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"Killing without intent is not murder, but accident. There is no murder without intent. Where there is intent, there is a reason."
Sunako Kirishiki

Shiki (literally Corpse Demon) is a horror novel by Fuyumi Ono, first published in 1998. It was adapted into a manga illustrated by Ryu Fujisaki which ran in Jump Square from 2007 to 2011. The story takes place in a small village called Sotoba where, after the mysterious Kirishiki family moves in, a wave of unnatural deaths begins to occur. It soon becomes obvious to a select few that these deaths are the work of vampires (or Shiki as they're referred to in-series), led by Sunako Kirishiki (pictured right). Can they stop the ranks of The Undead, or will they join them?

The manga was adapted to anime in 2010 by studio Daume. The anime is licensed by Funimation and was released on DVD and Blu-Ray in May 2012.

The novel series is currently being translated here.

Not to be confused with the Nasuverse characters, Ryougi and Tohno Shiki, nor with Shiki Misaki. DEFINITELY not to be confused with THAT Shiki.


Shiki contains examples of:

  • Action Mom: Chizuko Murasako, Masao's sister-in-law. Although staking the vampires is supposed to be the men's job, she's not afraid to stake a few of her own (including Masao himself).
  • Adults Are Useless: Natsuno's parents, especially his father. In one go, Dad managed to let a Shiki into the house, agreed to allow another one in, twice (!) disposed of all the charms and crosses in Natsuno’s room meant for protection (because he hated superstition), made sure to unlock the door (because the village is safe and doing so shows the trust in others), and unlock and open the window. All of this of his own will, without anyone hypnotizing or manipulating him.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Chizuru was a ruthless killer, but it's hard not to feel sorry for her when she is getting lynched while begging for her life when she is discovered as a Shiki by the villagers.
  • All for Nothing: In the end, neither side wins or comes out clean. Near all the Shiki created in the village are killed but at the cost of the villager's sanity. All that work to protect said village ends up meaningless when a brush fire ends up destroying it all. Sunako, the one that started it all, manages to escape but loses her faithful servants. All the survivors move away from the village and refuse to talk about what transpired there.
  • All Love Is Unrequited: Megumi for Natsuno, Tohru for Ritsuko and Seishirou for Chizuru.
  • Alternate Continuity:
    • Both manga and anime borders over this, for the simple fact that Natsuno is one of the biggest threats against the Shiki after he gets turned into one of them himself and begins working along with Ozaki. In the novels? Natsuno never rises as a Shiki thus staying dead, and the little he did against the Shiki as a human is completely overshadowed by Ozaki, who does almost all the planning by himself originally.
    • The same thing can be said for the manga. Yoshie doesn't die when she gets shot by Seishirou, and when the hypnotized humans attack Toshio and his group, Ookawa doesn't kill any of them, even after taking three knives to the back. Though this is shortlived as it ends up following a similar path as the anime.
  • Ambiguously Gay: Natsuno Yuuki. He shows no romantic interest in any women whatsoever, while being quite close with his best friend Tohru, even calling him Tohru-chan. Later, he loses all determination to fight back when he finds out the Shiki sent after him is Tohru, and proposes they run away together. When Tohru refuses, Natsuno willingly offers his own blood, and eventually even lets Tohru kill him. Megumi even kills Tohru in the first place out of jealousy. Natsuno seems much less friendly towards Tohru after he comes back to life, though, and doesn't intend to spare him from the slaughter, but it’s possible that he’s doing this out of mercy.
  • Anime Hair: Taken to new heights.
  • Anyone Can Die: And in fact, many of the cast members do die at least once.
  • Ate His Gun: Seishirou in chapter 35 of the manga.
  • Battle Butler: Tatsumi for the Kirishiki family.
  • Batman Gambit: Chizuru bites Ozaki and commands him to burn all his notes regarding the Shiki and the deaths in Sotoba. He does so, even commenting that he carried out her orders like "a man possessed" (implying her hypnosis was aiding him). He gains her trust so that he can take her to the Kagura Festival, a place filled with religious symbolism and imagery, and expose her as a Shiki. In reality, he was never fully hypnotized by her. Natsuno had bitten him earlier, so his orders take priority over anyone else's. The gambit is a success: Chizuru is staked at the Kagura Festival and the entire village now believes in the existence of the Shiki.
