Collab with Moya! Shiki Episode 1!

Hi friends and fellow anibloggers! Today I’ve got a special treat for you: The beginning of a collab with our dear Moyatori!We’re calling it

I’m really excited about this, my first collab! In addition to a love of anime, both of us enjoy literary criticism to the point that we both chose to study it in college. And both of us find it fun to bring the lit crit stuff we’ve learned to our enjoyment of anime.

Each of us recommended a series to the other. Moya suggested Shiki, a pretty creepy-looking show. Since I haven’t started yet, that’s about all I can say about it! What did I recommend to her? You’ll have to wait until her turn to find out! 😀

If we keep to our goal of one episode each a week, we’ll finish up around Halloween, which looks somehow appropriate! Let’s see what Crunchyroll has to say about the series:

Yep, sounds cheery! And away we go!

All right, having watched this first episode, I’m really digging this story so far! The most difficult part was keeping track of all the names they threw at me, but it wasn’t necessary to remember them all as yet and we are reminded of any we do need to pay attention to. There’s this girl in 10th grade, Megumi, who is in love with a boy, Yuuki. Megumi is tired of her small Japanese town and wants to move to the big city and become a star. And by ‘tired’ I mean that she takes to screaming periodically at the top of her lungs, “I hate it!” So the girl has issues.

Primes: That’s a good point, and when I rag on Megumi here it’s not because I disliked her character, which I actually found pretty interesting. It’s simply to clarify the setup for what’s coming. (Haven’t seen Your Name. Guess I should add it to The List!)

Megumi wants to check out the new ‘European-style’ (i.e. Disney castle) house on a hill near town, and meet its new residents. She walks up the hill to meet them, and… doesn’t return. Days later, she is found in the woods barely alive. The doctor diagnoses her with anemia, and expects her to recover. Instead, she suddenly dies. End of episode.

Man, there are some blinding parallels to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. You’ve got the foreign vampire(s), living in a European castle. You’ve got the first victim, a young woman, who appears to be very ill but with a normal sickness affecting the blood, who then dies unexpectedly. People think that’s the end, but—as Van Helsing says in Dracula—it’s just the beginning.

And just as in Dracula certain symbols keep the vampires at bay—garlic, crosses, and most powerfully the Eucharist—so at the outset of Shiki the sacred Jizou statues set up around the town have been desecrated and destroyed, suggesting that their loss has perhaps allowed the infiltration of evil. Megumi-chan herself may be responsible: She hates the town and belittles the statues—they’re just stone, she says—and it’s not too far to think she destroyed them in anger at the town they represent to her. In fact, in this scene we do see her kicking something rock-like, though we don’t see clearly what.

Oh, I guarantee you, the parallels to Stoker’s Dracula don’t stop here! You can almost call Shiki a rewrite of Dracula. I watched Shiki before reading Dracula, and it definitely helped with my appreciation of the novel. I should reserve further comparisons until you’ve gotten far enough in the series though!

All right, I didn’t expect it to be this close to Dracula! Should be very engaging, then. 🙂

Megumi confuses what the statues are—symbols—with what they are made of—stone. She does not merely deny the importance of what they symbolize, she denies their symbolism altogether (though it’s funny that the symbols still represent something to her, namely the town). That should seem pretty ominous. Historically, religion, folk superstition, and magic all present symbols (at least some symbols) as having the power not only to represent reality but also to influence and change it. And again she’s paralleling Dracula, in which a well-meaning old woman removes what she thinks are a bunch of stinky weeds from Lucy’s room. Of course, those ‘weeds’ are actually garlic and other plants that have the power to hold off the vampire, and removing them leaves Lucy in Dracula’s power.

You’re right. I couldn’t remember who it was exactly. Thanks!

Megumi, it’s safe to say, fails miserably when it comes to interpreting signs. Besides the Jizou, she sees the European-style home as indicating a possible fairy-tale future for her, in which she meets a kind and wealthy European family who decides she should marry their son.

Her girl friend whose name I forget is a bit more aware of the truth, pointing out that the house is strange and so are the people who moved in; Megumi will have none of it. She’s not the only one who fails at this, too: When the moving truck with the new family pulls into town, the drivers don’t know where they are because they missed the literal sign telling them what town they were in. The police interpret several initial deaths as due to a pack of wild dogs. The doctor notes some oddities that don’t fit that scenario, but when it comes to Megumi’s illness he interprets it as anemia. And Yuuki interprets Megumi’s ‘death’ as meaning, “I don’t need to close the screen on my bedroom window to keep her from spying on me anymore.” (He leaves it open. Whoops.)

So far the only people who seem any good at picking out the truth are Megumi’s girl friend and the doctor, and they ain’t batting a thousand. I predict that the girl is going to turn out to be a ‘prophet’ character who senses that something is wrong even if she can’t articulate it, is disbelieved, and ultimately perishes. The doctor, as a more rational character, will have to reason his way to the truth and hence will arrive at it more slowly—but because it will take time, he’s going to last longer. 🙂

Thus far, we could be speaking almost of a European story. But the fact that this is Japanese adds another layer of meaning: Colonialism. Japan has not always had a smooth relationship with the colonial Western powers, and the intrusion of an explicitly European story with European characters into a Japanese town strikes me as a depiction of the negative side of colonialism. It begins with the destruction of Japanese culture (the Jizou statues), the rejection of Japanese tradition (the small, traditional town) in favor of the Westernized big city, and Megumi’s confusion of a European-style horror story with a European-style fairy tale. On this last point, Megumi effectively stands for someone who only sees the good in welcoming in Westernism and abandoning Japanism. And not coincidentally, she is its first victim.

Representing colonialism as vampires I find appropriate, too: They want to take over, but by slow and unobserved absorption rather than by an obvious show of force. It’s insidious, kind of like the twist near the end of Outbreak Company which is a more obvious critique of colonialism and of Japan for accepting and imitating it.

That makes sense to me! I’m looking forward to watching episode 2! 🙂 In the meantime, have you seen Shiki or read Dracula, dear readers? How did you enjoy them? And as always, thanks for reading!