Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2014 3:44:04 GMT
So I decided to write a review because I want to draw attention to this series, and I also haven't done a review in a while.
... More Terrestia is coming soon, I promise, but chapters are going to be longer and slightly harder to write from now on because the story structure is going to change slightly.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
Shiki.
Synopsis
In Japan there is a rural village called Sotoba that is very secluded from the outside world. Its population is small and as such it is a place where everyone knows everyone, it sticks to traditions and it exists peacefully.
However one day, not long after a new family from outside move into a house named Kanemasa, a large mansion overlooking the town from atop a hill, villagers start dying from an unknown epidemic, falling ill and dying only a few days later.
To the audience, though not necessarily all of the characters, however, it becomes apparent that the true cause of the deaths is not a disease, but creatures known as 'Shiki' translated literally as 'corpse demon' who are a cross between zombies and classic vampires.
And so begins the horror/mystery series that isn't really that scary or mysterious all things considered, but it's up there with its intensity, themes, characters, pacing, and its overall ability to absorb you into watching many episodes in one sitting.
From what I've seen, this is not a show that people have had weak feelings about. There's not much to understand, but once you do, this is a series that you'll absolutely adore or dislike a fair bit. I for one really like it, and unless there's an anime I'm forgetting I'd say that it was best anime of its release year, 2010. I wont purposefully spoil the rest of the anime but if you are the least bit intrigued, go watch it now with my recommendation. If you don't care, you want more detail, or you've already seen it, then by all means move on to the rest of the review.
Characters
Looking back I didn't like my old format so I decided that instead of talking about the characters in the broad sense, I would instead talk about each of them individually. Unfortunately this may have been a bad anime to pick for the first time trying this because the cast in Shiki is huge, and they all have varying degrees of importance, though all are interesting and necessary. I'll get to as many as I can though.
Natsuno Yuuki: Natsuno appears to be the main character at first glance, in fact the image I linked to is actually the box art image for the DVD set I brought. Natsuno himself is a teenage boy who moved into Sotoba a few months prior to the story, and at first he appears to be a rather cold idiot, as the first episode is viewed from the perspective of a different character. While it is true that he is mostly rude to most, he latches onto the few friends he does make and he remains one of the most rational characters throughout the series. I really liked his character, mostly because he stuck out from a lot of the other villagers who appear asinine by design, but it becomes apparent that he is one of the most genuine 'tsundere' characters in anime. And by genuine, I mean that while he does secretly have a soft heart, his cold exterior is not just an act, either, and he gets across a lot of the best drama in the first half of the show.
Unfortunately, during the second half of the series is role gets severely reduced, to the point where I wouldn't even call him a side character. This is unfortunate as during this time he is still around an active, he's just off screen filling in ambiguous plot holes. The moment where this happens is fairly obvious, and his situation is one of the most unique in the series both in his physical position and his outlook, playing more neutral as the rest of the characters are busy taking one of two sides. I found out that this was because, unfortunately, in the original novel he had absolutely no half during the second half of the story. It makes sense that he was a manga and anime addition, but it makes one of the major problems with the characters, and the series, apparent. Natsuno is the perfect example of this.
My major problem with the series is that despite resting at a meaty 24 episodes, there could have been a lot more in all honesty. I wanted to see a lot more. The cast is huge, but all of them are interesting and for large portions of the story they are absent in favor of focusing on other characters. While I am glad that they didn't try to cram every character into every episode, as that would have murdered the show's wonderful pacing, it did make it disappointing to discover that some seemingly important characters had done really important and interesting things off screen when I would have liked to see some of it. In some cases, even an extra five minutes would have been sufficient. I think there is enough content here for 30 episodes. As a matter of fact, the original airing length sat at 22 episodes. The DVD added episodes 20.5 and 21.5 but 20.5 is a conclusion to one character's arc and 21.5 introduces someone new who exists only for that episodes, so they don't help somewhat. In fact 21.5 was probably the weakest episode overall, breaking the tension between 21 and 22. I'd say skip it and leave it for last, but unfortunately it explains one crucial plot point that would otherwise come off as a cheap deus ex machina.
Toshio Ozaki Ozaki is the local doctor who runs the only clinic in the village, and as such is the one of the first to go poking around the causes of deaths, as it's kind of his job. In a way, Toshio is the true main character as he ends up being the character with the most screen time, and certainly the most consistent screen time. Toshio is also very likable up to a point, who is very sympathetic and witty. He even ends up pulling serious mind games with a sprinkling of major moral ambiguity towards the end of the series, really upping his complexity and his awesomeness levels. Toshio is really the only character who comes close to perfect when all is said and done, although oddly he doesn't have quite as much prominence as I was expecting him to have in the last two episodes. It's also possible that some people will hate him after a certain point, but then again each of the characters in this show have the capacity to be either the best or worst anime characters ever based on the viewer's subjective opinions. I pretty much love all of them, however.
Seishin Muroi Seishin is a monk at the local temple who is also a close childhood friend of Toshio's, he also fancies himself a novelist. He meets a young girl early on named Sunako, who is a fan of his work. I wont say too much about Sunako, except that it's fairly obvious that she is a shiki if you look at her. It's the eyes, those things are creepy. Seishin seems to be the closest thing to an author surrogate character, despite the fact that in many ways he stands in direct opposition to Toshio. One of the great things about a series like this however is that while he is the closest to becoming a self insert for the author, he is not particularly Mary Sue either, and more importantly other characters present views that I would assume the author thinks is just as valid. I wouldn't know however, I haven't met her. Speaking of the author, this is the author of the original novel not the manga or anime, she is actually the wife of the man who wrote 'Another.' (I think she did a better job than him, at least judging purely by these two series since they have both written a lot, but *shrug*)
In any case, he serves as one of the few neutral characters throughout the series as it becomes more and more apparent that the Shiki's may not be completely evil entities. His last lines in episode 22 really hit me despite how obvious it should seem to someone of my disposition, and it makes him one of the more compelling characters.
So ultimately those three are the most important characters in the series(?), excluding a handful of the Shiki and a large amount of other characters. They're a cast of characters who made me think and emote weather they were alive or dead, in fact the Shiki themselves probably had some of the most heart wrenching stories that really made me cry in some places. Which does serve as a problem for some people, considering the Shiki are supposed to be the villains in all of this. Ultimately, the series serves as not only a fantastic horror story, but also a deconstruction of many horror tropes, and it is especially heavy handed when it comes to zombie movies, despite the fact that the Shiki themselves are also vampires as well as un-dead, serving as a nice fusion between the two classic monsters.
Animation and music
The series was animated by studio Daume, they seem to have been around for a while but they haven't animated any anime that I've ever heard of before, nor am I really interested by their other works. Even so Shiki was very well animated, of course character designs were taken from the manga as was the scenery I'd imagine but it's all very well detailed and the characters themselves also have a large amount of styles to them, usually done to make their wide variety of ages more apparent, with the old people looking more realistic while the younger characters have more memorable designs with huge eyes and great facial expressions. The Shiki themselves also look great, their eyes looking particularly glorious. There are also nice animation tricks such as when characters are thinking and things go fuzzy, and there are no instances of characters going chibi or yelling/fighting against moving white lines. The small amount of action in the show uses the same style as the slower paced parts, and it looks great. The animation never shies away from showing any gore when it needs to, and when it is shown it is always there to serve a purpose. I've also seen shows with much more graphic scenes, see Mnemosyne. Scenes in Shiki can be much more intense, though, despite the fact that they have less visual gore. There's a reason that Shiki is only a 15.
I also didn't really see any fan service, there were a few moments where a woman's underwear was shown... for like a second or so. Mentioning this honestly feels like a waste of time, though it is always nice when a show doesn't rely on a 'sex sells' mentality.
The music was haunting and well done, though I can't really remember any tracks outside of the opening and ending themes, there being two openings and two endings, which were pretty damn good. I wouldn't call them selling points, although here is the first opening. I wouldn't recommend clicking onto youtube as there could be spoiler comments and recommended videos.
As for sub vs dub... I don't know, I only saw this dubbed. I really liked it, there were a lot of funimation regulars who did very well. My policy is that even if the sub is 'better' if the dub has no noticeable problems and really carries across the required amount of emotions, then I will still go for the dub because I can't really tell if the japanese voices are any better. I don't understand the language. *shrug*
Closing comments
So overall... I would highly recommend Shiki. It has good horror, and it provides a lot of food for thought. If vampires or zombies have become quite tiresome to you recently, what with the west's current obsession with them, then I would recommend this series even more, as in many respects it spits on the reason those forms of media are popular. Well, maybe not twilight, as Shiki isn't really a romance...