  • Berserk Button: Sunako does not like to be addressed as "Sunako-chan". Anyone who attaches that honorific with her name risks her wrath.
  • Big Bad: Sunako Kirishiki is the leader of the Shiki and the reason behind the events of the series. She masterminds the plan to turn Sotoba into a safe haven where Shiki can live relatively normal lives.
  • Black-and-Grey Morality: The Shiki committed several actions such as killing, kidnapping, brainwashing and blackmailing in order to have their own homes where they live peacefully without having to hide all the time or afraid of humans hunting them. And yet, several of the Shiki such as Masao and Megumi happened to be colossal jerks and took the joy of preying on innocent people. There are sympathetic ones (such as Tohru) who are forced to kill humans with the threat that they will kill their families, or in hopes their victims will rise from the dead too. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Sotoba want to defend their homes and families after they found out that the Shiki are responsible for the declining population and the disappearance and death of their relatives. But they end up killing any Shiki they come across, from strangers to close friends and even the very dead relatives they are mourning. They also kill innocent, still living people with the belief that they're collaborators for the Shiki, and some of them (like Ookawa) straight up enjoy the freedom to kill others without being condemned.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: A good deal of the Shiki, Sunako being the most prominent for it. Makes you wonder how no one noticed anything odd about them from the get-go... (unless of course the eyes were meant for the viewer to have an easier time differentiating people and Shiki.
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Out of the Kanemasa residents, we have Chizuru (Blonde), Sunako (Brunette), and Yoshie (Redhead).
  • Book Ends: The first episode begins with villagers with flashlights searching in the forest. So does the last episode.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: In Chapter 33, Sunako specifically addresses the reader about why she's sharing the story of Cain and Abel.
  • Break the Cutie: Kaori goes Ax-Crazy in Chapter 32 when her undead father tries to kill her. She applies a baseball bat to his head multiple times, and when that doesn't kill him, she gets out a pickaxe to finish him off. She then proceeds to shove his unrecognizable corpse into a closet for good measure. The epilogue shows that she at least somewhat recovers.
    • A majority of the cast pretty much fall into this or Break the Haughty. Otherwise, it’s somewhere in between.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: You'd think a man who juggles candy bars and wears a hot pink suit would be the last Shiki to be put in charge of running funeral services.
  • Cassandra Truth: We see two big examples over the course of the series. The first is when Ikumi, who suspects that the Kirishikis are monsters, tries to rally the villagers, only to get dismissed as a lunatic by everyone, including Toshio Ozaki, who has actually been investigating the vampires but doesn't want anyone to know about them yet. The other is when Motoko tries to convince her family that they're slowly dying, to no avail.
  • Cast of Snowflakes: No villager looks the same if stood side by side each other. The entire village consists of people of different ages, and a wide variety too.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • Remember the guy on the tractor that Megumi sees in the first episode? She'll be seeing him and his tractor again...
    • And many, many more. To name a few, the offhand comments in the first episode, such as the destruction of the Jizou statues (the Shiki are weak against religious icons) and the time discrepancies between deaths in Yamairi (indicates the Shiki's plans for the area and hypnotic abilities).
    • Motoko Maeda, a character who got a chapter and episode dedicated to her story. She also tells the villagers about the daughter who is taking care of her Shiki mother and starts the fire that burns the village down.
    • Seishirou's pack of dogs served as a plot device later on.
  • Children Are Innocent: Little Susumu Yasumori's fear of Seishirou and Chizuru (in contrast to his parents' willingness to invite them over) may be intended to invoke this trope, as may the relatively small number of children (or at least very young children) who seem to have risen up as vampires.
  • Conflict Ball / Rule of Drama: The author’s trying to milk as much drama out of the setting as possible, and as a result the motivations behind many characters’ actions becomes if not straight out moronic then at least alien and nonsensical.
    • There was also one particular scene where one Shiki was going about how they can’t possibly coexist with humans because “who eats livestock piece by piece?” — completely forgetting that things like dairy industry exist, and he doesn’t need to eat them to use them as blood stock. However, in another scene, the villagers themselves deny the possibility of coexisting with the Shiki.
