(SPOILERS AHEAD!!!)
Recently I saw a recommendation for a fairly old anime from 2010 called Shiki, and with an interesting premise to boot: a vampire family moves into a rural village, bringing their filth with them and changing the lives of the villagers forever. Looking at it through the lens of JQ pilled individual, I thought it was a remarkable story with a strong allusion to the situation that is so common in the real world - a tiny community infiltrated by the usual suspects, their struggle, the evil behavior of the newcomers, the immense difficulty of rallying the people against the threat, and the inevitable violent reaction to the foreign invader. It's a *very* slow burn, and the anime takes a long time to get to the good stuff, but trust me, it's worth it.
The series begins by following the mundane life of a weirdo misfit and a fuckup girl who hated the village and longed for city life, yet she couldn't leave because she had an unrequited crush on a newcomer - a handsome boy who always tried to stay out of trouble and not get involved with anyone (I'll refer to him as SchoolMC from here on), and he was honestly annoyed by her pathetic attempts at attention whoring and did a good job of ignoring her at all times.
At the same time, the villagers are a little spooked by another new arrival - an eccentric family that has built a giant, spooky castle surrounded by fog on the hills overlooking the village.
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Where did they get the money? Who are they? What do they want? Why are they here? No one knows, and yet the village welcomed them - their benevolent nature couldn't allow them to reject people seeking refuge, no matter how strange they were. And the village was a perfect place for vampires, too - remote, quiet, with unsuspecting, kind, trusting people, and with the custom of always burying their dead instead of cremating them. A true paradise.
And what do they do the first moment they show up? The guy who drives the truck and moves the furniture for the family stops in front of one of the houses in the middle of the night and blares the truck's horn for a few minutes - just to establish the dominance of their future tormentors and for the lulz.
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As will be revealed later, this guy is a special kind of vampire - something of a daywalker without the typical weaknesses of regular vampires, who can't enter without being invited, who fear sacred symbols and burn in the sun. With an undying loyalty to the family, he's a perfect golem. He's an enforcer, henchman, and bodyguard all in one, prowling the village during the Sabbath for all vampires - in the daytime, scouting for new victims and taking out the people the family deems dangerous. He's undoubtedly one of the biggest thorns in people's sides.
Coincidentally, there has been a strange series of deaths in the village - perfectly healthy people are found dead and decomposing right in their homes, seemingly dying for no reason.
The village doctor is baffled.
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While his liberal monk friend, who works at the local temple, mourns the victims.
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Soon, the loser girl from the beginning goes missing. The entire village tries to find her, and when they do, she seems completely out of it - half-dead and drained, complaining that she feels extremely sleepy. It turns out that she went to the castle to see the new family, and what happened there is anyone's guess. The last thing she remembers is meeting the "mother" and "father" of the vampire family. Later that day, she dies of acute heart failure. A healthy young teenager at that, and understandably everyone is baffled.
The doc works hard to investigate the source of this new affliction, with the first theory being that it's some kind of epidemic of a new viral infection. No one knows what's going on, and soon more people start dying - with exactly the same symptoms as the loser girl - drained, languid, and extremely pale.
Meanwhile, the monk meets the vampire family's "daughter" at night - on the pretext that she has a rare disease that prevents her from walking around during the day. It turns out that the liberal monk is a writer with several novels under his belt, and that at some point in the past he tried to kill himself - he was that sick of this village and the unwanted duties he inherited as a member of the temple family.
With more victims appearing every day, a strange thing occurs - the victims quit their jobs shortly before their deaths, and are quickly replaced by some new guys no one has ever seen - all of them with a sickly pale complexion, and what's interesting is that they only work night shifts. That's right, the vampires have already started to replace the villagers with their own, the police being one of the first positions.
The doc sends the sick to the government hospital outside the village, but they die there, too. Anemia, complex organ failure, it's all very strange. The village nurses speculate that if it's viral, they should get sick too, but they don't. Some people didn't die as quickly as the others either. More confusion. The doc tells them to keep it to themselves so as not to cause a panic.
Meanwhile, the SchoolMC starts seeing visions of the loser girl. Disturbed and upset, he starts sleeping at his friend's house. And one night he sees her - now turned into a vampire - biting his friend's neck. What a nightmare. But was it just a bad dream? Things get serious when everyone's beloved friend suddenly dies the following night.
