reference to the trees. Now this series has a LOT of characters, and I mean a lot but I don’t mean in the way that I can’t remember most of their names because I can…but it still has a lot of characters. I’ll cover the ‘main’ ones here.

The ‘Main’ characters of the cast switch between Natsuno Yuuki, an outsider from the big city who never really felt he fit in the town. He’s probably one of the first ones in the town to notice what’s going on and aids one of the other main characters periodically through the rest of the story.

Toshiro Ozaki, the town’s doctor. I’ve heard him compared to Dr. Von Hellsing in ways. The start of the series he’s investigating the deaths in the town as if they’re caused by a epidemic. Natsuno tips him off that it may in fact be vampires and he becomes absolutely obsessed with destroying them before they destroy his town.

Seishin Muroi, the town’s junior priest and novel writer. He acts as sort of the stories narrator and as an opposite to Ozaki. As Ozaki becomes more and more obsessed with obliterating the vampires, Seishin tries to look at things from the other side.

The series begins with Megumi Shimizu, a young girl who’s lived in Sotaba her entire life and hates it. She wants to move to the big city, she admires the city and anything from it. This includes Natsuno who she is completely obsessed with. She is also interested in the new western style mansion that was built up on the hill of Kanemasa, as she has heard that it’s new residents have moved in she goes up there. She is the first young causality of the series, until her, it had only been old people who could have been killed by the summer heat.
Toshiro and his best friend Seishin begin investigating it as if it’s an epidemic. However, Natsuno who thought after Megumi died, she’d stop stalking him. I believe the actual line is “Shimizu’s dead, guess I can keep my window open now.”
This might sound cruel at first, but god she is a crazy stalker bitch and it only becomes more and more apparent the more we see her as a vampire.

She goes as far as killing Natsuno’s best friend because he paid more attention to him then to her. Have I mentioned she’s a petty stalker bitch? Because I don’t think I can stress how much I hate this bitch and she deserves everything she gets at the end of the series.

As Toshio loses more and more people to this ‘epidemic’, he is approached by Natsuno who asks him one simple question. Was Shimizu actually dead, not just brain dead or something. As Toshio jokes that to be alive she’d have to be a zombie or a vampire, it hits him that it is exactly that. If he put away all preconceptions of it being a myth, and thought about it from all the clues he’d gotten from looking at it medically, there was nothing else it could be but vampires.
This begins his slow decent into his obsession with eradicating the vampires from his town.

The ‘mainish’ characters on the vampires’ side of things consist of mostly three characters.

Sunako Kirishiki, a young girl vampire who is the head of the Kirishiki family. She comes off as playful and is actually rather kind. She feels like she’s been forsaken by God and is a huge fan of Seishin’s book who often writes about things like being forsaken by God.

Tatsumi Kirishiki, servant to the Kirishiki clan he is a special kind of vampire known as a Jinrou who is more of the equivalent of a werewolf. He can walk in the sunlight as opposed to the other vampires and isn’t technically dead.

Chizuru Kirishiki, aka, Lady Gaga in anime form. Seriously, look at the outfits this woman wears. Like this one I affectionately call the lemon outfit. She’s sort of the queen bitch of the group and does a majority of the leading but really serves under Sunako, their relationship is actually kind of cute.

As the vampires get more and more desperate to stop the humans from stopping their slow invasion of the town, they get to the ones who are investigating them any way they can. First off, they have Natsuno’s best friend that Megumi turned earlier in the series come and start draining him and they attack Dr. Ozaki’s wife. This is where we learn the most important lesson of the series.

Sometimes, you just need to dissect your wife.

He performs a series of experiments on her after she rises as a vampire so he can determine what hurts them and what kills them and then drives a stake through her heart. Yeah, this scene is about as lovely as it sounds. It’s the cause of the rift between Toshio and Seishin.

