Shiki

Life is idyllic and unassuming in the small town of Sotoba, a simple place where everyone knows everyone. However, tragedy strikes when Megumi Shimizu, a young girl with high aspirations, unexpectedly passes away from an unnamed illness. Over the torrid summer months, as more unexplained deaths crop up around the village, the town's doctor—Toshio Ozaki—begins to suspect that something more sinister than a mere disease is at play.

Toshio teams up with Natsuno Yuuki, an apathetic and aloof teenager, and siblings Kaori and Akira Tanaka, two of Megumi's friends, to unravel the dark mystery behind the deaths in Sotoba. With their combined efforts, the investigation leads them toward an eerie secret pertaining to the new family in the Kanemasa mansion.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ozaki, Toshio Main

Ookawa, Tooru Japanese

Yuuki, Natsuno Main

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Muroi, Seishin Main

Okitsu, Kazuyuki Japanese

Kirishiki, Sunako Supporting

Yuuki, Aoi Japanese

Shimizu, Megumi Supporting

Tomatsu, Haruka Japanese

Mutou, Tooru Supporting

Okamoto, Nobuhiko Japanese

Tatsumi Supporting

Takagi, Wataru Japanese

Kunihiro, Ritsuko Supporting

Sasaki, Nozomi Japanese

Murasako, Masao Supporting

Takahashi, Shinya Japanese

Ookawa, Tomio Supporting

Ishii, Kouji Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Ozaki, Noriko Producer

Abe, Ai Producer

Nishioka, Daisuke Producer

Reviews

Jul 8, 2025

Joe_Devaney

Recommended

Overview:
"Shiki" is yet another anime based on a series of novels by Fuyumi Ono, the same person who wrote the novels of "The Twelve Kingdoms" and "Ghost Hunt". It certainly shows as well, as "Shiki" does to horror stories what "The Twelve Kingdoms" did to isekais, providing a highly nuanced take on the horror genre that you rarely find in any form of media even nowadays. Overall, however, I would say that "Shiki" has held considerably better than its older sister over the years, with any of the problems it has being largely inherent rather than the result of not aging well.

Story (8/10):
The setting for ... "Shiki" is the fictional Japanese village Sotaba, a sleepy village in countryside miles away from anywhere, with nothing standout about it besides a medieval-looking castle on a hill. During one hot summer, a mysterious family moves into the castle, and not long after that, a string of mysterious deaths begins to strike the village, with not even the village's doctors begin able to figure out the cause. It soon becomes apparent that these two events are no coincidence, and there is a lot more to these new residents than meets the eye. Eventually, the people of Sotaba come to realise that they are under threat from a race of vampiric beings called Shiki, and they will have to take very drastic measures if they wish to survive the coming weeks.

One thing you'll notice right away about "Shiki" is that it's an ensemble piece, which is made apparent when the very first character to get some focus and development is also the first to be killed, though she doesn't stay dead due to how Shiki operate. In general, while they're never actually called such, Shiki (which is translated as "corpse demon") have a lot in common with vampires- they're vulnerable to sunlight, they can't enter buildings unless they're invited and they turn people into them by biting them. Given that stories where vampires are completely different from how they were originally portrayed tend to be the norm rather than the exception, there's something oddly refreshing about a story that portrays them a lot closer to the original legend, though of course there are still some differences. Above all else, Shiki aren't necessarily evil, or at least not all of them are. Like any good deconstruction, "Shiki" starts off appearing to be a typical example of its genre only to later reveal itself to be anything but, with the conflict seeming like a typical "humans vs. monsters" feud at first, but overtime you start to ask yourself more and more just who the real monster is, or if there even IS a real monster. Essentially, what "Tokyo Ghoul" attempted but largely at, "Shiki" very much succeeds.

All of that being said, the story does take a while to really get going; for starters, when the deaths first start, it is believed (understandably but frustratedly) that they are the result of some kind of epidemic, and it isn't until about a third of the way through that someone finally begins to understand that what's happening in the village is NOT natural. Ultimately, the series does get better little by little as it goes on, but even late into the series there were still a few scenes that annoyed or bored me, particularly when they revolved around characters I didn't like, of which there were a fair few. Overall, though, the plot did keep me intrigued all the way to the end, and while the conclusion wasn't exactly to my tastes, it still felt like the only way the series could possibly have ended, and personally I wouldn't change it.

