Category: Shiki

This show just continues to up the body count here. We’ve really reached a point in which nobody is safe. But with this episode, it feels like the prelude is finally over, in the way that Natsuno is actively getting involved with the plot.

I’m not exactly sure what was up with that dream. So far, most of the events here could be explained through this vampire attacks, but with Toru in Natsuno’s dream things are a bit different. Somehow, a vampire attacked Toru somewhere, but not on the place we saw Megumi bite him (bite-marks were missing). So either Natsuno can somehow dream about things that happen around him, or the vampires are able to transmit their actions into other people’s dreams. The latter would be quite an annoying restriction.

Either way, Toru died. The strangest thing about this episode was what happened afterwards though, when the series suddenly decided to focus on Masao. And really, it did what it was supposed to do, and Masao became a lot more interesting to watch, because his character was just so goddamn flawed. He feels more out of place amongst his environment than Megumi did because somehow, he really doesn’t know how to be polite to people, even when someone close to him died. I actually thought that the creators would continue his plot a bit further… and then he died too. He’ll probably also be turned into a vampire, but we’re still not exactly sure what that means. I can imagine his vampire character to just be insane though.

What amuses me is that the town doctor… travels by bike. You’d expect in a village like this, that everyone would have the possession of a car and yet he chooses to just use a bike. Can’t he save at least minutes if he got himself a car? In a situation between life and death, it could make a huge difference. I’m also interested in how, even though the town is full of old people, you hardly see any of them using the local bus (which Natsuno strangely does use. In order to get to school or something? Then how do the other teenagers in the village travel?). This episode also shows a businessman and businesswoman making use of it. You’d expect them to have cars as well…
Rating: ** (Excellent)

You can see that this series is using most of its time to build up at this point, but it still has quite an excellent atmosphere. The horror is already quite good, and even though this seemingly wasn’t a major episode at first sight, the episode did end with one heck of a cliff-hanger.

At this point, I think it’s clear now that we’re dealing with Vampires here, and they seem to be more similar to the classic vampires compared to what vampires have evolved into in modern pop culture. It’s true that we’ve seen none of the potential vampires appear at daylight, right? The older stories about vampires have also talked about how Vampires first need to get invited, before they can claim their victim. This is why they’ve tried to get friendly with everyone here.

Natsuno’s delusions are something I haven’t figured out yet. If the OP hints at anything, this show seems to be developing its own army of dead people turned into vampires, but I’m not yet sure whether the end of this episode actually happened, or whether this stayed in Natsuno’s head. We know that that cat guy is trying to get into Toru’s house, but why he decided to bring Megumi along is a bit of a mystery to me.

In the meantime, the animators. I can understand that they can’t make all of the drawings as detailed as in the manga, but you can see that they’re having fun with the visuals here. Like the church scene for example, that looked really good, but the visual effects they pulled on the climax of this episode also looked quite interesting here.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

A lot of building up was done in this episode, but it still had an excellent atmosphere. And I must say, for a studio like Daume, the art has really turned out to be quite beautiful here. The shots that use CG or strange filters are really well composed here. Character-designs like these are definitely a risk that was taken here, but it works out quite well.

The drama in this episode was a bit less due to the inclusion of some random emo teenager (or at least, that’s what he looked like). At this point, this guy is still a bit too extreme to be taken seriously, but I wonder what his purpose will be for the rest of the series. In any case this episode did a pretty good job of showing a bit of the every day lives of these people, and how they met each other, and I can very much see an extreme character like him pay off in the end. I can see that the creators were going for a bratty teenager here, so I’ll wait to see them show different sides of this kid.

Especially Natsuno showed a bit of a different side of him here. He was indifferent here, but now that he wasn’t bothered by some teen-aged girl here, he didn’t have this air of annoyance around him. His new friend also helped here, I guess.

This episode also was very much hinting at which characters we should watch out for. We finally get a good look at the owners of the castle, along what is possibly their daughter. The latter is so obviously featured in the OP and ED that she has to play a huge role here, and this episode pretty much set her up as a future antagonist. Also, the cat dude also seems to hold some secrets.

In any case, I love how the creators have been trying to include as many inhabitants of the village as possible, while giving EVERYONE distinct character-designs. Even all of the minor characters look unique, and are portrayed as people, rather than cardboard cut-outs (aside from a few old people in those rumour-scenes, I guess).
Rating: * (Good)

First, let me put up this disclaimer: this blog will discuss Shiki the anime, not the manga or novel. If you want to talk about stuff that happens there, then go to some website that discusses spoiler material. I’m usually very lenient on comment moderation, but I will get poisonous and delete comments that discuss spoilers.

The only thing I want to know here is the following: Shiki is an adaptation of a manga that is an adaptation of a novel, right? Wouldn’t it have been better if this series would have directly adapted the novel, rather than going for a strange double adaptation?

Either way, this is one of those rare second episodes that actually surpasses the first episode for me, even after an already favourable first impression. The direction was excellent here, the acting was very believable and the animation had quite a few interesting cuts and angles. We’re really in for an awesome series if this keeps up.

Having grown up in a small village, even smaller than the village that is portrayed here, I can somewhat understand the feelings of Natsuno feeling cramped up. It really is a village in which everyone knows each other, and there is hardly anything to do, other than to sit inside. I like how the creators portrayed the village, and actually put a lot of attention in making the bird’s eye view connect with what happened in the series. The strange thing about this village is how many doctors there are. I mean, in an entire village that’s loaded with old people, one out of every 216 people is a medical staff.

I’ve also gotten used to the character designs y now. They’re a bit weird, but definitely original. Especially the older people look great here. Daume… turned out to deliver a surprisingly solid series, considering that they only did silly moe shows up till now. It’s actually great to see that Noitamina allows all kinds of animation companies to produce a series for its timeslot, and it’ll be interesting if Daume made more of these serious series in the future, in other time-slots.

Interestingly, the series s taking the approach of a bit of a medical thriller: some kind of disease is causing problems (probably having something to do with that castle that was built). In the first episode, it still seemed a bit too similar to Higurashi and Ghost Hound, but with this episode it really set itself apart.
Rating: ** (Excellent)