Director: Tetsuro Animo
Starring: Aoi Yuuki, Kazuyuki Okitsu, Tooru Ookawa, Kouki Uchiyama, Cherami Lee, John Burgmeier, David Wald, Jerry Jewel,
Running Time: 253 minutes
Certificate: 15
Extras: Audio Commentary on episodes 1 & 12, Textless intro and outro, Shiki previews
SHIKI! What is a SHIKI? To tell you would be to ruin the plot of this enjoyable and dark anime. This is most certainly a mystery first and a horror second which is clearly demonstrated in the opening scenes of a search party trekking through the woods in the pitch black as they look for a missing girl. After that, the first episode is quite misleading, in that it is bright, colourful, and humorous. This is mostly down to Megumi Shimizu, a 15 year old girl we would assume to be the protagonist. She leads the first episode, giving her opinions on what she considers to be a backwards, isolated village, stuck in the past. Megumi is the kind of girl to dress up just for a walk down to the local shop. She dreams of getting away from this town and going to a distant University.
Meanwhile a series of strange deaths begin to occur throughout the village and a new family moves into a European style mansion on the top of the hill in the middle of the night. Megumi eventually goes missing, an epidemic hits the village, and fear and paranoia begin to take over the village. The pacing of the series is very deliberate in its gradual reveal of different plot twists, although sometimes it lingers on one story strand for a tad too long. For example, it seems as though the town doctor Toshio Ozaki is continuously dealing with multiple deaths before he gets anywhere. Once he has deciphered a thing or two he becomes a man of action, but for a while there it was a constant cycle of; death, unexplained, confusion, anger.
The animation is gorgeous and makes full use of a wide range of colours. Most horrors would shy away from bright pinks and glaring daylight scenes, but here they are used to wonderful effect. It makes the night time scenes that extra bit more eerie. It also doesn’t overuse common anime techniques which have started to become lampooned in Western media. This gives it a rather fresh feel and allows for some interesting dream sequences and artistic flourishes. One of my favourites included a scene in which our true protagonist, the distant and hard to read Natsuno, is aware someone is outside his house. The walls become almost transparent as he follows the sound of whoever it is outside. It builds tension and allows us to get a sense of what Natsuno is feeling at the time.
Once the big twists have been revealed, it would be awfully easy for this series to slip into tedium. Luckily it avoids this by offering us strong characters on both sides that are able to argue for what they believe in. It becomes a moral dilemma of good vs. evil without taking sides. This also makes for some brilliant chemistry and character dynamics, such as the novelist monk Seishin Muroi and the bizarre little girl Sunako, who only comes out at night due to a rare genetic disorder.
These first 12 episodes in the series are a great collection for all mystery and horror lovers. With such a wide and varied cast you are bound to feel a connection with at least a few characters. The vocal performances by both the English and Japanese casts are strong and really convey the gradual destruction of a once peaceful village. I can’t wait for Part 2.
Extras: The two episode commentaries see a number of the English voice cast come together and discuss their thoughts on the show and characters. They aren’t always talking about what is going on onscreen, which can get a bit distracting, but their chemistry is enough for a number of laughs. The textless opening and closing credits allow you to enjoy the visual feast without long lists of names intruding over the art. A fair package all together.
SHIKI Part 1 is available from Monday 8th October. It can be purchased here.