Wait, no! I so very nearly got through a review of something vampire related without mentioning twilight... NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
... More Terrestia is coming soon, I promise, but chapters are going to be longer and slightly harder to write from now on because the story structure is going to change slightly.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
Shiki.
Synopsis
In Japan there is a rural village called Sotoba that is very secluded from the outside world. Its population is small and as such it is a place where everyone knows everyone, it sticks to traditions and it exists peacefully.
However one day, not long after a new family from outside move into a house named Kanemasa, a large mansion overlooking the town from atop a hill, villagers start dying from an unknown epidemic, falling ill and dying only a few days later.
To the audience, though not necessarily all of the characters, however, it becomes apparent that the true cause of the deaths is not a disease, but creatures known as 'Shiki' translated literally as 'corpse demon' who are a cross between zombies and classic vampires.
And so begins the horror/mystery series that isn't really that scary or mysterious all things considered, but it's up there with its intensity, themes, characters, pacing, and its overall ability to absorb you into watching many episodes in one sitting.
From what I've seen, this is not a show that people have had weak feelings about. There's not much to understand, but once you do, this is a series that you'll absolutely adore or dislike a fair bit. I for one really like it, and unless there's an anime I'm forgetting I'd say that it was best anime of its release year, 2010. I wont purposefully spoil the rest of the anime but if you are the least bit intrigued, go watch it now with my recommendation. If you don't care, you want more detail, or you've already seen it, then by all means move on to the rest of the review.
Characters
Looking back I didn't like my old format so I decided that instead of talking about the characters in the broad sense, I would instead talk about each of them individually. Unfortunately this may have been a bad anime to pick for the first time trying this because the cast in Shiki is huge, and they all have varying degrees of importance, though all are interesting and necessary. I'll get to as many as I can though.
Natsuno Yuuki: Natsuno appears to be the main character at first glance, in fact the image I linked to is actually the box art image for the DVD set I brought. Natsuno himself is a teenage boy who moved into Sotoba a few months prior to the story, and at first he appears to be a rather cold idiot, as the first episode is viewed from the perspective of a different character. While it is true that he is mostly rude to most, he latches onto the few friends he does make and he remains one of the most rational characters throughout the series. I really liked his character, mostly because he stuck out from a lot of the other villagers who appear asinine by design, but it becomes apparent that he is one of the most genuine 'tsundere' characters in anime. And by genuine, I mean that while he does secretly have a soft heart, his cold exterior is not just an act, either, and he gets across a lot of the best drama in the first half of the show.
Unfortunately, during the second half of the series is role gets severely reduced, to the point where I wouldn't even call him a side character. This is unfortunate as during this time he is still around an active, he's just off screen filling in ambiguous plot holes. The moment where this happens is fairly obvious, and his situation is one of the most unique in the series both in his physical position and his outlook, playing more neutral as the rest of the characters are busy taking one of two sides. I found out that this was because, unfortunately, in the original novel he had absolutely no half during the second half of the story. It makes sense that he was a manga and anime addition, but it makes one of the major problems with the characters, and the series, apparent. Natsuno is the perfect example of this.
My major problem with the series is that despite resting at a meaty 24 episodes, there could have been a lot more in all honesty. I wanted to see a lot more. The cast is huge, but all of them are interesting and for large portions of the story they are absent in favor of focusing on other characters. While I am glad that they didn't try to cram every character into every episode, as that would have murdered the show's wonderful pacing, it did make it disappointing to discover that some seemingly important characters had done really important and interesting things off screen when I would have liked to see some of it. In some cases, even an extra five minutes would have been sufficient. I think there is enough content here for 30 episodes. As a matter of fact, the original airing length sat at 22 episodes. The DVD added episodes 20.5 and 21.5 but 20.5 is a conclusion to one character's arc and 21.5 introduces someone new who exists only for that episodes, so they don't help somewhat. In fact 21.5 was probably the weakest episode overall, breaking the tension between 21 and 22. I'd say skip it and leave it for last, but unfortunately it explains one crucial plot point that would otherwise come off as a cheap deus ex machina.
