Shiki Ep21.5 - That Old Bastard

With this episode, Shiki is officially done. Maybe it's because of the length of time since I watched, or the fact that one of my most favourite anime (Natsume Yuujinchou) has a slot this season, but I think I'm finally ready to move on passed Shiki.

Pastel usually denotes happy times.

This episode was entirely about the human aspect of the shiki invasion that occurred, focusing on mainly one character: Maeda Motoko, a local villager with two children, Shigeki and Shihori. Halfway through the episode, when Motoko's saga took a rather gruesome and deranged turn, and hit a standstill, the story shifted to her employer, Yano Kanami, who has been seen before in some prominent scenes (for one thing, she was the one who was woken up in the middle of the night when the Kirishima family first moved in). The episode quickly shifted back to Motoko as soon as she was up and about again, ending on a drastic revelation: the fire in the hills that engulfed the village began with her.

Shiki Ep20.5 - It's Not That Hard

Nichijou ep11 is delayed because I woke up this morning to find the release of Shiki ep20.5 (taking place between ep20 and ep21, obviously). This is a little random, since I didn't do episode reviews on Shiki (or a final review, for that matter), but I really couldn't pass up the chance to talk about it.

I wonder if they're missing any characters; I can't remember.

This episode focused on the villagers breaking into the irrigation system, where a large number of shiki had been hiding, and showed far more violence than I recall the surrounding episodes depicting. I suspect it might be because this was a DVD release, so the violence didn't need to be toned down. Two main characters were depicted, the shiki Nao and the human Hasegawa. This was as incredibly emotional episode, with the unspoken feelings of the characters clearly conveyed.

Rant From The Past: Shiki

Warning: This is chock full of spoilers and walls of text.

Pearz just finished watching Shiki yesterday, and the proximity made me recall all of my thoughts on it. I first watched this anime about two months ago, and had wanted to write a review but it's from Fall/Summer 2010, which is pretty old. It's not right to review something from so long ago...!

My inner fangirl went crazy.

I first heard about Shiki when perusing 2011 anime on AniDB, and recall waiting eagerly for it to finish so I could watch it. The picture above actually pulled me into the anime; I imagined from the makeshift description at the time that it would be kind of like Ghost Hound. It ended up being nothing of the sort, instead incorporating more supernatural and gore, with some philosophy gingerly sprinkled about. Ultimately, the characters are what made Shiki, since the story itself wasn't especially unique.