  • Costume Porn: Oh, dear lord. The Shikis themselves dress rather extravagantly. And they make sure the newly-risen do the same too.
  • "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: As Tomio points out to Sunako, had the Shiki simply approached the village openly and in good faith the two populations might have been able to co-exist rather than trying to destroy each other.
  • Creepy Child:
    • Sunako, pulling double duty as an Undead Child.
    • Shizuka and her hand-puppet.
    • It's revealed in a flashback that Masao used to be one of these.
  • Creepy Children Singing: The track Pendulum starts out innocently enough with a childlike chorus singing a La La La melody, only for it to slowly descend into darkness and madness as the tune shifts into a a much grimmer tone with the singing starting to sound less like innocent children and more like they are screaming the melody.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Tatsumi, with a hint of Obfuscating Stupidity. He does it on purpose to get people to trust him and think he's harmless.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Just, generally, a lot of the Shiki. Of course considering how most of the shiki behave after they come back from the dead...
    • Megumi getting her head run over by a tractor. Natsuno and Tatsumi exploding in dynamite (in the midst of a wildfire, at that).
    • While her head isn't crushed in the manga, Megumi does get hit by a truck. She's able to get up and run away a bit before getting five stakes shoved into her chest. Natsuno and Tatsumi also die after falling ang getting impaled in a fissure.
    • Toshio binds his wife Kyoko at the hospital before she rises. Once she does, Toshio videotapes himself conducting horribly painful experiments on her to discover the Shiki's weaknesses. It was bad enough to hear Kyoko crying with fear and pain, begging her husband to stop while Toshio ignores her...but then he brings out the stake. What follows after...
      • Later chapters of the manga indicate that no, she had absolutely no idea. Another woman that rises without another Shiki around stumbles home to her daughter, only to be confused that she cannot stomach normal foodstuffs anymore. So Kyoko, from her perspective, basically woke up to her husband torturing and murdering her out of the blue for no reason at all.
    • In Episode 20.5, the villagers leave the last batch of Shiki from the tunnels alive just so they can tie them up and let them burn to death in the sun. Hasegawa — the only sane male villager from the episode — is the one who ends up killing them to spare them from completely burning to death.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:The villagers' war against the Shiki from Episode 18 onwards is pretty much this trope, with thirty percent of the latter exterminated in a single day and the rest taken down with little effort.
  • Curtains Match the Window: Megumi and Natsuno.
  • A Day in the Limelight: One chapter in the manga, and most of one episode and part of a second in the anime, are shown through Masao's point of view. The two OVAs also center around side characters. The first follows Hasegawa, the café owner whose family was never attacked, and Nao, who attacked her whole family in the hopes they would rise up. The second follows Kanami and Tae, who own the roadside restaurant Chigusa, and Motoko Maeda, who slowly goes insane as her family is picked off by Shiki and eventually sets herself on fire in Yamairi.
  • Deconstruction: The story essentially functions as a deconstruction of horror literature.
  • Deconstructor Fleet: It is essentially one for horror fiction in general, particular vampire fiction:
    • At first it starts off with the a family of Shiki moving to a small village and people start dying one after another, some having risen as Shiki. While the Shiki have been seen as the monsters of the story in the first half, further exploration shows that a majority aren't any different from how they act when they're alive and do retain their personalities and memories like Toshio's newly risen wife, who doesn't know why her husband is experimenting on her. A few are even remorseful for their actions and only do it because the Kirishikis force them under the threat of death to them or their loved ones and their own unbearable thirst for blood makes it even harder to resist. If they are horrible as Shiki, it only means they were horrible people when they were alive too.
    • The 'hunters' or 'heroes' of the story, specifically the village doctor Toshio. He appears to be similar to Van Helsing, the man of logic who's fighting against the Shiki. In this case, his desire to save his patients from the Shiki. As the series goes on however, his repeated failures to save the villagers has him push to the deep end that he does questionable things in an attempt eradicate the Shiki such as experimenting on his newly risen wife to learn of the Shikis weaknesses, and it turns out he doesn't really care about the villagers, he just sees the Shiki issue as a matter of "win or lose". His attempts in trying to convince the villagers to consider the possibility of the supernatural is initially rebuffed with people refusing to see the truth on account on rationalism and when he the villagers do finally learn the truth, the war between them and the Shikis is less of heroic hunters fighting the evil vampire. In reality, it's the remaining townsfolk killing them out of survival; having been emotionally and mentally drained from being tormented by the vampires for the past months finally having some of them snap.
