As far as the story is concerned, it's phenomenal. Sure, it starts off slow for the first 5 episodes, but that's because those are the introductory episodes. They introduce you to the many characters that populate the isolated village of Sotobamura, introduce the village itself as a character of sorts, and then introduce the main plot to you. After the 5th episode, the story kicks into high gear and never lets you get off until its over. By the end of it, the story will have you asking yourself a simple question: Who are the real monsters?
The art is also extremely appropriate for this horror/mystery series. The art is dark and dreary, but colorful when it needs to be. The characters are drawn with anime hair syndrome, but it does add character to them, makes them stand out from one another. On the other hand, the characters are all like sticks. Tall, lean, anorexic to a point, and every female character(Well, almost everyone) has fairly large breasts. The gore level is also to not be taken lightly. While it will be fairly rare to see guts or anything, decomposing flesh is a constant, and the dissolving flesh of vampires that get caught in daylight is particularly gruesome.
The music is quite fitting, with most tracks featuring gregorian chants as well as an organ. The music tells of death, sadness, loneliness, hopelessness, and heartbreak. All wrapped up in a neat bundle. I can't tell you how many times I've put the soundtrack on repeat, just listening to it as inspiration for my own stories. To go along with the art, story, and music, the sound effects are also quite fitting. Most of it is constant ambient sounds that are common from one end of the village to the other. Then their are the more common sounds that are standard fair for an anime series such as footsteps, crunching grass, cars, etc.
Going in with sound, there is the English Dub. Funimation managed to obtain the rights to Shiki, and I am very grateful for that. Funimation put their dub pedigree to very good use with this series. No character seems wrongfully cast and each character displays the necessary range of emotions at the proper times. There weren't really any cases of generally bad acting so I really don't see anything wrong at all with this dub. I strongly recommend that if you're not fond of reading, the dub is definitely worthy of a look.
Characters are abundant in this series, and quite frankly, it helps a lot. A majority of the characters present in the series are background characters. And as background characters in a horror story, many of them are picked off one by one as the story progresses. But we're not talking a handful of characters. Oh no, we're talking about an entire village worth of background characters. Some of them return later in the series, but most are never seen again. So unless it's a main character, I'd recommend not getting particularly attached to any one character, otherwise you will most likely suffer heartbreak.
Overall, I found this series to be a masterpiece, worthy of multiple viewings. I found next to nothing wrong with it, and so can highly recommend this series to anyone who is interested in it. Just give it 5 to 6 episodes and you should be hooked. It needs time to rev its engine, but once it starts moving, for the love of god fasten your seat belt.
