Shiki 1 – Clubbing Is Evil

Come on. All the poor girl wants to do is become a star and hit the clubs. Is that so much to ask?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Unfortunately, horror is not the genre in which characters should dare to dream bigger than they are. Just wanting to hook up is a cardinal sin, and on top of that, Megumi wants to sing, have an active social life and move in with rich white folks? Ready the pitchforks! Forget dying in the first episode — I’m surprised she actually makes it almost to the end! Even without the bit at the beginning of the episode, it would not be difficult to see that she is marked for death. Megumi pretty much craps on every rule for staying alive in horror flicks. If she had a tan, she probably would have died by the eye catch.

(By the way, Megumi dreaming about living with the nice, rich white family slayed me (pun not intended). Ah, if only the rest of us could dream a dream where the white man drops some serious dollars to save us from our dreary lives. It’d be like The Blind Side, except with a bratty Japanese girl instead of a big black dude.)

As a modern teenager, though, you’d think she would be infatuated with the idea of sexing it up with sparkly vampires, in which case the events of this episode would be the best thing that could possibly happen to her. Maybe she is so far in the Japanese boonies that she cannot conceive of sparkly vampires, though; could be a decade before Twilight reaches those parts, in which case the sullen dude who ignores Megumi all the time is about as close as she can get to that romantic dream.

Ah, yeah. You don’t often see brooding of that caliber outside of popular entertainment.

Really, although Megumi was irritating, at least the audience had the carrot of her being sucked dry by vampires by the end of the episode. Yuuki is more annoying to me. All he does is stare, brood and express relief that Megumi won’t be hanging ’round his window anymore now that she’s bitten it. To be fair to him, I would be relieved, too, but there’s no need to be a dick about it. At least wait a day, damn. But what do I know? Ladies love the brooding. Someone will be falling for Yuuki again sooner or later.

I read that he is one of the protagonists in the series, so we’ll have to get used to him being around a lot more. Goody. I know that I am extremely excited to see more brooding, along with a storyline that serves to show that there is more to Yuuki than his douchebag exterior. Maybe he will even go shirtless a few times! We can only hope, right?

Have to give it to Shiki, though: Certainly knows how to deliver the audience-pleasing ending.

Episode does an OK job of setting up atmosphere and mystery. New family seems like the most likely suspects, but you never know with these things. Vampires are a sneaky lot. Plus, who is to say Megumi didn’t just do karaoke with the new family’s daughter all day (they probably have a kickin’ karaoke set-up) and then get ambushed on her way home? Don’t want to assume the worst about our new, rich, benevolent family after all.