Art & Animation (8/10):
"Shiki" was animated by one of the lesser-known studios around, that being Studio Daume. As such, the series is good-looking overall, but the characters and environments are all fairly standardly-drawn and the animations are serviceable but won't leave you in awe or anything like that. What felt very out-of-place, however, was the hairstyles. Ridiculous hair is hardly rare in anime, but "Shiki" manages to take it to a whole new level, to the point that it would honestly take less time to list the characters who DON'T have implausible-looking hair, which looks especially odd in such a dark and dramatic horror story. Overall, the series does look good, but far from fantastic, though the quality is consistent if nothing else.

Sound & Dialogue (9/10):
"Shiki"'s music is outstanding, composed as it is by Yasuharu Takanashi of "Fairy Tail" fame. The series features a lot of extremely moody and atmospheric tracks that really make you understand just what kind of series you're watching. The two openings and two ending themes are particular highlights, with me never skipping any of them, and I honestly don't have a favourite between them for the simple fact that all four of them are brilliant. The voice acting is excellent as well, with John Burgmeier, Jerry Jewel, Cherami Leigh and David Wald delivering great performances as Seishin, Natsuno, Sunako and Toshio respectively, and the dub cast in general having plenty of great names including Colleen Clinkenbeard, Alexis Tipton, Tia Ballard, J. Michael Tatum and Ian Sinclair for a very abridged list. As a whole, the sound design is easily the show's highlight.

Characters (7.5/10):
Since Natsuno Koide is the character we see most of early in the series, I'll start by talking about him. When first introduced, Natsuno comes off as very cold, aloof and uncaring, to the point that his reaction to learning that a girl has died is that he no longer has to close his window. The only person he's shown to be friends with is a boy a few years older than him named Tohru Mutou, and everybody gets along with him. Overtime, however, it becomes clear that much of his attitude is due to frustration with his life, as he hates living in a rundown village like Sotaba due to the fact that he used to live in the city, combined with growing up under a pair of idiotic parents who think that their way is the only way of doing things, to the point that they never officially married because they don't believe in it. Furthermore, while Natsuno can be pretty rude to most people he talks to, even those who are nothing but nice to him, he never really goes out of his way to antagonise anyone, instead keeping to himself until others approach him. And when push comes to shove, he actually proves himself to be one of the show's most likeable characters, as he always stays true to what he believes in no matter how much people try to tempt him, which is very commendable. Sadly, his role ends up being greatly diminished in the second half of the series, and overall he doesn't get that much character development.

Next up, we have my favourite character in the series, Seishin Muroi, the village's monk who also writes novels in his spare time. On the surface, Seishin is polite, gentle, kind, and respectful to the people of Sotoba, and rarely gets angry at anyone. While his kindness is genuine, it's shown later that he's actually deeply disillusioned with his role as a monk, as it's a role that was chosen for him at birth and forces him to preach a lot of things that he doesn't fully buy into. While not outright stated, this is the likely reason why he took up being an author as a side job, which in turn enables him to bond with the leader of the Shiki, Sunako, who has read and greatly enjoys his stories. Above all else, Seishin is probably one of the only characters who actually understands what kind of story he's actually in, in that he's one of the few characters to try and understand both sides of the conflict; he comes to realise that neither side is truly good or evil, and most of them are just trying to survive, and draws his own conclusions based on the actions of those around him. This makes him by far one of the show's most open-minded characters, since much of the story's conflict is caused by people's inability or just plain refusal to understand each other. Add in the fact that he goes through a fair amount of character development, both for better and for worse, and he ultimately ends the series as probably the story's most complex character, even if I can't say I agreed with all of the decisions he made.

The last of the three primary male characters is Toshio Ozaki, the head doctor of Sotaba and the lifelong best friend of Seishin, with whom he has a closer relationship with than his own wife, who doesn't appear to live with him and I honestly couldn't figure out why they were even married. At the start of the series, Toshio is easily the most proactive character, being the one attempting to figure out what's going on in the village and one of the first villagers to suspect that the deaths are being caused by supernatural phenomena. However, the more desperate he becomes to save the village, the more humanity he loses in the process, and overtime he starts to engage in increasingly ruthless and assholeish behaviour. The fact that he's been trained as a doctor, and so must have taken some kind of oath to do no harm, makes a lot of his actions later in the series come off as especially jarring, and overtime I found it harder and harder to like him, though I DID understand and sympathise with him.

