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Not a bad read, but, at least in my eyes, with a somewhat disappointing end.
Bastards main strength lies in the protagonists father. The Serial killer. You can very much relate to jin, his son, and the terror he feels towards his father. Not because of the gruesome murders, but because of the mental abuse. Dongsoo (the father) is an intelligent, cruel, manipulative monster that drives his victims insane. He keeps his son as a pet to assist him in his murders and uses his role as a father to lure in new victims and appear innocent to the public. He enjoys the security his approach ... has given him, as well as the power he holds over his son. When Jin (his son) now starts to rebel against him his father begins a cruel game.
This is what gave the manga strength. This was done very, very well. Sadly in the end it seems the author could not find a way to lead this to a fitting conclusion. Instead he (or she?) decided to go with a character twisting final reveal that seemed to be more shocker than actual substance. This broke the dynamic that worked so well for this story.
In the end this is an entertaining read that works based on the described relationship and the thrill it creates, sadly this is done at times with somewhat silly story developments. This would have been forgivable if the ending had landed, but sadly this was not the case.
So final verdict: a fun read, with hints of greatness, and sadly nothing more.

Very strong series with a number of flaws.
I understand how this series seems to get mostly very low or very high ratings, it's a mixed bag of outstanding and very weak moments. I guess in the end it boils down to you buying into the characters and the atmosphere or not.

Weirdly enough i can understand people who would say the characters in this were one of the series weak points, although i would strongly disagree.
Shiki is very upfront with it's characters, in most cases you don't really get many scenes the deepen the characters personality or background, however -oddly enough- that was not a ... bad thing here. Characters in Shiki are not idealized like in most movies/shows, they are rather realistic. They act selfish, stupid, pathetic, and sometimes noble and good. They don't just fit one role or stereotyp. For me this made them very relatable. In Shiki i found myself relating to characters that i actually hated, which is always a sign of greatness.

This is so refreshing and great about the whole series. Nothing is really forced upon you. The show does not literally tell you how to feel at any given moment. The scenes are not just there to triggere a clear cut reaction in you, like it is the case with most shows. Sometimes the scenes are just weird and seem out of place. As a result you feel like you actually are watching something real happening, which drives home the cruelty and drama that much more. And even that is not overdone to a degree that makes it all absurd.

Shiki seemed to be something very simple. A very simple story from which i did not expect much. But it was much more authentic than that. It had life to it and i enjoyed every minute watching.

The interesting thing about this finale is that the main character actually fails in reaching his desired goal.
Interesting as well is that they don't make a big deal out of that. It is treated as something normal.
Now this is both positive and negative as well.
On one side oregairus long build up on the question "what does a genuin relationship between the 3 main characters look like?" gets a rather disappointing answer. It is not as unique as one might have hoped for. It is the most expected outcome for the series.
On the other side this is a rather realistic ending, and they don't try ... to really hide the fact that the 3 of them could not escape the expected norm. When the main character is asked in the end if he has found his genuin thing he has to answer "i don't know". And i like that. In a weird way the series ended in the most simple disappointing way possible while making a statement about even the simplest things being more complex than one might expect, and that is quite powerful.
So in an unexpected way the ending that was expected. A great finish for an even better series.

It's hard to review this one fairly.
It's a pure drama series, provocative, over the top, sometimes brutal. This is why you will build up a lot of resistance towards it. However even though the character interactions often feel forced and over the top (everybody sleeps with everybody else and everybody is hurt), as is typical for drama shows, the series can't be called bad.
Actually the drama in this show is often times reflected very intelligently. The topic of the teenager desperatly trying to find a place in a world that turned out to be far more cruel than ever expected is realized well in ... this anime.

It's hard to rate this show.
It is intelligent and self aware.
However it overtunes everything like any cheap drama show and this almost makes me hate it.

All in all: If some brutal, provocative drama is what you are looking for, watch this one, at least it is smart with the way it uses drama.
If this is not your genre, this anime wont do anything good for you.

This is one of those animes that you just have to rate very positively. Not because they are the greatest that have ever been, but because they had the courage to do something different. In an ocean of generic, overused and copied animes who are all variations of the same story, Inuyashiki did something different, and it did it well.
Yes the last episode felt extremely rushed, yes the 3d / 2.5d art-style of the action scenes was nothing impressive, but with the characters of the hero and the villain of the story Inuyashiki did something outstanding.
An old man, disappointed in himself and his life, ... a young student who is a textbook psychopath, both of them attain insane power at random.
The villain uses this power to explore his emotions, kills people to see how it makes him feel until events get to close to him... Even though he is clearly designed as a character that has little connection to human emotions, or society, you clearly understand what he is doing. Even in his most vile moments you still feel him. This is rare. The fact alone that he is relatable even though he is not a bad representation about a psychopath deserves praise.
The hero on the other hand uses his power to help people, to make up for his short comings. Without searching for attention he just wants to truly help people. He is a beautiful contrast to his younger counter part. Still, in the end of the story they find themselves in the same place, for similar reasons. This final episode feels very rushed, yet it still delivers.
Watch it.
Among all those stories you already know, among all these characters and ideas that are used for cheap emotions and reactions, this is something original.
It deserves your support.

A series with a lot of potential that sadly uses very little of it.
The idea is interesting, somebody who is struggling in life gets the chance to relive a certain period of it. There are a lot of interesting scenarios within this story line, sadly none of them are explored at all. The main story holds no relevance to the series and could be extracted from it without anything feeling off.
The idea of the show is to resocialize somebody who has shut himself of from society by letting him relive his youth. Oddly the main character doesn't really need to be socialized. His ... personality is warm and accepting from episode one. All the man needs is a job and some trauma-therapy. There is no real character development going on here as there is little progress for the main character to be made.
That aside the story still might be interesting if you'd properly explore how an 27 year old man might feel skipping backwards in time, how a grownup interacts with the values and problems of teenagers, sadly this potential is left untouched. The main character does not come across as an adult who went through very depressing periods in his life. Instead he feels like a teenager himself, getting embarrassed over banal things, overly focused on group-interactions, accepting the authority of teachers over him (having him drop smoking, as they think of him as a teenager).... There is no conflict caused by his mental age in this new situation and there are very few moments where he seems somewhat mature. These moments are the better parts of the series, very sad to see that this was not integrated in the story.
All in all this series has some loveable characters going through minor problems of growing up, everything else is an unused extra which leaves much to be desired. Sad to see an interesting idea falling flat on it's face. Watchable but nothing more.