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Apr. 11th, 2011 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI have been watching and reading an EPIC TON of shojo recently (more posts on that to come, probably!) so to balance that out, I thought, "I feel like taking a break to watch something kind of creepy for a change! I guess I'll watch Shiki, that seems interestingly atmospheric."
Ha. Hahahahahahaha.
So: Shiki. I picked it because it's based on a novel by Fuyumi Ono, author of Twelve Kingdoms, whose brain I am in love with. Many of Fuyumi Ono's books are really interestingly subversive; Shiki, I eventually decided, is subversive precisely because it plays the vampire thing dead straight. People die, and become vampires. They are still the people they were. Also, they need to eat people to survive. That's it. There aren't any outs - there's no law that says that vampires don't have souls so it's okay to kill them, no convenient ability to survive on animal blood or go vegetarian if they try really hard. I mean, every so often people try to act like one or the other of those is true, and it DOES NOT END WELL. Then again, in this show, pretty much nothing does. (I have never seen a set of vampires that cry sad vampire tears as much as this lot do. I'm just saying.)
The other thing about Shiki is that it's about a small and relatively isolated village, and it feels like a whole village. There are about a million characters, all with very individualized (and sometimes highly idiosyncratic) character designs, and everyone has a family and friends and some acquaintances they sort-of know and some people they don't really know at all. The people feel real; the monsters feel real, too. The monsters are pretty terrifying. That's because they're people, and the people are also sometimes PRETTY TERRIFYING.
The stubbly guy is Toshio, the village doctor; the guy with the glasses is Seishin, the junior monk. They are childhood BFF. Toshio spends a lot of time chewing on cigarettes and snapping at people, and for the first couple episodes I had him kind of pegged as a Dr. McCoy clone - crusty on the outside and a bit hampered by narratively convenient incompetence, but he just wants to save lives so bad! I'm going to start in on the hollow laughter now.
Seishin on the other hand is sort of suicidal and writes nihilistic novels in his spare time. Sunako, the daughter of the new family in town, is a big fan of his books!
NOT THAT SUNAKO IS CREEPY AT ALL.
This series has fantastic imagery (and fantastic music, as well). For the first few episodes, it's all in the atmosphere and the slow buildup while you try to reign in your frustration at the fact that it's taking everyone forever to figure out the obvious fact of VAMPIRES. Then you hit the midway point and all of a sudden you realize that you are shrieking obscenities at your screen.
Fortunately, there is always the inexplicable fashion design to distract you!
Ritsuko is a nurse at Toshio's clinic. She has hidden depths of hardcore, but I couldn't even pay attention to anything about her until a few episodes before the end because every time she was onscreen I was busy staring at her hair.
Just when I got used to the kitty ears of this particular terrifying vampire opponent, he sprang the spiky leopard-print jumpsuit on us.
Tatsumi: making Spike's fashion choices look dignified.
THE HOODIE ONESIE. I also think it's notable that Sunako seems to be blowing ridiculous amounts of vampire fund cash shopping at Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. Her collection of adorable little hats and bonnets is pretty epic.
As for Sunako's ostensible mom, the new owner of the creepy house on the hill - the internet has nicknamed her 'Lady Gaga' and it's easy to see why.
This is just to remind you that even kitty-ears monsters in hoodie onesies can be pretty terrifying when they set their mind to it.
Some of the teenaged semi-protagonists: Megumi, Natsuno and Tohru. Megumi's hobbies: playing dress-up, dreaming about escaping the village, and stalking her crush Natsuno, who is EMPHATICALLY NOT INTERESTED. Natsuno is only interested in Tohru, the sole person he has allowed through his mile-thick boundaries of apathy and resentment about having to move to the boonies. Tohru's hobbies: playing video games, having a crush on Ritsuko and miles of subtext with Natsuno, and being generally a sweet and super-friendly guy to everyone. Guess how well that works out for him in this series. GO ON, GUESS.
I'm talking a lot about this series; I don't know if I'm actually recommending it. It is not a feminist series, for a start. There is a direct 1:1 correlation between the degree to which any given female character is sexualized and the likelihood of her suffering a gross and graphic death that makes me feel sick for reasons entirely different from the bloodshed and horror. It's not that more women die than men - loads of both die, many of them twice! - it's the how.
But on the other hand, I'm still thinking about it days after I finished it, and a lot of what it's doing is enormously interesting. Every vampire story is a metaphor, but these vampires are working on multiple levels. They represent simultaneously the danger of otherness invading the village, and the stagnated isolation of the village itself. The vampires and the village do equal work of the horror. (I think it's hugely significant that the adult vampires, the ones with families, tend to go after the rest of their relatives in the hopes that they'll rise up - they want to keep their families so much that they risk destroying them. Meanwhile, the teenaged vampires have an instinctive horror of attacking their families - either because they want to protect them, or because they totally cannot deal with the idea of eternity with their undead parents, or both. The adults want to hold on, desperately. The teenagers want to escape.)