While she doesn't appear as often as the male leads, Sunako is nevertheless part of the main cast, and is a very complicated character. She's the leader of the Shiki and the instigator of the plot, but it's debateable if she's THE villain of the story. This is due to the fact that she's actually one of the more sympathetic Shiki, as she's only doing what she has to in order to survive, or at least what she THINKS she has to do in order to survive. She also serves as the conscience to one of her subordinates, in that she's the only reason he has any kind of restraint. Sadly, it's very hard to talk about Sunako in detail since doing so would risk giving away the entire plot. In general, while most characters are somewhere in the grey area in terms of morality, there are a few who have next to no redeeming qualities whatsoever, a prime example being Megumi Shimizu, who can easily be summed up as a much less sympathetic Yuno Gasai (or rather, Yuno is a much more sympathetic Megumi, since Megumi existed first). What's more is that the fact that there are so many characters in a 22-episode series (24 if you count the bonus episodes, which you should) means that many of the characters only get the bare minimum amount of characterization... and that's if they're lucky.

Enjoyment (7.5/10):
Really, this cannot be stressed enough; "Shiki" isn't just a horror story, it's a deconstruction of horror stories. As such, it should go without saying that, while it may be exciting and suspenseful, it's also extremely bleak, with a dark, gritty tone and deaths too numerous to list, both of those who deserve it and those who definitely don't. What's more is that the series goes with the rather cynical interpretation of humanity that people will do anything to survive when backed into a corner, regardless of their original personality, which may rub you the wrong way depending on your worldview.

Overall:
"Shiki" is far from being free of problems, but it is still easily one of the better horror stories out there, and definitely one of the most original. It has deep, layered characters, a complex, interesting and suspenseful plot, fantastic music and voice acting and serviceable art and animation. Sure, some may find the bizarrely weird character designs off-putting and those who don't like horror would do well to stay well away from it, but if you're a horror lover or want a more unique take on the genre, then "Shiki" is a series that you will not regret spending your time on.

Score:
8+8+9+7.5+7.5=40/50=8.0/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 18, 2024

Hermonia

Mixed Feelings

At first, I was quite interested. It's the first time I have ever watched an horror anime.

However, as a lot of reviewers wrote, the story is way too slow. Shiki could have easily have been a 12 episode anime. More than half of the anime is just people dying, we don't get any action or people actually trying to figure out what's happening, which is a huge waste of time.

The characters are written poorly, their motives aren't clear and they don't really have clear traits or personality. Their designs were cool though, the outfits definitely suited the characters and were quite original.

Overall, this ... anime isn't too bad but if u watch it speed it up by 2x or smth..

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 23, 2025

Gsarthotegga

Not Recommended

Informative

Shiki is one of the rare horror anime to stand out at all, falling under a "revisionist/social commentary" kind of banner; it has a decently creepy atmosphere, imagery, and an adequate plot, though the gravity-defying rainbow hair and bizarre hip-hop-like music makes this an eccentric title. The writing can be fairly condescending with its depiction of ruralites and villagers: there's a cosmopolitan smugness expressed throughout, with the pink-haired girl, who only cares about cute boys in the city and being an idol, being the best representation of the contempt for the countryside. There's not much presented here that would make anyone yearn for a life ... outside of the city.

For the relatively long running length of 22 episodes, it takes most of the protagonists a ridiculously long time to figure out what's really going on, as villagers are picked off one by one by a clan of vampires. Eventually, the humans fight back, and the prey becomes the predator, but it feels like these people are blind or oblivious for nearly the whole runtime, which becomes exasperating. Emphasis should be placed on the prey becoming the predator, or even the prey and predator being one and the same when boiled down to their essence, which is partially the message found in the monk's pretentious Cain and Abel-inspired story; this is reflective of a trend in horror fiction to humanize the monsters while also relying on gray areas of morality for the sake of social commentary about humanity. The show starts by depicting the shiki as being ghoulish in some early nighttime scenes, but, by the end, the villagers are portrayed in just as ghoulish of a light, if not greater.

