Shiki: Episode 4

Now this was a great episode! What distinguished this episode from the previous ones had to be that it actually had a few creepy moments. The scene where Megumi barges into Natsuno's room in a dream successfully scared the hell out of me, as the execution and dark visuals do an excellent job of providing a very creepy atmosphere.

The episode basically consisted of more build up, the doctors learning more information about the deaths while even more people die in the village. My favorite scene had to be the part where the nurses try to figure out which disease may have caused, coming to the conclusion that an infected animal may be the reason why people have been dying. Natsuno also starts to have creepy visions of Megumi being alive, those visions soon becoming a reality (hopefully) in the final parts of the episode when we see a resurrected Megumi and the weird cat guy (Tetsumi) trying too bite Tohru with Natsuno as a witness. I have to say that this was a spectacular way to end the episode, as now that Megumi has resurrected as a vampire (I'm guessing...), this will lead to a lot of interesting plot developments and character interactions later on. Hopefully Megumi will also be less bitchy now that she's a vampire.

GREAT! If she's annoying, we still may get the joy of seeing her getting killed off...again.

Seishin's weird admirer (Who I'm guessing is also a vampire.) is an interesting character that seems to be oddly intelligent for her age. Her voice does annoy me a little though, as I usually don't like young female characters with overly squeaky voices. A problem that I had with Seishin's appearance was probably the fact that no information regarding his hobby of cutting himself was given to us. I'm guessing that he used to be some alcoholic writer, but I would of really appreciated if they developed Seishin, as his appearances are starting to become boring.

Overall, this episode was very interesting. The character models do hinder the emotional value of some scenes, but the creepy atmosphere and great execution of horror sequences made the episode worth watching. Plus the plot developments advanced the story very much, something that the other episodes didn't really do that much due to the focus being too much on Natsuno's bitching.