Story: There is certain difficulty in working with cliché stories and themes that may not be readily apparent to those without a bit of a literary background. One might think “aha, that’s easy!” when it comes to formulating a story around a cliché topic, as the underlying content and framework are already prepackaged and easy for an audience to absorb. Yet, there is an important flaw in this assessment: where an author might otherwise rely on a unique premise to offset some poor execution in an original work, the inclusion of the cliché requires a story’s execution to be running on all cylinders at all times or risk flopping into the trash bin.
Shiki happens to be one of those few twists on the vampirism cliché that succeeds in executing a coherent story without deviating from common themes. The story engages in a well-honed exposition covering a host of powerful philosophical explorations into the human experience, and yet is not a preachy pseudo-intellectual work in the vein of Texhnolyze, Ergo Proxy, or Serial Experiments Lain. No, Shiki cleverly masks much of its depth behind a mundane, generic setting that has been done a hundred times over: a string of mysterious deaths come to a small community in a middle-of-nowhere village and vampires are to blame. Following the formula, one might expect to watch a few people die, wait for the deus-ex-machina to save the day (Higurashi Kai, anyone?) and then yawn at the predictable and banal climax of some cheap horror flick as the vampires get their due, right?
Wrong. Sotoba, the village in the show, is populated by doctors, elders, monks, farmers, the young, the old, and a legion of other ordinary townsfolk who share various backstories that might accuractely mimic any large social exchange in the real world. Among all these various characters are a wide array of different perspectives on what first appear to be a handful of unusual deaths, and serious tensions between people begin to emerge as the oddity turns into a pattern. While the story takes a few episodes to start rolling at full speed, the village soon begins to tear itself apart over a serious existential threat that nobody knows how to contend with. Some of the townsfolk acknowledge the the string of deaths as beyond random chance, but no consensus can be reached as others constantly cry for proof to substantiate the problem as more than just a string of bad luck while handwaving away the desire to look into the deaths as superstition. Further on the fringes, others identify the threat straight away as an otherworldly assailment, only to find that their harbinger proclamations to the town square have made them the target of an enemy who wishes to remain secret and holds no reservation about killing to make that so.
What unfolds from there is a truly gripping story of the nature of power, propaganda, deceit, virtue, and social stratification in human society. While a more popular mainstream western series like “The Walking Dead” rather brashly flaunts its central motif of “in the apocalypse, other humans are more dangerous than the zombies” at the forefront of its story, Shiki is far more subdued and nuanced in how the vampiric threat manifests tragedy within the village. There are no over-the-top scenes of spiked baseball bats flattening faces as man fights man for supremacy – quite the contrary, there is surprisingly little shock-value drama for the sake of shock. One’s own belligerent self-denial, for example, is as potent a weapon toward one’s own demise as a blood-sucking assailant. Other topics, such as a willingness to forsake one’s culture for the sake of a greater social narrative, also plays heavily into the misfortunes of the village much as it does in the present day. Without social cohesion, the villagers are but naive individual lambs against a pack of wolves.
Due to the roller-coaster nature of the how events in the story unfold, I find it best to remain intentionally obtuse in the level of detail offered regarding individual events. Observing Shiki without preconception of what is to come allows one to experience a powerful whirlwind of emotions as one reacts to Sotoba's growing tragedy, and a huge cast of characters makes it nigh-impossible to predict what is going to happen to each as the story moves forward. From beginning to end, Shiki's tale is a masterwork commentary on the nature of evil within the human soul and the tenuous lines that those of virtue must walk in order to combat it, and carried within this is an elegant weave of melancholy, anger, sorrow, and hope that define man when pushed to the brink. The subject of vampirism in the show is simply a catalyst to tell this greater narrative and, for those willing to look for the wizard behind the curtain, offers a chilling parallel to events which transpire in our own world in much the same way.
Animation:
Despite being a series from the turn of the 2010 decade, where the artistic brushes of Kyoto Animation and ufotable were redefining what the anime community would come to expect as quality in the years to come, Shiki’s animation is decidedly unimpressive. While I give it credit for the fact that it does not show unnecessary restraint and makes the visuals every bit as horrific as they need to be to parallel the actions happening on screen, too many character designs are intentionally disproportioned or downright comical. The vampires are given a distinct and ghoulish empty-eyed aesthetic, sure, but the general quality could easily be mistaken to be from the timeframe of similar dark-themed animation styles like Noir or Gungrave.
That said, the animation does not really detract from the intended pace of the show even if it has many questionable elements. My sense is that the series was likely budgeted for a standard 13 episode run, yet was later was drug out to 24 in order to allow it to properly deliver its story. Corners would obviously have to be cut to make this work, but having a properly-paced and phenomenal story is far more important to my appraisal than a perfect animation board.
Sound:
Haunting choral chants and tension-laced strings define Shiki’s soundtrack and work diligently to set the mood for each episode. While the total count of tracks is fairly low and the same pieces are liberally recycled, the delivery feels similar to Your Lie in April in that the tracks it does possess are employed with a deft hand and sound musical judgment. The silence as an episode comes to a close inspires the ever-desired “just one more” feeling to motivate the viewer to continue on, and creates the desired dark, eerie vibe befitting of a show best watched a few hours past sundown.
Voice acting from the Japanese casting is quite good, and the seiyuu deliver a broad mixture of different emotions required over a wide range of individual talent. Catatonic muttering, murderous screaming, wailing despair, and unwavering resolve are all met with poignant delivery – points which the English talent expectedly falls short on. Stick with subs on this title for full effect.
Characters:
Of the many reviews I have written and the host of anime I have watched, Shiki is distinctly unique in how its characters are used both in the plot and as foci of the narrative. With exception to the village doctor Toshio, who one might ascribe as the true “main character”, characters are more abstract than a random individual with a random name. The story takes place in a village of 1300 people, and the scope and feel certainly make this number seem believable. For example, one family in the show of particular emphasis is that of a young contractor newly married with a young child. His two parents and sister round out the family, and while individual members are highlighted at different times “the contractor and his family” acts a sort of meta-character that makes amalgamizing such a massive set of characters into one’s head much more palatable.
The scoping of the story in this manner creates an ensemble cast that feels of a scale similar to Legend of the Galactic Heroes, yet one does not feel burdened by having to try to remember any great number of individuals. Faces are easily pieced together into the character groups in which they belong, and retaining names is far more a bonus than a necessity to the experience. This hierarchy of characterization is essential to how all the characters develop, as the plague of vampirism tears through each individual family in different ways. Some families go unscathed, others are obliterated, and within each family are drawn out emotive stories of what had been before and what has been bereft after.
While I still have my reservations about several character additions who feel like out-of-place comic relief ala Infinite Ryvius, these hiccups are minimal and are included sparingly such that they do not impact the larger drama. Not a perfect category, certainly, but the characterization is definitively noteworthy and is executed very well.
Overall:
Were it not obvious at this point of the review, Shiki really took me by storm. This show has been on my “recommended by friends” list since it aired around ten years ago, and I never gave it the time of day due to my general disinterest in the horror genre. Horror or not, however, the presentation is first and foremost a dark drama of a similar color as one might find in The Promised Neverland, where the underlying shock-value elements are a targeted subset of the plot and not a major selling point.
For those looking for a tense mystery drama written for a mature audience, Shiki should be toward the top of the list. Not to be missed by any serious connoisseur of top-tier anime drama.