Shiki Blu-ray Review
Twilight's last gleaming.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, May 16, 2012
Desperate cries ring out through the Japanese countryside, and it's obvious someone is missing. Flashlights scan the
night sky and attempt to penetrate the dense foliage. As a group of adults repeatedly attempt to get an answer from
an unseen person named Megumi, the camera pans slowly to reveal the body of a young girl lying in the dirt. Is she
dead? Why is she devoid of any color?
Shiki gets off to a really interesting start with that disturbing sequence,
but then backtracks both literally and figuratively as it then depicts how young village girl Megumi ended up either dead
or unconscious on that forest floor.
Shiki is an odd little anime that is part vampire thriller, part
shonen,
and, as odd as it may sound, part
CSI, perhaps appropriately to be called
CSI: Sotoba after the sleepy
little Japanese hamlet where the series takes place. One thing is for sure: people are dropping like flies in Sotoba, and
Megumi only seems to be the latest in what turns out to be a rather terrifyingly long string of similar calamities. Once
the series drifts back a few days to set up the story, we find out that several people have been found dead (and
partially dismembered) in an even more remote part of the region than even "downtown" Sotoba. That raises the
interest of local doctor (and erstwhile forensic pathologist) Toshio, who is instantly suspicious of the manner of death of
these individuals, but who can't quite put his finger on the proximate cause. In the meantime, we get to meet Megumi,
a spirited a young girl who is
extremely unhappy with her life in Sotoba, and is planning her eventual "escape",
certain that she will meet the right people in some dreamed of large metropolis who will further her ambition to be a
celebrity. The only item of even passing interest for Megumi in Sotoba is new local resident boy Natsuno Yuuki, who,
like Megumi, wants nothing else but to get out of Sotoba, but who at the same time can't stand Megumi, leading to the
girl's affections being decidedly unrequited.
Shiki deserves some props for throwing caution the wind in terms of introducing characters and then rather cold
heartedly killing many of them off. In fact, it's not
too much of a spoiler to reveal that Megumi herself is just one
of
several victims that fall prey to Sotoba's family of vampires, the Kirishikis. But what is so interesting about this gambit is
that
Shiki actually posits Megumi as the lead character, at least for a little while, until it becomes clear that she's
just another victim. It's sort of a anime analog to what fans of
Lost came to expect, when supposedly major
characters bit the dust in a series of unexpected disasters. (It also shouldn't come as
much of a surprise that at
least some of these supposed victims return to the series later in their "undead" forms.)
What ends up transpiring is a sort of procedural where Natsuno and Toshio team up to try to unravel why so many
people in an already small town are dying, and what it may have to do with the Kirishiki family which has moved into an
anachronistic castle that adorns a hillside on the outskirts of the town.
Shiki doesn't shy away from introducing
a lot of characters—too many, some might argue—who populate the town and tend to contribute small tangential plot
pieces that actually fray the edges of the series' central vampire story, not always to the show's benefit. But there are
some very well done character moments here, probably none more so than Megumi herself, who in her "revised" form
seems to morph into something decidedly more devious and ill willed than she's initially portrayed as in the series'
opening couple of episodes.
Shiki is stylish to be sure, but it's also tonally a bit odd, descending into not very funny slapstick elements on
occasion and also presenting a much different take on vampires than everything from
Dracula to the more
recent phenomenon of
Twilight. That's all well and good, of course, and it's to the series credit that it tries not
to rehash hoary tropes while at the same time attempting not to reinvent the vampiric wheel, but the fine line
Shiki traverses blurs more than a few times, and viewers may wish that the series did indeed either stick closer
to more familiar "I vant to suck your blood" themes or go more completely over the top with new and more innovative
approaches. What remains is a somewhat compelling story that probably derives most of its interest from the
investigative side of things than for any treatment of the well worn vampire
mythos. It's a bit ironic that Dr.
Ozaki initially thinks that all of the victims in Sotoba have fallen prey to a rare form of anemia, for some cynics may aver
that
Shiki is strangely anemic (at least at times) itself.
Shiki Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Shiki has a lot to recommend it, including a kind of ruthless approach to its characters, many of whom meet their
fate throughout the first half of the series which is released on this new two disc set (the second half of the show will be
reviewed soon). The best part of
Shiki is actually its portrayal of a small town in the grip of a growing panic as more
and more people die off, and with the unlikely pairing of Natsuno and Toshio as they attempt to ferret out what's going on.
The actual vampire motif is a decidedly more mixed affair, never really capitalizing on either well worn clichés (which is
probably a good thing), nor ever totally exploring unusual new aspects (which is probably a bad thing). What's left is a
fitfully compelling series that may be just a tad on the bloodless side. Still, this set offers some extremely nice animation
which pops incredibly well on this Blu-ray release. For you vampire fans, or
Twilight aficionados who are jonesin' for
a blood sucking fix in between feature film releases,
Shiki, despite some problems, has enough going for it to earn a
rating of
Recommended.
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