Toshio Ozaki Ozaki is the local doctor who runs the only clinic in the village, and as such is the one of the first to go poking around the causes of deaths, as it's kind of his job. In a way, Toshio is the true main character as he ends up being the character with the most screen time, and certainly the most consistent screen time. Toshio is also very likable up to a point, who is very sympathetic and witty. He even ends up pulling serious mind games with a sprinkling of major moral ambiguity towards the end of the series, really upping his complexity and his awesomeness levels. Toshio is really the only character who comes close to perfect when all is said and done, although oddly he doesn't have quite as much prominence as I was expecting him to have in the last two episodes. It's also possible that some people will hate him after a certain point, but then again each of the characters in this show have the capacity to be either the best or worst anime characters ever based on the viewer's subjective opinions. I pretty much love all of them, however.
Seishin Muroi Seishin is a monk at the local temple who is also a close childhood friend of Toshio's, he also fancies himself a novelist. He meets a young girl early on named Sunako, who is a fan of his work. I wont say too much about Sunako, except that it's fairly obvious that she is a shiki if you look at her. It's the eyes, those things are creepy. Seishin seems to be the closest thing to an author surrogate character, despite the fact that in many ways he stands in direct opposition to Toshio. One of the great things about a series like this however is that while he is the closest to becoming a self insert for the author, he is not particularly Mary Sue either, and more importantly other characters present views that I would assume the author thinks is just as valid. I wouldn't know however, I haven't met her. Speaking of the author, this is the author of the original novel not the manga or anime, she is actually the wife of the man who wrote 'Another.' (I think she did a better job than him, at least judging purely by these two series since they have both written a lot, but *shrug*)
In any case, he serves as one of the few neutral characters throughout the series as it becomes more and more apparent that the Shiki's may not be completely evil entities. His last lines in episode 22 really hit me despite how obvious it should seem to someone of my disposition, and it makes him one of the more compelling characters.
So ultimately those three are the most important characters in the series(?), excluding a handful of the Shiki and a large amount of other characters. They're a cast of characters who made me think and emote weather they were alive or dead, in fact the Shiki themselves probably had some of the most heart wrenching stories that really made me cry in some places. Which does serve as a problem for some people, considering the Shiki are supposed to be the villains in all of this. Ultimately, the series serves as not only a fantastic horror story, but also a deconstruction of many horror tropes, and it is especially heavy handed when it comes to zombie movies, despite the fact that the Shiki themselves are also vampires as well as un-dead, serving as a nice fusion between the two classic monsters.
Animation and music
The series was animated by studio Daume, they seem to have been around for a while but they haven't animated any anime that I've ever heard of before, nor am I really interested by their other works. Even so Shiki was very well animated, of course character designs were taken from the manga as was the scenery I'd imagine but it's all very well detailed and the characters themselves also have a large amount of styles to them, usually done to make their wide variety of ages more apparent, with the old people looking more realistic while the younger characters have more memorable designs with huge eyes and great facial expressions. The Shiki themselves also look great, their eyes looking particularly glorious. There are also nice animation tricks such as when characters are thinking and things go fuzzy, and there are no instances of characters going chibi or yelling/fighting against moving white lines. The small amount of action in the show uses the same style as the slower paced parts, and it looks great. The animation never shies away from showing any gore when it needs to, and when it is shown it is always there to serve a purpose. I've also seen shows with much more graphic scenes, see Mnemosyne. Scenes in Shiki can be much more intense, though, despite the fact that they have less visual gore. There's a reason that Shiki is only a 15.
I also didn't really see any fan service, there were a few moments where a woman's underwear was shown... for like a second or so. Mentioning this honestly feels like a waste of time, though it is always nice when a show doesn't rely on a 'sex sells' mentality.
The music was haunting and well done, though I can't really remember any tracks outside of the opening and ending themes, there being two openings and two endings, which were pretty damn good. I wouldn't call them selling points, although here is the first opening. I wouldn't recommend clicking onto youtube as there could be spoiler comments and recommended videos.
As for sub vs dub... I don't know, I only saw this dubbed. I really liked it, there were a lot of funimation regulars who did very well. My policy is that even if the sub is 'better' if the dub has no noticeable problems and really carries across the required amount of emotions, then I will still go for the dub because I can't really tell if the japanese voices are any better. I don't understand the language. *shrug*
Closing comments
So overall... I would highly recommend Shiki. It has good horror, and it provides a lot of food for thought. If vampires or zombies have become quite tiresome to you recently, what with the west's current obsession with them, then I would recommend this series even more, as in many respects it spits on the reason those forms of media are popular. Well, maybe not twilight, as Shiki isn't really a romance...
Wait, no! I so very nearly got through a review of something vampire related without mentioning twilight... NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!