| It's been like ten years since I watched this, but I don't really think there is much dilemma here. Humans had all the right to be opposed to being killed and turned. Wether it was necessary for Shiki to kill humans or not is irrelevant. Though I found it unnerving how humans were kinda joyful while commuting their little genocide on Shiki while chanting, singing and cheering. And what would happen is probably the same thing they did many times before. They would just move somewhere else. |
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| I share your interpretation of this anime. Shiki are truly fascinating villains. |
| その目だれの目？ |
| I re-watched Shiki several months ago during 2024 and I also want to preface this with Shiki being an anime I have a long history with; Shiki being an anime that I have probably re-watched the most (second to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) and gaining a different opinion on it every re-watch I have done with this show, but I feel by now I have a pretty good grasp on my thoughts of the show at this point. This is not to say my opinion/take is the ultimate correct one; I just really like this show then I saw this discussion and decided to throw my hat in the ring because I love talking about it! ***MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE ENTIRE ANIME AS WELL AS THE OVA EPISODES, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED*** Despite not having a lot of screen time during the first half of the show, Sunako is the perpetrator behind this entire scheme. Due to it having been a good several months since my last review of the show, I can not exactly remember how the show initially puts her role, but Sunako is the oldest of the Kirishiki "family" despite appearing as a child (she died quite a long time ago before we're introduced to the Kirishiki's, at least 100 years ago if not more) and has quite the solid iron grip on the family. Chizuru, the elder feminine figure we would assume to be the matriarch of the family, is actually described to us more as the "daughter to Sunako". Sunako's experience living as a shiki/vampire has brought her to the conclusion that she needs a base of operations and as we are shown throughout the show's runtime she has adopted a very ruthless ideology for turning the entire town to achieve her shiki/vampire utopia. It is Sunako's ruthless pursuit of such a utopia that forces the turned villagers to kill and transform the entire village. I believe (if I am incorrect then disregard this, I am currently running off of my memory while typing this) there is a scene where Tohru makes a plea toward Sunako as to why they must kill and turn the entire village and he is answered in threats. Should the newly risen Shiki fail to follow Sunako's rules and will, there are certain consequences (whether that be immediate death, starvation, torture or etc. I am not really sure if the anime ever truly clarifies that) that follow. This is at least how I interpreted it. Sunako's naivete largely comes from the fact that she died a child. Despite having lived for 100+ years following her transformation into a shiki/vampire, Sunako never grew up. She never moved past that "childhood naivety" that every human being goes through. Her wordly experience is through the eyes of a child vampire. She has had to fight to survive as a vampire her entire undeath and never learned the wisdom of life as a regular human being. This is the tragedy but also means for her ending up in her delusional ideology that causes the entire issue in Sotoba. She is a cynical child, she has lost the ability to feel empathy for the living people due to living as a monster, and whether she wants to admit it or not she is horrifically jealous of the life ripped away from her. In my opinion even if Sunako had managed to turn the entire secluded village of Sotoba into shiki/vampires, her base would have been discovered eventually, as Sunako seems to be incapable of thinking about human emotion and reactions to her actions. Perhaps we as the viewers are meant to interpret the ending where she is successfully rescued and evacuated from the burning Sotoba that her subsequent time with Muroi could help her learn such feelings and they'll learn to coexist with the living; however, as that follows the ending of the show and there has been no follow-up since the initial release that is up to the individual. I can see where the empathy for certain shiki/turned villagers comes from, Tohru was likely gaslit into his beliefs that led him to commit such atrocities and it was only by the end of the show when he accepted death alongside Ritsuko that he realized how far gone he had become as well as the horrid gravity of his choices were, despite whatever manipulation he had gone through may have excused him of responsibility for a time (if at all). There's also Nao to consider, a woman who's immense bottomless void of guilt from being the one who annihilated her entire family single-handedly led her to insanity. However, with this being said, these two faced proper repercussions for their unforgiveable acts. While we can feel empathy for the characters in those moments, they still made the decision to kill. Ritsuko was the only shiki that realized she had the option of choice, a choice of mercy, and was better off mentally for that when she inevitably dies. My main takeaway of the show's message is that people will do monstrous things in order to survive. A Primal fear of death is present within a large portion of the show's cast and it's not only the shiki that commit atrocities in order to live. Dr. Ozaki performed such an act and a good portion of the villagers abandoned their humanity in pursuit of the shiki as well. A lot of the characters in this show are monsters regardless of what they appear as physically. Both the shiki and the live humans ended up monsters by the end. Regardless if anyone has any thoughts to add or continue this discussion I would love to hear them! I love seeing discussions like this pop up from time to time and I love that I can still talk about this show ten years after I originally watched it! |
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