Shiki 3 – Mysterious Shiny Outsiders

Woah, that was a pretty intense half-an-hour. Things are still progressing slowly in this series but that doesn’t stop events from being genuinely creepy. One of the things Shiki is proving to be very good at is creating atmosphere, and the show has been using that to its advantage; the consistently eerie mood it’s been building since the premiere has not only been maintained but heightened. In this episode, we were introduced to several new characters, all of whom were sinister or intriguing or both, and the foreboding was really laid on thick.

Believe it or not, this is his happy face.

Shiki 2 – Swine Flu, My Dear Watson

[NB: This is a post that is somewhere between an episodic and an editorial, and it goes off on a couple of tangents (swine flu, Sherlock Holmes). You've been warned. It's a departure, but I hope you enjoy it!]

In Shiki, a universal fear is played with: that of illness, or rather deathly illness. It’s a fear that can be so strong that it can cause a total frenzy – remember last year and the swine flu pandemic? For weeks, you couldn’t turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper without seeing something about H1N1. Suffice to say, the media was all over it, and there was a huge amount of hysteria surrounding it all. Looking back, perhaps what made people so (arguably unnecessarily) scared was that anyone, no matter how healthy, could contract the disease.

Sotoba Victim #001 - Megumi Shimizu. Draws attention to herself even in funeral photo.

Shiki 1 – Sticking Out Like a Sore Thumb

The premiere episode of Shiki focuses on Megumi Shimizu, a tenth grader feeling totally out of place in the small town of Sotoba. While most residents of the village seem to favour a quiet, simple existence, Megumi is fashionable, vibrant and thinks that the big city is the only place for her. In her eyes, Sotoba is utterly boring. She’s only interested in two things there: her crush, Yuuki Natsuno, and the giant, Western-style mansion up on the hill. She’s a bit of a brat and I could imagine her having a lot of anti-fans in the anime community. Fortunately for them, she doesn’t last very long. By the end of the episode, she’s dead.

Meet Megumi Shimizu. She's fashionable.