Shiki: A Boring Tale of Vampires.

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Humans have two sides, the animal side which keeps us alive and human side which builds societies, laws, art. This side makes us what we are. Shiki tries to touch this subject. However, Shiki fails to achieve that on so many levels.

Shiki has one of most boring starts I have ever seen in anime, first episodes are sluggish and uninteresting. While viewer knows what the hell going on from as early as episode 3, characters in anime simply can’t figure it out even with such huge evidence. Every character is god damn idiot. Even these Shiki’s are idiotic they don’t even try to hide their presence.

Characters in Shiki are annoying at worst and uninteresting at best. Given the Shiki’s premise, it should be a very character driven show. However, characters are the worst part of the show. It seems people working on this had the competition of How can you make each character as unrealistic as possible while making them as annoying as possible? This is unacceptable. It is not like that Shiki didn’t have enough episodes, rather than showing how each character is a douchebag, they could have shown the relationship between various characters making climax more heartbreaking. If characters had enough development for me to care about them, then this would have been very good anime, sadly that is not the case. The only likable character for me was Tomio Ookawa, the person who was killing Shiki’s left and right and killed his dead son, probably the smartest character too.

(Everything below has high possibility of being wrong or it is just outright wrong just ignore it or laugh at my mistake,(^_^))

Shiki liked by many because it shows moral ambiguity, let me debunk that myth. Now imagine that this entire village either died or people turned into Shiki’s. These Shiki’s still need to feed on other people and when they do, that person either dies or become Shiki. Now this will spread like an epidemic, how long do you think human population will last as more and more people will turn into Shiki’s and others die. Shiki population will grow with increasing rate and human population will decrease with increasing rate. Soon there will not be enough humans to feed all Shiki’s and hence Shiki’s will die out. The conclusion is simple that Shiki’s are unnatural as they dig their own grave, either way, they are doom for extinction. There not a single carnivorous in the world which would naturally do that kind of thing. Hence by definition humans have more right to live than Shiki’s. Because of slow reproduction of humans, Shiki’s will eventually run out of food. This premise is very well handled in Parasyte the maxim. There is no moral ambiguity here.

For me, Shiki is a mess of stupid characters playing kingdom kingdom.

Let me know your thoughts below guys. If you liked this post then please leave a like, follow and share. If you didn’t like the post then there in nothing to worry about, it is just me rambling about an overrated anime which I didn’t like, please let me know your thoughts in comments, see ya.

28 thoughts on “Shiki: A Boring Tale of Vampires.”

  1. I love Shiki though I get that the slow start is a problem for a lot of viewers, there’s a lot actually going on in the early episodes. I find the characters fascinating and I like that for once people don’t just assume vampire attack and try to think of all the other logical explanations, which eventually have to be rules out. It really feels like an isolated community set in their ways, and the characters feel authentic to that setting. Though I get that this is an entirely subjective opinion and quite a few people just find the characters stupid. However, on the point of moral ambiguity, the Shiki don’t have to kill their victims. They are choosing to kill off the population of this one village because they want a home, but they do not have to kill their victims. It takes four feedings to kill and we know that if the person is left alone after being fed on, or if they receive a blood transfusion, they can recover. So once the Shiki have the village, they can simply continue to occasionally raid other towns and villages for a food supply. However, they won’t end up wiping out humans, because that would destroy their food source and be farily senseless. As to whether the Shiki’s decision to take over an entire village has any merit that one is pretty simple to figure out.
    While it’s not to everyone’s tastes, I enjoyed Shiki because it is a bit different from the standard vampire story these days and felt more old school in that it dealt with the everyday lives being disrupted by the supernatural and focussed heavily on ideas of denial and exclusion. Sorry for the long comment.

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    1. Oh, I didn’t realize that. Actually, I did a thunder marathon(where you skip all unnecessary dialogue and boring interaction), I know it is not the optimal way to watch but I couldn’t simply get past episode 5. I truly hated every character in this anime. I think this is not made for me, I am still right on boringly slow pace and character from my perspective. As for moral ambiguity, My point was wrong(well it happens, thanks for clearing it up). But It can be proven other way, as happen Shiki’s are still undead, they are dead so they do not have any right to kill people who are alive(simple enough). Still, I both parties are just bunch of kids playing kingdom kingdom. Either way, I screwed up on the second half, sorry for that, I didn’t do my research well and thanks for telling me. I will let this post stick here for a while until(Sometime in this year) I rewatch it and repost my new thoughts.