  • Dedication: To 'Salem's Lot.
  • Despair Event Horizon:
    • Mr. Yuuki crosses it when Natsuno seems to die, going pretty much bonkers. The last scene of the anime indicates that he's gotten over it.
    • Toshio as well. His repeated failures in saving the villagers from the Shiki eventually lead him to experiment on his newly turned Shiki wife when she rises.
  • Death Seeker: It's implied in the manga that becoming a Jinrou tends to end up making the person suicidal, with them usually needing something to keep them going to stop it. Tatsumi was a Straw Nihilist who wanted everyone to die, Yoshie clung to the hope of the village finally being a home she can live in peace and blew herself up with dynamite when that was impossible, and Natsuno had accepted that the village itself would be his grave just as he always feared it would be when he was alive. The Shiki aren't different, and many of them (including the mastermind Sunako) express desire to finally die.
  • Diabolus ex Machina / Trash the Set: The villagers managed to save their village! Until a giant fire burned their entire village down.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Motoko Maeda decides to get revenge on her father-in-law who supposedly killed her family by starting a fire that burns down the whole village.
  • Do Not Call Me "Paul"/Embarrassing First Name: Natsuno Yuuki. He prefers people not to call him by his first name because he thinks it's too girlishnote .
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: The deaths of several of the Shiki, especially the female ones. As a case in point, when Toshio Ozaki experiments on poor Kyoko, he first straps her to a table as he stands above her and later proceeds to slash her femoral artery and stake her through the heart while she's crying and begging him to stop.
  • Downer Ending: The story does a remarkable job of making you care about pretty much all the characters, their relationships with one another, and the life of the village itself - so how does it end? With almost all of those likable characters suffering very tragic ends, going insane and performing deeds that border on evil, and all they did to protect their town and families or stablish a safe haven ultimately for nothing.
  • The Dragon: Tatsumi and Yoshie are this to the Kirishiki family. They do all the work when they basically just sit in their mansion looking fabulous.
  • Elegant Gothic Lolita: In the manga, Sunako's clothing is sometimes inspired by Lolita fashion. Megumi's clothing comes close once in a while, but bears more resemblance to Japanese punk and gothic fashion.
  • "Eureka!" Moment: Doctor Ozaki has one when talking with Natsuno.
  • Evil Detecting Dogs: The Tanaka and Kunihiro family's dogs.
    • Love turns highly aggressive towards Kaori's Shiki-fied father.
    • Taro attempts to warn Ritsuko of an approaching group of Shiki in Episode 17.
  • Expy:
    • The Kirishiki parents' mannerisms noticeably resemble those of Isaac and Miria.
    • Going further on this, J. Michael Tatum even voices Seishiro in the dub. Caitlin Glass voices Yoshie Kurahashi, one of the Kirishiki Family's servants rather than Chizuru.
  • Eye Scream: When Yasuyuki is dragged out into the sunlight, there's a close-up of his eye exploding.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death:
    • Megumi gets her head run over by a tractor. Then her heart impaled after her legs still wiggle about after her head is crushed. And this is shonen, not seinen.
    • Kyoko is first traumatized by Toshio experimenting on her, then is crudely staked to death. See Cruel and Unusual Death above.
  • Fan Disservice: In her first scene as a Shiki, Megumi is wearing a low cut top, short skirt and Zettai Ryouiki. The sexiness, however, is mitigated by her unnatural body movements, as well as the fact that she's, you know, a corpse.
  • Final Girl: Kaori, by nature of being the most prominent female survivor.
  • Flat-Earth Atheist: Natsuno's dad, who didn't marry Natsuno's mother because they questioned the principles of marriage and hates religion and holy icons. It comes back to bite him in the ass in the end by discarding the religious icons that could have saved Natsuno from the Shiki.