After he dissects his wife? Toshio makes a ton of stakes and begins working on his plan to expose the Kirishiki’s to the whole town. Meanwhile, Natsuno has been turned but he ended up like Tatsumi as a Jinrou.

Now I will stop right now and bitch about the worst dad in all of anime, Natsuno’s fucking father is the largest D-bag in all of anime. Now you’re gonna be like “but Midnight, what about Gendou or Shou Tucker.” And I say, NO. Yeah, I’m not saying that they’re good fathers by any means but I have to say, I just can’t STAND Natsuno’s dad. His son is obviously sick and dying, I don’t care HOW fucking anti-religious you are, first off you have no right to rip your sons religious symbols down because of your own views, if he wants to cover his room in holy symbols it’s his own damn choice!

Second off, if you promise that you’re going to watch over him over the night. Actually fucking watch over him, sit in his room and take care of him or you know, better yet. Actually hang the religious symbols the kids brought over…but NO, he not only lies to the kids about considering the holy symbols and throws them out, he doesn’t even watch over Natsuno. HE PRETTY MUCH IGNORES ALL WARNINGS, LETS HIS SON DIE AND THEN GOES INSANE! WELL IT SERVES HIM RIGHT!

So right, Natsuno becomes a Jinrou and helps Toshio by biting him before Chizuru does so she can’t control him. The reveal of this is probably the greatest moment of the series, as he just raises his arm, his sleeve falls down to reveal Natsuno’s bite mark and he gives the most wonderful smirk.

This is where the show begins to sort of demonize the humans more so then the vampires as they become literally an angry mob that’s sole purpose is to drive the vampires out of the town…and by that I mean kill them all. While the rest of the series is pretty tame about blood, this part of the series turns into a total gore fest. There is blood everywhere, festering and burning flesh as the vampires are dragged out into the sunlight.

The humans even get so crazy they start murdering humans they think are harboring vampires. It’s sad and kind of sickening, I actually have to close my eyes as they slaughter Seishin’s family in cold blood looking for him and Sunako.

I do have to cheer when they run a tractor trailer over Megumi’s face, she kinds of deserves it. She was a whiny obnoxious stalker bitch in the beginning of the series and she’s still an annoying stalker bitch at the end of the series. She deserves everything she gets and more.

The series has two OVA’s that are included in their chronological place in the series, yes, you could skip over them but I think both are very important in their own ways. They don’t feel out of place and melt into the plot rather nicely. The first one is about the vampires as they try to escape from the rampaging humans, in particular Nao, a vampire we’ve seen pretty often throughout the series and her regrets and pains as she is about to meet her end.
It also shows that not all of the humans have been demonized, a old friend of hers seeing the suffering the vampires are going through as they’ve been tied up to things and forced to burn slowly in the sun, goes through and stakes each of them in a mercy kill. Crying as he does so, these used to be his friends. Sotaba was the kind of town where everyone knew each other. It PAINS him to have to do this, while others are making comments like “I never liked so and so anyway.” it shows that some of the humans aren’t so far gone into the mob mentality.

The second OVA shows the slow decline of a human woman we’ve only really seen in the background of the main series. It depicts her losing her family and her mind as the vampires take over the town. In the end of the episode, she sets herself and the entire town on fire. starting the fire that ultimately destroys the entire village at the end of the series.

The very end the vampires are all gone however, the village is a lost cause. As the few remaining humans with Ozaki as their center drive down the road they see one thing…the two last living vampires….

Seishin, the towns preist now a Jinrou and Sunako as they drive away from the town…

Who was right, the vampires who only wanted to live? Or the Humans who wanted to protect their village and their loved ones? They both murdered hundreds of people for their goals. Was anyone right? That’s honestly for you to decide. While I’ve never watched the sub for this show, the dub is amazing and the people at Funimation did an amazing job of creating a creepy atmosphere and none of the characters sound wrong to me. You can watch Shiki at Funimation.com

Happy Halloween!

~Midnight