      Thanks, you saved my but

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  2. Oh, I didn’t realize that. Actually, I did a thunder marathon(where you skip all unnecessary dialogue and boring interaction), I know it is not the optimal way to watch but I couldn’t simply get past episode 5. I truly hated every character in this anime. I think this is not made for me, I am still right on boringly slow pace and character from my perspective. As for moral ambiguity, My point was wrong(well it happens, thanks for clearing it up). But It can be proven other way, as happen Shiki’s are still undead, they are dead so they do not have any right to kill people who are alive(simple enough). Still, I both parties are just bunch of kids playing kingdom kingdom. Either way, I screwed up on the second half, sorry for that, I didn’t do my research well and thanks for telling me. I will let this post stick here for a while until(Sometime in this year) I rewatch it and repost my new thoughts.

    Thanks, you saved my butt.

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  3. Sorry to hear that Shiki wasn’t your cup of tea. It is one of my fave horror anime, possibly because it feels like a Stephen King tale. I didn’t mind the slow start because they had to introduce a village worth of characters.

    From what I recall not everyone who gets killed becomes a vampire so I don’t think Shiki would ever outnumber humans.

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    1. I am not a huge fan of horror anime, and I don’t think Shiki is horror anime(after watching corpse party and another). The start was so slow and most importantly boring for me that I have to skip a lot of dialogue, because of this it is possible that I didn’t understand how Shiki works fully. I will have to rewatch Shiki to give full judgment. The second half of Shiki may be good but the first half is so boring that I just couldn’t bring myself to rewatch it. Thanks for your feedback, cheers.

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  4. Pingback: In Case You Missed It | 100WordAnime

  5. I subscribed to your blog a while ago but I never got any e-mail notifications. Ah well. WordPress is quite a mess.

    I’m sorry to hear that Shiki didn’t work out for you. It’s one of my favorite anime. But I can see why it won’t appeal to people since it’s quite an odd piece. That said, the moral ambiguity isn’t a myth. But I see that Karandi already mentioned this above. I’d just like to add that it’s not the humans killing shiki that taints their moral superiority but the eagerness and brutality with which they get around to it.

    Thanks for sharing.

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    1. I agree, but it necessary for survival, like piercing chest and bashing heads. Things which Shiki’s do before the last episode villainized them, their psychology is not well explored in early episodes because of this when I didn’t care about them enough to see badness in human actions, this might be because I have watched some more disturbing gore anime. But hey everything is fair in love and war. Thanks for your feedback, cheers.

      I don’t think WordPress sends email for normal followers only email followers receive email and I have no idea how to do that. You will have to be logged in WordPress and you will see the latest post on blogs which you follow in reader section, that is how I catch some posts of blogs I follow, It is hit and miss really. Thanks,

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      1. Yeah, fair enough. Shiki’s nowhere close to the most violent thing I’ve watched but I found the whole psychology of it pretty interesting.

        WordPress reader never works for me. It keeps crashing. I sometimes get e-mails for blogs I normally followed so yeah, hit and miss.

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  6. I actually liked Shiki quite a bit, but yeah, the show did have a really slow pace. I usually love slow paced anime with a lot of atmosphere and tension. But only if it’s done right. I felt like the humans were pretty damn stupid not to notice the epidemic started when the weird new people showed up out of nowhere, it was frustrating at the same time really annoying that no one seemed to be able to put two and two together despite all the abnormal deaths and mysterious stuff that kept connecting to the very, very obviously not normal new people that live in a fucking castle on the outskirts of town.
    The only characters I did like in the show were Natsuno and Toshio Ozaki, at least they were actually doing something. The ending to the show wasn’t bad, but it would have been better if Seishin and Sunako both died. Half if not almost all the characters were either annoying, useless or stupid. Ya know what could have been really useful against the Shiki, a gun.
    But I have to admit, I did like the show a lot, it was fun for a while especially when the towns folk started hunting down and killing all the Shiki, best part of the anime.