  • From Bad to Worse: Ax-Crazy and Roaring Rampage of Revenge also apply. Things go completely bonkers around Episode 18, when the villagers discover the existence of the Shiki.
  • Gonk: Masao for one, though several characters could fall into this category.
  • Gorn: The last few episodes, particularly the OVA Episode 20.5, turn into an almost endless stream of this.
  • Graying Morality: The story starts with the humans squarely in the white while the shiki's are in the black. As the story progresses however, both sides start to progressively move more and more into the black, until the point that it get's so muddled that the story leaves up to viewer interpretation over which side was A Lighter Shade of Black.
  • The Hero Dies: Natsuno. Though he gets better, sort of... But ultimately played straight in Episode 22.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: Toshio has a much closer relationship with his old friend Seishin than with his wife. It doesn't last.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: After the villagers find out about the Shiki, the humans become progressively more and more unhinged. Especially Toshio Ozaki, who tortures and kills his own wife.
  • Hidden Depths: Nearly every major character (and many minor ones), which really says a lot given the size of the cast. Hell, this show might as well be called Hidden Depths: the Anime.
  • Horror Hunger: The Shiki suffer from it. It will force them to give in to it no matter what. Even Ritsuko nearly gave in to it in the manga and threatened her friend to stay away from her or else she would bite her. It also causes them to want to drink their targets of blood to death like a drug.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: By the end, the villagers perform some pretty unspeakable acts which the viewer is invited to see. It's made clear that (most of) the villagers were driven to those ends having suffered numerous tragic losses due to months of being systematically stalked and hunted by what amounts to be a supernatural organized crime family. However, almost all the Shiki are villagers, and retain their memories and personalities after rising, so they're really not that different from when they were alive. Except for a few Shiki like Tohru, they don't show remorse - all of the horrible and cruel things they do are things they'd have done/wanted to do as humans.
  • Hypocrite: Seishin chooses to turn his back on Ozaki after he discovers he's tortured and killed his wife yet he has no problem siding with the shiki who kill on a daily basis.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The episodes are written as plain old "The first chapter" when read in romaji, but the kanji used are words related to killing which are also read out like the numbers.
  • Idiot Ball:
    • Natsuno, Ikumi, Akira, and Kaori all know about vampires being able to roam the streets at night, yet all of them leave the protection of their houses at one point or another.
    • Doctor Ozaki doesn’t back Ikumi up when she accuses the newly arrived Kirishiki family. Doing this one thing would’ve likely prevented many of the oncoming disasters.
    • On multiple occasions characters hand-wave away why they couldn’t call an outside help to fix their vampire infestation problem with poorly concocted explanations.
    • Villagers in general act like low-intelligence NPCs. As a minor example, no one is overly suspicious about people suddenly up and leaving the village (and leaving all their possessions behind at that), or that it is always the same vehicle that transported them away. Justified, since it's revealed later they were just in denial that something supernatural was happening.
    • Akira eventually goes into a vampire residence even though he’d been specifically warned against doing that because some vampires were able to stay active during the daytime.
    • After finding out about vampires, on several occasions Toshio has a chance to save a villager that is being thralled (the vegetarian nurse, for instance). He chooses to do nothing and lets them get hunted to death.
    • Chizuru for her 11th hour villain stupidity. She decides to drop her guard around Toshio, believing he's under her hypnosis and lets him take her into the midst of a celebrating crowd of humans. Were she to wait only a little bit longer, she’d have gotten herself the vampiric village she was so eager to have.
    • Same applies to Seishirou for not organising a better protection for his wife when she did decide to get herself into a crowd of humans.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Tatsumi and Natsuno, in the manga.
  • Impossibly-Low Neckline: Practically all of Chizuru's outfits feature this, some more than others.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Ritsuko post becoming Shiki. She refuses to attack others and even submits herself to starvation out of her own morality, despite how strong the inevitable hunger pains become, begging Tohru to let her friend escape before she inevitably attacks her.
  • Ironic Nursery Tune: "Three Blind Mice" while Shiki are being killed in Episode 20.5.
    • In the manga,the villagers sing an old cheesy 70's song while they kill Shiki. Ozaki concludes that they're doing it to keep their sanity and drown the Shiki's screams and pleas.
