Oct 17, 2022
'Every living creature is condemned to murder and eat another living creature in order to survive. To live life is to take anothers life.'
Horror Anime at its peak, with Shiki being the most beautiful anime I have ever watched, and an excellent view on how genocides occur.
If you look at the history of humanity, there is pretty much no empire that hasn't committed a genocide. It isn't hard for me to see why, the world works on 'strong over the weak' 'predator over prey' and that's the result in every species, not just humans. If you have 3 cooperative states, the stronger one can
...
(and probably will) dominate the other two, often in violent ways. Call them 'forsaken by God' if you will, but there is no God that's ever going to intervene in one. Idealistically, we can live in peace growing our own food, yet eventually conflicts will arise (as humans are social creatures) and usually domination, often combined with violence will follow. Keeping every single state pacifist through ideals is simply not possible as the one willing to break them can easily defeat the rest and get to the top and thus, international organizations, superpowers are needed to keep humanity 'in check'. And, again, that's all despite the fact that humans do not have to kill others to survive. However, animals, unlike us, have to kill and eat others to survive.
In some ways, I think of this anime as an allegory to the negative relationship between different species. In the animal kingdom, a predator has to kill it's prey to survive. Now what if certain parts of humanity faced the same dilemma? Just how further depraved would be the consequences? I loved the fact that while there is clearly a victim and an oppressor here, (especially in the second half) I simply understood the necessity of doing what they were doing, the necessity of committing the genocide . Let the victims out of the village, and it would spread to the entire planet, taking away 70 percent of the population with it. And, at the end, all that will be left are a bunch of predators with no prey to hunt. The series does hint that a cooperative relationship could be established (see the second last episode, the mom character) but how many would die in the meantime before that got established large scale. Think of Shiki as Tokyo Ghoul if the ghouls couldn't eat the dead bodies to survive, thus necessitating a negative relationship which results in violence and deaths.
The series does start off a bit slow, but I loved that aspect due to how mysterious it made the anime. I started the anime without knowing anything about it (as I do most things) and it kept me guessing as to where it was going to go. Even till the end 'I had a stupid hope' that what I was dreading wouldn't happen. Also the music in this anime is BEAUTIFUL. Skip to the 9th episode (if you have watched it) at 18 mins and 15 seconds and you'll see what I mean. I loved the character of the Junior Monk (I empathized with him a lot) that no matter what, taking another living thing's life is nothing but evil. His sacrifice to do what he could was...interesting to say the least and probably what I would have tried to do while realizing the lack of inner strength for 'not making the tough choice'.
(SPOILERS START) Yet, I'm not sure about the last 10 seconds of the anime (pre-credits). If he escaped with 'her', wouldn't that just restart the cycle? And thus, what would be the point of the 'necessary' genocide? Though some might argue that there are others like them in the world so eradicating the ones in the village wouldn't change the big picture. In some ways, the complex morality play here and the way it made me feel are what I really loved about the anime. One complaint I have though, is as to what happened to the all the village's children? Why did none of them 'turn'? Was the series trying to hide children being murdered by adults? For a series so brave to go into our most depraved instincts, it seemed a bit disappointing that it deliberately avoided that. Yet, its a minor nitpick. (SPOILERS END)
If you like horror and mystery with a complex morality play, then Shiki is something special. Not an anime I'll ever forget for the rest of my life.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
