Well thankfully Shiki has nothing to do with that Twilight fagifying of vampires where they’re just a bunch of mopey emo disco balls. They are by the book steak to the heart, can’t go out in sun light, and must be invited in vampires. This may sound a bit spoiler-ish but one of the genres for the series straight up says “vampire” so if you didn’t know that already you probably are the kind of person who likes to huff paint for fun.
Now I believe that story is pretty much generic. Some vampires move in, people start disappearing, a group of people who aren’t pants on head retarded figure it out but no one believes them yada yada yada. So basic vampire affair but it does get some points in my book for keeping it to the traditional vampires but Shiki does take some liberties with vampires any way. Like remember how Dracula used to dress like he had just gotten off working the register at the local Hot Topic? Well these vampires tend to walk around in street clothes which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but when one in particular vampire we’ll just call her Whore-Tits McGee walks around in such little clothing that she would almost certainly be called out for public indecency you’ve done something wrong. Another thing that’s a bit fucked up is the hair of most characters, both humans and vampires alike. A disturbing amount of characters in Shiki seem to do their hair by stepping into a wind tunnel full of hairspray and moose, it almost makes me wonder if there isn’t some chemical in the water that cause everyone’s hair to have so some sort of weird erection. Then there is the one vampire who’s built up to be like an unstoppable badass and could be used to great effect in scarring the shit out of people but he looks like he has two stalagmites growing out of his head which he is trying desperately to cover up with his hair and he dresses and acts a complete fag. I laughed out loud in one scene where he rode up on a motorcycle in some sort of maroon button up leather outfit that I would image a transsexual lesbian would wear and the best part was he had on a pair of sunglasses that could only be described as douche goggles and it was night time.
One of the biggest let downs in Shiki is that it has a very inconsistent tone. Near the beginning it has a really creepy morbid feeling to it which I really found entertaining. It truly unnerving to see a girl previously thought dead to show up under your friend’s bed and proceed to suck his blood without you being able to do anything about it. But then it starts to get more generic. It gets bogged down a lot with tons of worthless characters that I don’t give a shit about and the worst part is when tragedy befalls them, they try to make you feel bad. It’s really quite sad because what could have been a morbid depressing moment turns laughable because the characters are so poorly written I almost jump with joy every time one of them bites the dust in a gruesome way which probably reflects poorly on me as a person but that’s beside the point. A lot of the middle of the show is spent wandering around in boredom waiting for everyone else to figure out what’s going on even though it is painfully obvious. During the majority of the series it seems like nothing is happening like the series is just treading water trying to bide its time till the ending
And the ending incidentally is the worst part of this series. Now imagine that an anime is like a stuffed crust pizza. Shiki is a pizza that starts of delicious with your choice of unsettling toping but as you go one it start to taste like cardboard and then when you get to the crust you find that it’s stuffed with a bunch of used condoms. So to sum it up Shiki is about a bunch of dodleing retards and flamboyant vampires fapping about doing nothing of interest.