  • I Was Quite a Looker: Ikumi gets one flashback, looking quite stunning compared to her present appearance.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
    • Natsuno, who is aloof towards others, hates Megumi and resents his parents for moving with him to a small town, doesn't hesitate to protect his friends and take a stand against the undead.
  • Jerkass: Many. Particularly toward the end—as the situation gets increasingly dire we see previously nice characters demonstrating increasingly assholish behavior.
  • Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: The villagers, especially Ookawa.
  • Karma Houdini: Sunako.
  • Kick the Dog:
    • Megumi kills Kaori's dad and then taunts her about it.
    • Tatsumi does this on a regular basis, mostly by tormenting the new Shiki and threatening their still living families.
  • Kiss of the Vampire: Sort of. At least the first few bites seem fairly harmless since they don't take much blood per bite (it takes several bites over several days to be fatal), and the bite marks themselves are so minor that the doctor initially mistakes them for insect bites.
  • Likes Older Women: Tohru, who had a crush on Ritsuko.
  • Mama Bear: Motoko and Chizuko, though they're rather dysfunctional.
  • Madness Mantra: Motoko Maeda's "Damn you old man.... Damn you old man....".
    • Coupled with Sanity Slippage, Nao Yasumori sees visions of her family and breaks down chanting "I'm sorry..I'm sorry".
  • Mercy Kill:
    • To some humans-turned-Shiki, this is a blessing.
    • Hasegawa does this at the end instead of letting the last group of Shiki from the tunnels burn to death.
  • Mind-Control Eyes: The Shiki have a variation of it that they use on humans after biting them.
  • Mirroring Factions: The Shiki are considered monsters, but take a look at what the villagers are capable of doing. In the end, Shiki are completely human in nature.
  • Morality Kitchen Sink: The Shiki vary from sympathetic to monsters, a few of them even resisting their hunger or killing just to feed, but many of them kill for fun. On the humans side we have Toshio, who has crossed the Moral Event Horizon (he still considers killing hypnotized victims to be murder), but most of them wanted to protect themselves from the Shiki. Things become even more complicated when humans have started an uprising against the Shiki and kill them without remorse - even their own family members. Humans then start killing people who so much as have a single bitemark on them and it gets worse from there.
  • Must Be Invited: One of the key limitations of the Shiki is their inability to cross thresholds unless invited in. They usually get around it by biting people outside, then hypnotizing them to let them in whenever they ask.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Happens to Nao in episode 20.5. She believes that her family not rising up with her and her subsequent slaying by the villagers to be her punishment for killing them.
  • Nice Guy: Tohru. Even the resident Jerkass Masao likes him.
  • Non-Malicious Monster:
    • Tohru, who suffers from the guilt some new Shiki face of murdering humans for sustenance and still maintains his gentle demeanor.
    • Several of the Shiki could fit in this category, all things considered.
  • Noodle People: Some of the characters are like this, especially Megumi. What on earth does she eat?
  • Not So Invincible After All: After the Shiki were outed, they didn't stand a chance against the villagers. They don't have any special powers besides hypnosis and being able to see better in the dark.
  • Ominous Music Box Tune: "Pendulum", the song that made the ending of Episode 4 ten times more frightening than it already was.
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Toshio’s Plot Armor’s explanation is that Chizuru forbids her minions to kill him, because she wants to eat him herself. Later.
  • Our Werewolves Are Different:
    • Jinrou, given name by Sunako, are a rare subspecies of Shiki. Tatsumi compares Jinrou to the werewolves that accompany vampires in movies. Different from regular Shiki, Jinrou breathe, have a pulse, are able to walk in the sunlight, can survive off of regular food, and they never actually died. Their blood just changed to that similar of a Shiki.
    • They are also able to take more damage and can almost be inhuman in ability when compared to Shiki or normal humans. Tatsumi revealed that he believes Shiki are just those who failed to become Jinrou. Seishin and Yoshie show this off the best, where Seishin delivers a Curb-Stomp Battle to Ookawa and Yoshie gets her brains blown out but is still alive.
