Check the wrists.
This does ont look suspicious to you at all? Seriously!?
Shiki is by far the most entertaining series of the season. The horror series takes place in, as all good horror does, the remote countryside. The remote village of Sotoba has a population of only a few thousand people, including one fashionable Megumi. Megumi isn’t the main character past episode one but she does catalyze the whole series of events. So, to keep myself from spoiling the series, I’ll be describing the plot of episode one only. As far as main characters go Megumi isn’t very likeable but she dies at the end of this episode so we only have to pay attention to her for twenty minutes.
The episode opens with Megumi walking down a countryside ride in her oh so fashionable pink clothes. She’s stopped by a few villagers that tell her the latest town gossip: some statues in the town are being destroyed. Megumi could care less about this and less about the village entirely. Megumi hates village life and her only dream in life is to go to college in a big city and be scouted for modeling. There are, however, two things she does like about her current home: the grand European castle that sits atop a hill, called Kanemasa by the villagers, and fellow high school student Yuuki. Megumi is obsessed with both and she is constantly peering into Yuuki’s house from the forest behind his home. Yuuki could show less interest in Megumi and has not even looked at her despite her tries to talk to him. Both Yuuki and Megumi have one thing in common: they both desperately want to leave Sotoba.
The episode veers away from Megumi and Yuuki to a series of strange deaths in a remote area by the village, Yamairi. Three people have died: the first was a middle-aged woman they determined died from natural causes. The other two are the woman’s husband and neighbor who have grotesque bodies but no wounds to speak of. The young local priest Seishin Muroi disovers the bodies and contacts the local police. The police determine that two of the dead were the victim of wild dogs and that the woman had died three days after her husband’s death. As the husband and wife were found in the same room this is very perplexing.
The next scene is again of Megumi trying to mail a love letter to Yuuki. Her friend, one-sided on the friend’s part, catches her in the act. Megumi again laments about how much she hates this village and runs away. She runs straight into Yuuki, who is standing at the bus stop, staring into space. She tries and fails to catch his attention until she mentions how much she wants to leave the village as well. The scene ends as Yuuki looks at her and Megumi deliriously smiling.
Shoot ahead to that night. It is twelve in the morning when a woman who lives on the edge of Sotoba with her mother is awakened by bright headlights and a blaring horn. Annoyed, she stumbles outside to see a moving van with two cars behind it. Probably the cutest villain to ever exist steps out of one of the cars and apologizes to the woman for waking her. Her asks her where Sotoba is located and the woman replies that he’s found himself right in the middle of it. She finds out that the man and his employers (he’s a janitor of some sort judging by his uniform) are moving into Kanemasa. Dun dun dun.
The next morning Megumi is walking by Kanemasa and day-dreaming about having a life there. Her friend comes up to her and says that she head a few old women gossiping about the house. Apparently a family of three lives there: mother, father, and a daughter. She also calls the house strange which throws Megumi into a rage. Angrily she stalks up the hill leading to the house. Nearing the house she feels someone’s eyes watching her and decides to impress them by strutting like a model. She fails at this and sprains her ankle but it appears to have worked as the door opens (which is the scene in the picture I used above). This is the last we see of the cheerful Megumi.
When she does not return home that night the village organizes a search party for her. They find her, knocked out, weakened, and a sickly grey, but still alive. The doctor, Toshio Ozaki, diagnoses her with anemia. In what is the best part of the episode Megumi has a psychedelic nightmare that showcases warped images of what happened to her. It’s impossible to understand the picture slide show but it is fun to watch. Megumi dies the next morning which sparks a chain reaction throughout the village.
This episode covers about the first chapter of the manga. I hope the anime moves faster because the manga has quite a few chapters. Besides Megumi, the main characters are Yuuki, the young priest, and the doctor. None of them are very sympathetic: Yuuki comes off as a self-absorbed jerk and the other two aren’t explored enough to sympathize with. Besides these four main characters the rest of the cast is the entire village who are thankfully unnamed unlike in the manga. There isn’t a lot of character development in this episode in the first place: the Kanemasa’s aren’t introduced and neither of the characters besides Megumi are explored in any depth. This is about the case with every horror series: can we really sympathize with Rena from When They Cry? Character development isn’t important here, the plot is.
Having read some of the manga I thought I would know about everything that the anime can throw at me. This was mostly true except that the anime presents a few other things that I never caught in the manga. The main mystery is the focus on dogs. There is a scene of them in Megumi’s search party and they were believed to be involved in the three villagers deaths. Not only that but the janitor we see working for the people in Kanemasa has hair that is drawn to look like dog ears.
Moving away from plot the art is fantastic. It has elongated bodies similar to that of xxxHOLiC but more appealing. Colors are bright and bold with thick lines. Eyes are drawn with an interesting style: a ring of a bright color circles the pupils, making the eyes look really creepy. The backgrounds are also nice; artists seem to put a lot of work into series that take place in the country side. As for music, well, the background stuff used in the episode itself was good but Shiki has some of the worst openers and closers I’ve ever heard for a horror show. The imagery for both tracks is great but the songs are extremely off. Maybe it’s just me but the guy singing in the opening seemed more suited for a shounen and the ending song was something out of a dramatic romance. I was really disappointed since I was hoping the wonderful singers of Umineko’s opening would return.
Basically, this show is a great suspense and is really like nothing else offered. Watch it if you like scenes like this:
