Shiki: Why I Think it's Worth the Watch

A lot of people I know who have watched the anime Shiki have said that it's boring and too slow. They say the characters are underdeveloped and it didn't keep them hitched. Several people have said they didn't even bother to finish watching the anime. I honestly loved the show. It's by far my favourite anime. And I'll tell you all the reasons why.

Shiki is a horror genre anime that takes place in a tiny town called Sotoba. Oh, great. There's that stereotypical tiny horror movie town. But don't worry: I'll touch on that later. Sotoba is a small town where nothing extraordinary or out of the ordinary ever happens. So when everyone starts dying off from an epidemic, the town starts to worry.

Soon after the first person is found dead, a strange family known as the Kirishiki family moves into the new European style mansion built just outside of the town's city limits. After they move in, people start dropping like flies.

The doctor at the clinic, Toshio Ozaki, is losing his mind trying to figure out what this epidemic, that starts off as just a common cold that turns deadly in just a few days, really is. He never even suspects that the epidemic is really vampires - or as the town calls them, Okiagari, and later in the series, Shiki. If you think this is a spoiler...well obviously you didn't get past the third or fourth episode when Megumi Shimizu, a girl who wants to go live in the city and is made fun of constantly for the way she dresses who died, comes back to life.

It takes a while for the humans to figure out that vampires are killing off the town, but when they do, your mind is plagued with several questions that there really is no right or wrong answer to. And the long amount of time that it takes seems to be what everyone complains about. They whine that the anime took too long to get interesting, and it's really slow, and the characters are stupid for not figuring out sooner why everyone is dying.

And now let's get to the critiquing.

To start, the slowness of the anime in the beginning is realistic. Would you believe that vampires are killing the town? I think not. If your town started dying down, would supernatural creatures be your first thought? Most likely not. I don't know about you, but I know I wouldn't believe that creatures that were supposedly made up were killing my entire town.

A lot of people also complain about the fact that the anime brought up too many questions by the time you finished it, and they didn't like how much you thought about them. And what I have to say about that is that the entire point of the anime is to make you think. The entire point of the anime is to make you ask the questions "What is good? What is evil? Do we all have evil in us? What would it take for me to lose my humanity the way the humans did at the end of the anime?" Another question it's supposed to make you ask, and my favourite one that I certainly spent a lot of time thinking on once I finished the anime is "Who here is in the wrong? Were the humans the bad guys for massacring the Shiki and saving their town? Or were the Shiki in the wrong for killing people and doing what they had to to survive?"

And by the way, on the part of the tiny town, the Shiki, more specifically, Sunako, elaborates on why they moved to such a small town. It's not just your stereotypical horror show where it's in a small town just for the hell of it. They chose a small town to live in on purpose because they were looking for a safe haven. They were looking for a small town where they would be safe. A small town that would do a minimal amount of damage if they were to completely kill it off, and turn people into Shiki while they did so. A town that no one would notice is gone. They also chose that town so that, if they were discovered, there would be so little people by the time they were that they would have no trouble killing them off. This little detail is not mentioned in the anime, but you can assume by some of the things Sunako does and says that it is, in fact, a reasoning for choosing this town.

Now let's discuss the character growth. A lot of people compare Megumi Shimizu to Gasai Yuno and bash on Megumi for copying Yuno. First of all, I'd like to point out that the anime came out in 1999, and the manga adaptation came out in 2009. Mirai Nikki, where Gasai Yuno came from, didn't come out until 2013. That's LONG after Megumi Shimizu was originally created. So Megumi was the ORIGINAL pink haired ponytail wearing yandere. I'd be willing to bet that Gasai Yuno probably had a lot of features about her that were based off of Megumi because, if you really analyze the characters, they're quite similar.

As for character development? I think they did an amazing job with it. Especially Toshio. While Megumi was my favourite character, and I don't know why, Toshio had the most development. SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!! IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THE ANIME AND DON'T WANT SPOILERS, SKIP OVER THIS PART AND LOOK FOR THE NEXT PART THAT'S ALL IN CAPS!!!!

Toshio is portrayed as a doctor who cares a lot about his patients, and is very dedicated to his work. However, when his wife comes to town, you learn that Toshio is a little TOO obsessed with his work, and that's why she left in the first place. He also has a terrible morbid curiosity that leads him to do terrible things. This is shown when his wife Kyoko dies. He keeps her dead body in a patient's room because, at the time, he was already suspecting Okiagari which is the town's name for Shiki, was behind all the death. So he keeps her in a room in the clinic hooked up to a heart monitor and a machine to track brain activity, waiting for her to rise up. While he is waiting, he shows affection for her by caressing her face, and even resting his forehead on hers as an act of love. But then when she finally does rise up, his morbid curiosity gets the better of him, and he experiments on her to the point where it is most definitely considered torture.

Right before he kills her, Toshio is seen with the black and red eyes that are used to symbolize the Shiki's inhumanity. In doing this, it in turn symbolizes the loss of Toshio's humanity. (Here's a link to a picture of that moment if you want proof, or just didn't notice it.  Doctor Ozaki's Shiki eyes)

SPOILERS OVER!!!!!!!!!! YOU CAN START READING AGAIN!!!!!!!!

As for the other characters, the characterization is truly amazing. There's a scene where Sunako tells her backstory and how she became a Shiki. In this scene, you can truly sympathise with her, because she didn't choose that life for herself: it was thrust upon her. And this is where you really start to think, or at least where I did. It makes you think about all those other people that Sunako and her family are killing. They don't CHOOSE to rise up and become a Shiki. It's FORCED upon them. And they're only doing what they have to in order to survive. They're not killing people because they want to. This is clearly seen with one character, as he refuses to kill people for quite some time. Another Shiki refuses to kill people at all, and eventually starves to death because she can't bear the thought of killing a human or even doing so much as to drink their blood. And when she dies, you realise that the Shiki are only doing what they have to in order to live. It's kind of like Tokyo Ghoul, where the ghouls have to eat people in order to live. However, in Tokyo Ghoul, the ghouls are ALWAYS the protagonists, and the human's killing them shamelessly are the antagonists. It's the same idea with Shiki. They're only doing what they have to in order to survive.

With all of this said, I believe Shiki to be a very well-made, in-depth, mesmorising anime. It's got all the factors a horror anime needs: suspense, a sense of anxiety, not knowing what's coming next, gore, and most of all, it makes you really think about things. This anime was extremely exciting to watch, and I loved analysing it and picking it apart to the very depths of what this anime is about.
To wrap this up, I very strongly suggest watching this anime. While it is a little slow at the beginning (even though while, yes, it is slow, it's still extremely interesting), it gets to be so intense that you can't help but be sucked in and need to know what's next. 

I would absolutely love to hear your feedback and tell me what you thought of this anime, and how you interpreted it. So drop a comment and tell me what you think about it. I'd love to hear from you! And don't forget, if you want me to critique something you like, shoot me an email at kitty.kat.kritiques@gmail.com.

I love you all! Now go out into the world and be productive!