  • Our Vampires Are Different / Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp":
    • Shiki, the term for vampires in this series. These vampires do not display classic traits such as supernatural strength, so they're fairly easily to fight in hand-to-hand combat. This makes it so the villagers can easily fight and kill them even during the night, as they outnumber the Shiki and are better armed.. Also in addition to the traditional symbols like crosses, Japanese religious symbols seem to hurt them.
    • This trope is lampshaded when Natsuno advises Kaori and Akira not to assume that every weakness fiction assigns to them will necessarily apply.
    • Also interesting is that the victims fangs form behind the usual teeth rather than morph them.
  • Perspective Reversal: The monsters are shown for the first half of the anime, but then you see humans becoming more and more vicious.
  • Pet the Dog: Sunako decides to spare Seishin. He comes to her later on his own volition.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: The anime noticeably changed the tone and narrative style of the original novel from something that was more of a mystery to a straight up horror story.
  • Primal Fear: Several, including the fear of illness that even young, healthy people are dying from, as well as, most infamously, the scene of Masao waking up in his coffin, unable to dig himself out or scream for help.
  • Put on a Bus: Subverted. Natsuno tries to do this to Kaori and Akira, but they come back.
    • Invoked literally at the end with the survivors.
  • Put Them All Out of My Misery: Motoko is so upset about the deaths of her family that she burns down all of Sotoba in revenge.
  • Pyrrhic Victory: Even though the villagers succeed in wiping out the Shiki, it comes with the high cost of most of the villagers being killed and the entire village getting burnt down. On the other end, Seishin and Sunako manage to escape with their lives, but Sunako's family and friends have been ruthlessly killed and her dream of a "Shiki Heaven" has pretty much been forever shattered.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: As if the Black Eyes of Evil mentioned above weren't enough, the Shiki tend to get this when feeding or about to feed.
  • Retractable Appendages: Shiki's fangs form from behind their main teeth and can be retracted (think like how a snake bares their fangs).
  • Sanity Slippage: The penultimate episode features the villagers hard at work, chatting happily to one another and eventually tucking in to rice balls and boxed lunches...whilst covered from head to toe in blood from the previous night's Shiki extermination hunts, and the hard work in question being digging mass graves and shifting a huge number of corpses around. Nobody seems even slightly disturbed at what they are doing.
  • Series Continuity Error: Earlier in the series it is established that vampires neither breath nor have a heartbeat. Later in the anime, however, Megumi (who’s a shiki, not a werewolf) is shown to get out of breath after a scene of dramatic running.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: From the villagers' perspective, they risk their lives and their sanity to kill the Shiki and save their village, and after a four episode battle, end up victorious. Oh, and then their entire village burns down. And the main antagonist ends up getting away. The End.
    • From the Shiki's perspective, they finally found a secluded village where burial is still practiced and plan to finally stablish a safe haven for their species there. They spend a lot of time and resources bringing the villagers to their side - then they're discovered, hunted down and brutally murdered. Oh, and then their entire village burns down. The End.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Arguably, nobody in this story ends up completely getting their way.
  • Shout-Out:
    • In Episode 6, Natsuno checks out a couple of horror flicks, one of them titled Texas Chainsaw Mackerel.
    • Natsuno and Tatsumi's final confrontation is very similar to John Reilly and Giorgio's in Castle Freak (1995). The former had just evacuated two loved ones to safety and is going to settle the score with the surviving antagonist, even if it means their death. And it does, but they pull a Taking You with Me.
  • Slasher Smile:
    • The Shiki pull this off on a regular basis.
    • Toshio gets a rather frightening one in Chapter 30.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Very cynical, but interestingly enough manages to hold off on making any of its characters completely without redeeming qualities or at least a Pet the Dog moment or two.
  • Sliding Scale Of Silliness Vs Seriousness: Shiki is far on the serious side of things. What little comic relief there is tends to be presented in such a way that you're not sure if you're supposed to laugh at it or not.
  • Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness: Tohru, Kaori's dad, and Ritsuko are among vampires that can be considered friendly, but depending on what you're willing to accept, even Tatsumi can be seen as a nice guy. Except for Ritsuko, all of them still attack and kill people.
  • Spared by the Adaptation: Somewhat. Natsuno is Killed Off for Real in the original novel. He comes Back from the Dead in the manga and anime, but dies later.
