Shiki is a psychological horror anime from Studio Daume , it is set in a small village Sotoba. The anime starts by introducing us to Megumi Shimizu , a young girl who wants to leave the village and make a career for herself in the big city. She is obsessed with Natsuno Yuuki , a guy who has recently moved to the village from a city, but Natsuno doesn't seem to care at all about Megumi.. The story starts with a family moving into a mansion close to the village. When Megumi learns that the family has moved in from the city , she cannot stop herself from meeting with them. A day after the meeting , she catches a high fever , and suddenly bizzare incidents start taking place in the village.
Before going any further , I want to warn everyone for spoilers , so if you have not watched Shiki , I highly recommend you to do so and also consider yourselves warned. For anyone who has watched it or doesn't care about spoilers , sit back and enjoy reading. So where were we , oh yeah , Megumi catches a high fever and then dies. And similarly a lot of people start catching fever and then ultimately dying. But , some of these people later on start rising from their graves in the form of Shiki (or vampires). The village doctor , Toshio Ozaki and the village priest Seishin Muroi are the first people to learn of the existence of Shiki and thus begins the struggle for survival of the villagers. Now , to clearly demonstrate the conflicts that the show creates in the viewer's mind , I will be separately talking about the moral state of the protagonists and then applying them to the grand scheme of things.
Let's start with Toshio Ozaki , he is the very first person to learn about the existence of Shiki , he discusses this with his childhood friend Seishin, who although skeptical at first , still goes along with it. Ozaki was a very observant person , he quickly traced the origin of these Shiki back to the weird family that moved in the nearby mansion and discovered that the whole family themselves were Shiki and it was them who were sucking the blood of the villagers and turning them into vampires. He told the villagers about this and after no one believed him , he took it upon himself to find a way of eradicating them , thus showing his radical and survivalist nature. The show portrays him as this "good guy" who wants to save the village but at the same time creates a conflict within the viewer's mind by showing us the extent to which he can go to accomplish his mission.
For example, he tied his dying wife to a bed and once she rose as a Shiki , he repeatedly tortured her in a bid to find out the weakness of these monsters. We also find out that he never really loved his wife and on the day his mother died the only thing that he could think of was that "she deserved it". He led the villagers to kill all the Shiki and this ended up causing a lot of destruction to the village which led him to declare that "he lost" which also shows that , at the end of the day he thought this situation to be just a game between him and the Shiki family and although he was able to kill them , still he was not able to "win" as a lot of destruction was caused as a result of it.
Now , let's talk about Seishin , after having a chat about Shiki with Ozaki , he himself met one in the form of a young girl Sunako who was a part of the Shiki family. After talking to her a number of times , Seishin started sympathising with her. And felt that the humans and the Shiki could find a way to live together in harmony. Although he was not able to accomplish this goal as the revolution led by Ozaki was too strong to oppose. He ended up dying amidst all the fighting only to later on rise as a jinrou (warewolf) , as a Jinrou, he along with Sunako was able to escape the village but unfortunately the other members of the Shiki family died.
Both of these characters , although being childhood friends had very different mindsets. For Ozaki , Shiki were monsters who caused harm to the humans thus their eradication was necessary for human survival. But for Seishin , it was not the fault of the Shiki that they were made this way , they needed blood for their own survival. He felt that the Shiki were similar to the humans in the fact that over the years the humans have also hunted other wildlife for their own survival , they have done everything whether morally correct or not for their survival, then why is it that the Shiki family were considered wrong in what they were doing , weren't they also just trying to survive in this world. The show never really clears that which side is correct and leaves the viewers to decide it for themselves. This is the major conflict that the show presents us with, but the reason why it is so enjoyable is the supporting cast , so let's take a look at them for a moment.
Let's get back to Megumi , she was the first one to get converted into a Shiki and even in that form, her obsession with Natsuno did not decrease . She would stalk him everyday and in the end was not able to convince herself to fulfill her desire of leaving the village. Being converted to a Shiki also enhanced her violent and dark nature as she murdered her friend's father , just for the sake of it. By the end of the show , she finally attempted to leave the village but was caught and brutally murdered by the villagers. Her character was very conflicting for the viewers as at one point you felt that she was just a young girl who wanted to see the city and got brutally murdered when she was inches away from her dream but at the same time she was a vampire who murdered her friend's father just because she could.
Now , let's talk about Natsuno , he was also among the first few people to learn about the existence of Shiki . He was initially presented as this good guy who helped the villagers fight the Shiki but when he realised that his friend Tohru had become one , he literally gave up and allowed Tohru to suck all his blood and ultimately died. He later rose as a Jinrou and worked from the shadows in order to help the villagers. He ended up sacrificing himself in order to take down the Jinrou of the Shiki family. He seemed to be very conflicted in his own mind , as at times I felt that he was just a cold-hearted , unlikable guy when he showed no empathy for anyone but then when he helped the villagers , both as a human and a warewolf , he seemed to be a good person. I personally feel that the show could have handled his character a bit better by giving him a bit more of depth and by somehow making his mindset a bit clear. Of course you can label his change of heart as character development but this change felt a bit too sudden for me and thus I never really got on board with it.
There were a few other characters who were an active part of the story but I seem I have touched on everything important so let's just end it here. It was these conflicted characters that increased the appeal of the show as by the time you finish up with it , you yourself don't know that which characters were right and which were wrong, the show makes you think and question your own moralities and thus it succeeds in becoming a brilliant psychological horror which will appeal to everyone.
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