Saturday 28 August 2010

Shiki - Episode 8

Following one of those ever-more frequent and somewhat highbrow conversations between Sunako and Muroi, episode eight of Shiki gets right down to the heart of recent matters, with Natsuno, Akira and Kaori getting down to the serious business of digging up Megumi's grave in their pursuit for the truth about the deaths occurring throughout the village.

In a sense, there's barely any need to dig up Megumi's coffin, as Kaori finds the present that she'd put in alongside Megumi's coffin at the time of her burial out in the open, but nonetheless they proceed and sure enough Megumi's coffin proves to be completely empty, thus confirming their fears about the "Risen".


In fact, that isn't all they should be fearful of, as Kaori finds herself dragged away from the scene by an unknown assailant, forcing Natsuno to come to the rescue via a solid shovel blow to the head. As it becomes clear that this attacker is not only dead, but was dead before he attacked Kaori, this only serves as further proof of their theory. Of course, at this point you might expect this trio to try and get some help, be it from adults or pretty much anybody else, but at this juncture they continue their investigations and planning alone - a decision which already looks to have put Natsuno in grave danger indeed, as a decidedly strange girl named Shizuka managed to get herself and her brother invited into his home...

This accelerating of (or, rather, sharpening focus on) the goings-on in the village as Natsuno et al finally unmask them almost unequivocally has certainly upped the pacing of the series, which has in turn increased the tension and feeling of threat surrounding the series from something rather vague into something decidedly more specific. This certainly makes the entire affair far more watchable, and hopefully this will continue to be the case now that things have gotten much more interesting. Shiki still isn't quite as "horrific" as I'd expect of its genre, but as long as it continues to warm up nicely my complaints about it thus far are slowly melting away.

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