  • Spoiler Opening: In the second opening, Seishin's eyes briefly look the same as when he reveals himself to be a Jinrou at the end.
    • This is done for symbolic reasons in the first opening. Everyone who turns into skeletons in the opening become Shiki at some point in the story.
  • Stages of Monster Grief: You can observe every stage in the various undead characters.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Megumi. She goes to full Yandere territory after being turned into a Shiki, stalking her crush, Natsuno, and murdering his best friend (who she perceived as a threat).
  • Stoic Spectacles: Seishin.
  • Straw Nihilist: Tatsumi and Seishin. Tatsumi outright claims to be a nihilist that doesn't even want to live, and that the only person he cares for is Sunako. Seishin hates himself, his position and the village so much that he ends up siding with the Shiki, as he believes that they at least kill because they have to.
  • Swiss-Cheese Security: One of the children manages to break into the vampire castle by... breaking the backdoor. Which was made of thin plywood.
  • Taking You with Me:
    • Natsuno corners Tatsumi and himself in a large fissure, the latter finally finishing the fight with a large bundle of dynamite.
    • Done by both Natsuno and Yoshie in the manga. With Yoshie doing it with dynamite against the villagers and Natsuno dragging Tatsumi into the fissure filled with Shiki corpses where both are impaled.
  • Techno Babble: In this case, Medical Babble.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: Seishin. He waxes poetic to Toshio about all murder being wrong and walks out on him after he finds out Toshio experimented on and staked his Shiki wife, but he has no problem getting close to Sunako, who's killed countless humans. In his opinion, human sins don't apply to Shiki.
  • Together in Death: Tohru and Ritsuko.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • Too many instances to count.
    • Megumi starts off the tradition by saying she thinks someone is watching her from the shadows in the forest...and then loudly proclaiming "GOOD!" and screaming about how she hopes it's a talent scout.
    • Another particular instance was with the self-proclaimed shamaness Ikumi. While she had the right idea by figuring out the village was being plagued with Shiki and wanted to get rid of them, she executed that idea like a raging bull with no subtlety, planning, or intelligence, going around and making so much noise about the Shiki with the villagers and eventually publicly confronting the Shiki at their own castle that she made herself look like a fool. Naturally, her brash behavior just turns her into a target for the Shiki as they lure her out that night and it's implied that that she's Killed Offscreen.
  • Trailers Always Spoil: The next episode previews do this on a handful of occasions.
  • Uncertain Doom: A couple of characters don’t show up to the very end, even though they’re last seen alive.
  • Unexplained Recovery: Natsuno, although only in the anime and manga. The novels in the other hand...
  • Unlimited Wardrobe: Most of the characters aren't seen in the same casual clothing twice. This even extends to the Shikis.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
    • The Anime Hair is so crazy in this series that this trope arguably applies. Hell, Tatsumi's hair looks like cat ears.
    • The blood once the villagers start Shiki hunting. You'd think that they were playing paintball or something similar.
    • For that matter, Sunako's and Chizuru's weird eyes never seem to put anyone off.
  • Values Dissonance: Invoked. It's noted several times that Sotoba is odd in that they bury their dead rather than cremate them, which is what is done with a majority of dead bodies in Japan. This is no doubt why the Shiki chose Sotoba to live in.
  • The Vamp: Chizuru. Also a literal example since she’s basically a zombie vampire.
  • Vampire Hickey: Bite marks occur a few time in the story when more and more people start mysteriously turning ill and dying. The first example being Megumi, who had gotten bitten after visiting the Kirishiki estate with it stated they found the wound but didn't make the connection at the time when she had turned ill out of the blue and her health rapidly decreased.
  • Verbal Tic: Tatsumi and his "Ya".
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Some shiki want to coexist with humans but think it’d be an impossible task. Many humans torture and kill any shiki they see without any empathy, and explicitly deny the possibility of coexisting with them.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Nurses Satoko and Kiyomi to Toshio Ozaki, after he refuses to act concerned that another nurse named Yuki had gone missing.
  • With Us or Against Us: Boils down to "Are you going to help us kill the Shiki, or do we kill you just in case you might be helping them?"
  • Would Hurt a Child: Most Shikis aren’t particularly picky about their victims, which will typically involve children and young teenagers.

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