Fans seem to relish this aspect, but the humans, while maybe becoming a bit more cruel and spiteful than is necessary when confronting the shiki at times—probably best emphasized by the segment where the villagers leave the shiki to a slow death, but one human delivers mercy killings, as well as the infamous tractor scene, or the murder of humans assumed to be in league with the Shiki—are acting in their own best interest for survival.

The shiki brought the situation upon themselves by terrorizing the once idyllic village. Due to the shiki's bloodlust, the villagers were left to watch their friends and family wither away and die. And among the villagers who die, some come back as shiki and are manipulated or groomed by the veteran shiki in preying on their remaining loved ones in a vicious cycle. Tatsumi, one of the higher-ranking shiki, is particularly sadistic in how he directs these newly recruited companions to prey on former family and friends. The shiki's intentions appear to be the death and/or conversion of all humans in the village. There are no benign alternatives conceived of amongst their ranks. One human appears to be an exception here, and the shiki seem to view him as a potential human ally, in what represents the standard symbiotic relationship often found in horror films, such as vampires having a werewolf or human who protects them during the day or carries out tasks that only they can perform.

Throughout the series, it's shown that the shiki can easily blend in with humans, other than their aversion to sunlight. They open stores in the village, have a city unit of shiki engaging in similar ways, own a moving company, and they can afford to purchase the obviously expensive and out-of-place European castle on the outskirts of the village, so they clearly have shiki-specific infrastructure in place, are well organized, and possess a lot of money.

Cows are featured prominently as livestock to emphasize that what the shiki are doing to the humans is similar to what humans are doing to other animals. Humans survive by devouring animals, but shiki only need the blood of humans to survive, meaning killing is not necessary for the latter. The Kirishiki family is shown consuming blood from wine glasses, an important story arc has one character trying to convince a shiki who was once his friend to coexist with humans and not kill them, and there is only one other subplot that features a shiki making an effort to survive on blood without killing. Couldn't they conceivably purchase human blood (whether non-human blood is viable or not is never addressed) and forego preying on humans altogether? This is never explored at all. In fact, the shiki seldom explain anything that they do, so one must question if their leader, a pseud 900-year-old goth loli vampire, ever had any plans at all.

But on some level, I accept the argument that what humans do to cows is no different than what the shiki are doing to the humans. One can even argue that humans don't require meat to survive either. We can become vegetarians. However, humans enjoy the taste of meat, and a balanced diet with meat, fish, etc., is nutritionally superior to vegetarianism. We also harvest the bodies of animals for many items we create.

However, the series makes it clear that the shiki are trying to survive and flourish. Similarly, shiki need more than just blood, because they cannot replicate themselves through DNA but have to instead convert humans into shiki. If we consider the instinct to reproduce in some form an imperative for all lifeforms, then how can the shiki really be blamed, for it appears to be a biological necessity for the shiki? They do what they must to survive and to "reproduce," yet it necessitates antagonism between humans and shiki. The shiki use every part of humans, not just blood; just as the humans use every part of cows.

While I think we may as well limit suffering, it's a natural part of life. We only make ourselves weaker by creating an ideology centered around removing suffering altogether. A utopian example of this ideology is actually the idea of the humans and shiki co-existing, which strikes me as the end goal of the tedious moralizing the series engages in. "Extreme" attempts at removing suffering tend to result in much more suffering overall. In theory, the two could co-exist. Humans and shiki could live amongst each other, without it being an arrangement similar to the predator-prey relationship of the Eloi and Morlocks of H.G. Wells Time Machine. With a sufficiently small number of shiki, humans could donate enough blood to sustain them. Too many shiki would necessitate suffering and death for the humans, but they could also have controlled replication. Some humans would obviously like the chance of becoming immortal, like the shiki, rather than dying, so there could be a quota system to prevent their death and bolster the population of the shiki. Surveillance technology could enforce this system even better. This is an arrangement that works well in theory, and you could probably make a simulation of this in a video game and perfectly micromanage a win-win outcome. Nonetheless, reality is messy, and humans and shiki are naturally at odds with one another. It's unlikely that you could stop the two from feuding or prevent the shiki from manipulating the humans along the way of completing this grand utopia that will never be. It would also inject many problems into society, with elites controlling the shiki's "immortalization" process.

