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Zankyou no Terror is a poor imitation of successful plot-driven anime like Code Geass and Death Note. It tries to pass itself off as an intelligent mystery show but then shoots itself in the foot. It wasn't awful, it just didn't do anything particularly well.

The characters were bland and forgettable, including the ridiculously annoying meat-brain muscle-head police side-kick whose incessant screeching had me rolling my eyes every time he appeared on screen.

Our two male protags (who are supposed to be savant-level geniuses) had inconsistent personalities, and frequently acted out of character, and on at least two occasions acted in such a spectacularly stupid ... fashion that it completely took me out of the show.

Our heroine didn't do particularly much, but it might say something that she was nonetheless my favorite aspect of this anime, because she wasn't extremely annoying or overly cliched in the way that many female sidekicks are, and she was cute.

Any emotional scenes are undermined by two factors. One is a lack of emotional build-up. It's hard to feel empathy for characters that you really don't care about. The second is that these emotional moments only arrive through completely absurd circumstances and idiotic decisions on behalf of several parties.

Which brings me to my final point. This idiocy and absurdity plagues the show throughout its entirety, which is annoying enough in shows that aren't trying to "be smart", let alone in an anime that attempts to take itself seriously and seemingly considers itself cerebral. Almost every single major plot development is either a) so ridiculously unrealistic and unlikely that you no longer care about the outcome, or b) dependent on the characters behaving in such stupid, idiotic ways that you actually want them to fail because they deserve it. (Minor spoiler: The Japanese government lets the FBI bomb their citizens in an attempt to flush out the "real" terrorists. Yeah. That happened. Twice.)

It's 11 episodes to see some cute antics of a girl who gets involved with terrorists. Basically slice of life with bombs. Seriously. If you need your cute girl fix I would recommend watching a shoujo anime instead.

tl;dr tries and fails to be like other "smart" anime. Characters are forgettable and uninteresting, and the show as a whole suffers from a, sadly, terminal case of Idiot Plot.

So. I was very excited to start this show, especially after hearing part of the soundtrack on Youtube. Having heard that it took the darker route with the ever-popular theme of vampires was very encouraging to hear, especially since so few anime seem willing to explore the concept of "dark and light", morality, and death.

However....

They absolutely dropped the ball. There was so much potential for this series but it just completely missed the mark. They could have (and should have) deeply explored the intricacies of self vs other, can you justify/how do you justify taking the life of another being, does morality apply in ... a hunter/prey scenario, survival in the face of the unknown, etc.

Shiki didn't do any of that. They just cracked open their paintcan of generic, store-brand morality and bathed in it. There was virtually no concern given to any of the many possible psychological and philosophical elements they could have explored.

Story & Character: I'll discuss these together because of how closely related they are in Shiki. The plot is entirely character-driven, so character and story are inseparable. Unfortunately for Shiki, as a result they are both terrible. The story is told mostly from the point of the villagers, the "good guys". Regrettably, they used one of the most common and most frustrating tropes commonly found in horror flicks - absolutely, utterly, how-do-you-even-survive-from-day-to-day braindead stupidity. Every Single Human Villager Is Completely And Utterly MORONIC. And that's what the entire plot relies on. Without idiotic villagers, the series as it stands would last maybe 6-10 episodes. It was so bad I started rooting for the vampires halfway through the series. It was my sincere hope that every single villager would be massacred and that "evil" would prevail. That's how frustrated I was at the ineptitude of the humans.

The only villagers that were at all likable were dead ones that had turned into vampires. There was one vampire that I really liked, which is why I gave Character a 3 instead of a 1. I think if the story was told from the perspective of the vampires, trying to infiltrate the village and take over, the series would have been much, much better. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, and we're left with this mess. There isn't much else to say - there's about 18 episodes of stupidity, some stuff happens at the end and then series is over. Very disappointing.

Sound: As I said in my intro, the soundtrack is what led me to this series, and it certainly delivers throughout. It's a shame that the actual substance of the anime was so lacking, because the music was hauntingly beautiful and did an amazing job of setting the mood. Similarly, I had no complaints about the voice acting (for Japanese; English dub was god-awful as it usually is) - it was well done and all the voices matched the characters very well.

Art: Gorgeous. Some reviews I read said that they hated the art, so I suppose like anything it's a matter of personal preference. However, I have to say Shiki has probably the most gorgeous, intriguing, captivating character design I have ever seen in an anime. The vampires especially I found to be exquisitely well designed, so in that regard I have to absolutely respect the animators. Beautifully well done. The visual aspect was the only reason I actually slugged my way through the last 12 episodes or so.

TL;DR: Almost non-existent character development for protagonists, use of common horror trope "all good guys are braindead" ruins any potential this series had from a storytelling perspective. Sound and especially art are the saving graces of this anime - consequently, if you do not like the art, I would absolutely not recommend this anime.

Overall - 5/10