I don't know. It's fascinating, it's beautiful, it's horrific in more than one way. If you're interested, try checking out the opening theme, which gives a good sense for the style, and also the feel of OVERWHELMING DOOM.
Ha. Hahahahahahaha.
So: Shiki. I picked it because it's based on a novel by Fuyumi Ono, author of Twelve Kingdoms, whose brain I am in love with. Many of Fuyumi Ono's books are really interestingly subversive; Shiki, I eventually decided, is subversive precisely because it plays the vampire thing dead straight. People die, and become vampires. They are still the people they were. Also, they need to eat people to survive. That's it. There aren't any outs - there's no law that says that vampires don't have souls so it's okay to kill them, no convenient ability to survive on animal blood or go vegetarian if they try really hard. I mean, every so often people try to act like one or the other of those is true, and it DOES NOT END WELL. Then again, in this show, pretty much nothing does. (I have never seen a set of vampires that cry sad vampire tears as much as this lot do. I'm just saying.)
The other thing about Shiki is that it's about a small and relatively isolated village, and it feels like a whole village. There are about a million characters, all with very individualized (and sometimes highly idiosyncratic) character designs, and everyone has a family and friends and some acquaintances they sort-of know and some people they don't really know at all. The people feel real; the monsters feel real, too. The monsters are pretty terrifying. That's because they're people, and the people are also sometimes PRETTY TERRIFYING.
The stubbly guy is Toshio, the village doctor; the guy with the glasses is Seishin, the junior monk. They are childhood BFF. Toshio spends a lot of time chewing on cigarettes and snapping at people, and for the first couple episodes I had him kind of pegged as a Dr. McCoy clone - crusty on the outside and a bit hampered by narratively convenient incompetence, but he just wants to save lives so bad! I'm going to start in on the hollow laughter now.
Seishin on the other hand is sort of suicidal and writes nihilistic novels in his spare time. Sunako, the daughter of the new family in town, is a big fan of his books!
NOT THAT SUNAKO IS CREEPY AT ALL.
This series has fantastic imagery (and fantastic music, as well). For the first few episodes, it's all in the atmosphere and the slow buildup while you try to reign in your frustration at the fact that it's taking everyone forever to figure out the obvious fact of VAMPIRES. Then you hit the midway point and all of a sudden you realize that you are shrieking obscenities at your screen.
Fortunately, there is always the inexplicable fashion design to distract you!
Ritsuko is a nurse at Toshio's clinic. She has hidden depths of hardcore, but I couldn't even pay attention to anything about her until a few episodes before the end because every time she was onscreen I was busy staring at her hair.
Just when I got used to the kitty ears of this particular terrifying vampire opponent, he sprang the spiky leopard-print jumpsuit on us.
Tatsumi: making Spike's fashion choices look dignified.
THE HOODIE ONESIE. I also think it's notable that Sunako seems to be blowing ridiculous amounts of vampire fund cash shopping at Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. Her collection of adorable little hats and bonnets is pretty epic.
As for Sunako's ostensible mom, the new owner of the creepy house on the hill - the internet has nicknamed her 'Lady Gaga' and it's easy to see why.
This is just to remind you that even kitty-ears monsters in hoodie onesies can be pretty terrifying when they set their mind to it.
Some of the teenaged semi-protagonists: Megumi, Natsuno and Tohru. Megumi's hobbies: playing dress-up, dreaming about escaping the village, and stalking her crush Natsuno, who is EMPHATICALLY NOT INTERESTED. Natsuno is only interested in Tohru, the sole person he has allowed through his mile-thick boundaries of apathy and resentment about having to move to the boonies. Tohru's hobbies: playing video games, having a crush on Ritsuko and miles of subtext with Natsuno, and being generally a sweet and super-friendly guy to everyone. Guess how well that works out for him in this series. GO ON, GUESS.
I'm talking a lot about this series; I don't know if I'm actually recommending it. It is not a feminist series, for a start. There is a direct 1:1 correlation between the degree to which any given female character is sexualized and the likelihood of her suffering a gross and graphic death that makes me feel sick for reasons entirely different from the bloodshed and horror. It's not that more women die than men - loads of both die, many of them twice! - it's the how.
But on the other hand, I'm still thinking about it days after I finished it, and a lot of what it's doing is enormously interesting. Every vampire story is a metaphor, but these vampires are working on multiple levels. They represent simultaneously the danger of otherness invading the village, and the stagnated isolation of the village itself. The vampires and the village do equal work of the horror. (I think it's hugely significant that the adult vampires, the ones with families, tend to go after the rest of their relatives in the hopes that they'll rise up - they want to keep their families so much that they risk destroying them. Meanwhile, the teenaged vampires have an instinctive horror of attacking their families - either because they want to protect them, or because they totally cannot deal with the idea of eternity with their undead parents, or both. The adults want to hold on, desperately. The teenagers want to escape.)
I don't know. It's fascinating, it's beautiful, it's horrific in more than one way. If you're interested, try checking out the opening theme, which gives a good sense for the style, and also the feel of OVERWHELMING DOOM.
