Story - 9/10
Contrary to what many people seem to say, I enjoyed the slow pacing of the first part of Shiki (from what I can remember of it). It set an atmosphere surprisingly similar to that of a Slice-of-Life anime, which made the transitions from the beginning to the middle and from the middle to the end quite jarring. The concept of vampires, while nothing original in this day and age, was handled very uniquely in Shiki, which I really liked. At times, the vampires (referred to as either Risen or Shiki, depending on which character is talking about them) were portrayed simply as evil, bloodthirsty monsters. But also, in contrast to that, there were times where you really felt sympathetic for them. The pacing of Shiki is what sets it apart from other anime I've seen (albeit I haven't seen nearly as much as a lot of people). It starts slow, becomes very enthralling near the middle, and then just explodes into an onslaught of depressing brutality at the end. The vast amounts of character deaths also really set a depressing tone throughout, which works very well.
Art - 8/10
The art is very good and solid. Nothing about the art stood out too much, aside from the nice variety in character designs, and nothing seemed out of place.
Sound - 7/10
The soundtrack to Shiki is pretty well done. The voice-acting seemed to be on-par, the music was solid, and so were the sound effects.
Character - 5/10
Here lies the only real issue I had with Shiki. Now, I'm all for large amounts of characters in my stories, whether they be anime, books, movies, or anything similar. But the problem Shiki had stemmed from an improper handling of its myriad of characters. At the end of the day you just... didn't really care about many of them. This could be partly due to the fact that deaths run rampant in this anime. Character deaths become less personal and more downright depressing on a massive scale. Which works wonders for the tone of the story, but severely diminishes the value of each individual character. I didn't outright despise any character in the anime, and I even liked quite a few (namely Natsuno, Ozaki, Tohru, Kaori and Akira Tanaka, and (for the most part), Sunako and Seishin). But all these characters appeared to share a few deadly flaws. Many of these characters were absent for long periods of the anime. This seemed to result in a few things, such as loss of interest in said character, and frustration stemming from wanting to know what the hell happened to them. And not nearly enough effort seemed to be put in to fleshing out ANY of the characters to their deserved potential (aside from maybe Ozaki). While watching Shiki, I periodically wondered if it would have been time better spent tracking down and reading the book that Shiki was adapted from, JUST so I could give a crap about the characters. There were times where I just got lost as to what any given character was trying to accomplish apart from wandering about aimlessly and not seeming to get anywhere. One thing I also have to mention in terms of characters is Sunako and Seishin. At first, I really was interested in the mysterious relationship between the two. But by the end, there seemed to be no real reason as to why the two were so damn obsessed with each other. And I REALLY didn't like the fact that Natsuno was pretty much dropped halfway through, only to appear near the end with a frustratingly small and pointless role.
TLDR; I just couldn't care too much about or fully understand any character in Shiki.
Enjoyment - 8/10
Like I said, I did really like some of the characters, the story was great, and for the most part, I enjoyed the ride through the convoluted, mysterious, and compelling anime that is Shiki.
Overall - 7/10
