Reviews

Based off the light novel written by Fuyumi Ono in 1998. Shiki is not your typical vampire themes, it is a rare breed of an anime. If we discuss vampire in anime, many words that come out. The phrases that often comes out are romance (Rosario to Vampire etc), and action (Hellsing and Trinity Blood) Many vampire anime got mixed up by those set-up while Shiki did a different thing than the others. Shiki throws tons of mystery to the plot, the story itself is more focused to the plot and fewer fillers. The story set-up in Sotoba. A village with large numbers of mysterious deaths that never happen before. The villagers didn't know what threat that will come to haunt them.

Another interesting from this story are they take a different viewpoint of the storyline. It's just so rare to found an anime that does that in the right place.The story has 3 leading roles, with a different point of view. While the pacing is different, The story goes with medium-slow pace, while the individual elements of mystery discovered one by one. Shiki has a little dull feeling in the early episode , but as the story evolves with mysteries & excitement in the air. My eyes just ask more, and more. The enjoyment shines in the finale. In just the end of 10 seconds of this anime, I saw a cyclone right in front of my eye.

I know that many viewers dislike the art of this anime. It's similar with 90's anime.
But, if you looked deeply, the art really represents the feeling of the story itself. The animation is done well, it represents fear and darkness in the night, and bring bright feeling when the morning in the story comes.

The sound settings are one of the most brilliant ideas. I'm not talking about quality, I'm talking about how much darkness feeling that spit out from the opening theme. While the ending was decent. The seiyuu did well in bringing such characters to the screen.

With millions of peoples within Shiki, it's really dangerous for the balance of the story. While other people think Shiki need do more development in their character, and they do have.. But, if we think logically, "How can we make a deep character in just 22 episodes, while the cast is crowded?'', even the best writer will be confused with this kind of question. But Shiki answers that ''We just need the major development in the essential characters, and throw a proper role to the rest...". The characters had their own proper roles, it's not perfect but it's enough to balance the story up.

And that's all about Shiki, a rare breed vampire theme. The anime do more to the plot although have some lack of points in the characterization, but it's worth to watch. If you seek a deep character, you won't get a bonus. But, if you interested to see a serious plot with a real vampire in the anime form, then the anime is for you.