Just as wolves are predators and sheep are prey, we have a similar relationship with our livestock. The shiki are a natural predator of humans. Is it really immoral for predators to hunt prey as food? Certainly no one would consider a non-human animal consuming another animal as immoral. It only becomes a topic of morality for humans because of their sentience and insecurities. Due to our ingenuity and problem solving, many will debate that having alternatives makes this process inhumane and morally objectionable. Of course, for a coherent worldview, one must realize that morality is a subjective construct to enforce order; individuals have a personal morality that interacts with a consensus morality of said society, and that consensus morality is enforced by violence. a society has to have some kind of morality to function and sustain itself, and morality should be beneficial. Yet the morality on display in Shiki is often framed in a way that is injurious to the humans, and the authors are saying it is a good thing, often resorting to injecting manipulative evil bastardisms into their writing.

The killing of humans by other humans without a justified cause would almost universally be seen as immoral by the standards of today. Could the same be said of relations between shiki and humans? Certainly there are many similarities between shiki and humans, but is an equivalence in intelligence and other criteria more important than the nature of being predator and prey, when it comes to evaluating whether or not something is moral? The shiki may have once been human, but they must be regarded as a completely different species, and something altogether different than even denisovans or neanderthals, which are other species humans mated with in the distant past. My assumption is that shiki are probably parasites that can "resurrect" a recently dead host, harnessing their memories. Just because the shiki possess the dead human's memories does not mean they are one and the same.

Essentially, the shiki are in direct opposition to humans. Both are engaged in competition for resources as various creatures would be in an ecosystem, while also engaging in a predator-prey relationship, eventually resulting in a predator-prey reversal as the humans gain the upper hand. The shiki, as the minority, must always be fearful of the human majority exterminating them, and the humans must always be fearful of the shiki surreptitiously parasitizing them and taking over their society, as can be seen when the shiki replace the entirety of the local government, with aims of taking over the village.

The focus on morality that the show has, where they went to great lengths to make the humans seem wicked or "just as bad" was insipid and cheap. In many cases I'd say the humans are portrayed by the writers as far less sympathetic than the shiki, the true aggressors here. I'd rather have been spared the moralizing tone and the pathologizing of the villagers. Both the humans and the shiki can be "humanized" in their own right with a recognition of them being competing entities, concerned first and foremost with their own survival and growth in numbers. You can portray a person doing something one might find objectionable without giving them evil-looking expressions set to sinister music, which this show was often guilty of in the second half.

One point that will sometimes be made is that Ozaki, who led the bloody campaign against the shiki was too brutal. Yes, they would have been obligated to kill many of the aggressive shiki, but they could have imprisoned some of them or brought in the government to contain them in some way. Even the shiki couple who decided to stop preying on humans, unconscious in their cell, were killed by the humans. Amusingly, characteristic of this show's try-hard brand of trashy social commentary, Ozaki even says something like, "We need to clean this up," indicating the bloodshed needed to be concealed from any outsiders or non-local government. Not only do people conflate what happened to actual genocides, but the writers seem to be suggesting as much. Sure, they didn't have to kill all of them, but shiki, who have an overwhelming desire for blood and can pretend they're humans, are extremely dangerous, and eradicating them altogether would be for the best. All it takes is one shiki to deceive the humans, convert more humans into shiki, and have the same incident all over again. They could quickly take over entire cities.

I realize people want to make these kind of productions into metaphors about the human condition and humans massacring or genociding other humans for social commentary and moral preening, but the shiki are undead. They shouldn't even exist in the first place, not to mention all of the other points that make them an enemy of humanity.

I never questioned "who the true monsters were." I always sided with the humans, though I often had sympathy for the shiki, given that they were forced to become shiki without any regard for their own wishes and were manipulated, not only by their newfound hunger, but by the shiki leaders. From the perspective of the humans, I see the shiki as something to be exterminated for the benefit of humanity, as we usually view vampires in fiction, but I can also respect that the shiki are acting to benefit their own group, though it goes against human interests.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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