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    1. Toshio Ozaki is also my favorite from series and in japan, you can’t own a gun. I think Shiki is for those people who like horror and mystery genre with a lot of blood and gore, But I think blood series does a better job at it and if Shiki goal was to make me sentimental towards vampires then it failed. The problem is simple, I am not that connected to western culture and vampire, I don’t watch that many Hollywood films. I think people liked the new way in which vampires were represented. I truly couldn’t care less about a story which could not capture viewers attention in first five episode. And yes last episodes were enjoyable but first half killed it for me. Thanks.

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      1. Oh, so that’s why no one had any guns….what a shame, that’s actually a little strange considering the town is somewhere in the countryside/mountains meaning that there would be wild animals that would wander into town, like bears or something. I thought they’d at least have policemen with guns. As for the sympathy for the vampires, well…I’m not exactly gonna be sympathetic to a bunch of undead assholes whose goals were to kill everyone in a small village and eat people because they think being a vampire is soooo much better than being human. Even though it’s a 50/50 chance you’ll even become a vampire let alone enjoy living as one for the rest of your days. Your right about it being really hard to actually like the vampires let alone root for them. Good review as usual.

        Oh, hey, have you ever watched Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki kun? it’s a funny anime. It’s has good animation and great characters too! I really love it.

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  7. If I had to list some of my least favourite anime series, I’m sure Shiki would be in the top 3 positions. I don’t think I’m abto pass any comment on it, since I dropped it after watching maybe 5 episodes or so, but I have to admit that it was boring as hell. I know it’s horror and all but it made me disgusted with the gore scenes instead of scaring me. Moreover, I was absolutely pissed by the behavior of that pink haired girl (Didn’t even bother to remember her name). But still, on reading the comments of all the other bloggers here, I think I will give it another try. (Even though I’m sure the result will be the same) Thanks for sharing your views on it!

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    1. I rewatched it and I assure you that Shiki is not worth watching, It is worth watching if you like vampire media. I think Shiki was successful because of oversaturation of vampire media that movies like twilight did. It is like watching hundreds of those boring Nagin movies in Indian and then watching one Nagin movie which doesn’t follow the old formula(If you get what I mean). As Indian, I never come across that much vampire media so I don’t have any sympathy for it, In basic term, Shiki is a bad anime, In vampires fans terms Shiki is unique anime. If you watch too many western vampires movies then go ahead give it a retry.

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      1. I do my best to avoid horror series or movies in general. Even though I gave that sparkling fairy a try, I don’t think vampire themed things are that great, and that level deteriorates even further if it has gore in it. So, I think that it’s not a good idea to rewatch something that got compared to cheap Indian nagin movie……. starring Sridevi -_-

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  8. i remember i liked shiki the first time since its close to the mythology with stakes, and all that, but now that i older i dont like it as mutch as i did 🙂 i love horror, but shiki was not that scary XD i prefer Ghost hunt and Higurashi any day 😀 mabye i should make a blog post about underrated horror anime that is really good? XD most people i ask havent even heard of ghost hunt 🙂

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    1. My one complaint about Shiki would be that it is painfully slow, being slow is not a problem but it must not be boring. Ghost Hunt and Higurashi are on my watch list but I am not a big fan of horror to begin with, few horror anime which I enjoyed were Another and Blood-C.

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      1. yes, shiki really is slow :/ if it was a bit more fast more people might like it :`D im a big fan of horror, so i have seen many horror animes XD the Blood sreies is on my watchlist 🙂 Another was really great, my only complaint is that the dolls was pretty unrelated to the story XD they could have used them better 🙂 you will see what i mean in one f your watch list anime 😛

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        2. yes, isent it facinating how dolls can be so terrefying? i was so lucky that i had an uncle that gave me 13 porlacain european dolls…. yay… :/ i only have one left since my mother sold them to by alcohol, but i dont miss them ^^;

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