The SchoolMC, now on his way to become redpilled, makes an educated guess that these people might be some kind of vampires. In fact, the village has a myth about people rising from the grave, and it's a very similar case. He approaches the doc and reveals this information, which blows his mind - from now on, he'll try to approach the subject from this angle, assuming it's the work of a vampire, as the virus theory is rapidly being debunked. Despite his skepticism, his new methods yield extreme results - a blood transfusion and a night vigil with his monk friend helped one of his patients slightly improve, unlike any previous ones.
Speaking of the devil, one of the recent victims finds himself in the grave. He has risen and panics at his predicament, only to be rescued by the golem, who introduces him to his new existence as a vampire. He takes him to a house with a victim to feast on and tells him that they kidnap people from nearby towns so that the new vampires can have their first taste of blood.
Meanwhile, the SchoolMC goads a pair of local kids into digging up the grave of the loser girl to prove whether or not she rose from the dead. They find out that she did, as the grave was empty. On their way back, they are attacked by one of the vampires, which they manage to thwart. They find out that he was extremely cold to the touch and that he wasn't breathing, fearing that they might have killed him. They end up burying him in the same grave. The next morning, however, the grave is empty again.
Back to the doc, and the vampires planning to crash the vigil. The patient awakens from her sleep, extremely lucid despite being unconscious most of the time, and calls the vampires to her, proving that those who are bitten are under strong hypnosis to follow their orders. The doc manages to protect the patient the first night, but the second night the golem leads the charge personally, overpowering the doc and warning him to stay out of their way or else. The patient dies the next day. The doc is now royally pissed.
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The vampires are also on to the SchoolMC's shenanigans, gaining access to his house and waiting for him to arrive. When he returns, the vampires are gone, but the place is no longer safe. He demands an explanation from his father and he realizes that he has made a big mistake. SchoolMC puts all kinds of homemade crosses all over his room to ward off the evil. But then it turns out that his family is a bunch of liberal contrarians, especially his father who is an atheist, and he throws out all the crosses, leaving SchoolMC defenseless against the next attack. The vampires, being the scoundrels that they are, use his newly resurrected best friend to attack him, and he ends up getting bitten.
At the bar, the doc tries to gain the support of his fellow men, but all he gets in return is a look of disbelief. The doc is convinced that it is no longer an epidemic, but he cannot speak freely for fear of scaring the normies by revealing his power level too much, on top of being watched. But the normies do what normies do, and they refuse to buy it. He gives up and leaves, advising them to cremate all the bodies of their relatives from now on.
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Meanwhile, the local madcap crone medium storms up to the castle with a group of curious onlookers, claiming that the castle family is behind all the tragedies. The doors open and the father of the family comes out to calm everyone down, during the day no less. The doc happens to be nearby and volunteers to check the father's pulse. He finds that he's a warm, breathing, living human being, a shocking revelation. Later it turns out that he was a shabbos goy - the vampires never turned him, yet he served the family as a human, probably for this very scenario. In the end, it just reinforces the belief that it's all some crazy conspiracy theory that can't be trusted, so the villagers all laugh at the crazy old woman, humiliate her, and go home.
The vampires don't leave the SchoolMC unscathed either, making sure he either turns or dies. His father doesn't help matters much by removing all the sacred symbols that the previous two kids had brought to sanctify his room. He succumbs by the morning, as his father discovers his corpse, completely losing his mind as he realizes he's to blame. His wife, pale and probably bitten and under hypnosis, also leaves him.
The doc's wife, who arrived the other day, gets a little too chummy with the golem and ends up contracting the same disease as all the other villagers. The doc knows there is no way to save her, so he decides to use her as a sacrifice for research - after all, he always wanted a live specimen.
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Five days after her death, her body finally shows signs of life. He records his findings on videotape for posterity, trying all sorts of injections and incisions to find their weaknesses, while his wife - now a vampire - begs him for mercy, but the doc never backs down. He discovers that the guaranteed way to kill them is to stake their heart or prevent blood from reaching their brain by either damaging it or decapitating them. As he puts his wife out of her misery, his liberal friend finds out what he's done and leaves in disgust.
The doc, now with concrete proof of his findings, tries again to recruit people at the bar, but they are still completely blind and deaf to his pleas. "Please, I need your help. I can't stop it by myself," he says. "You are tired and delusional," they respond. "We've received the baptism of modern rationalism. We can't help you." They even admit that they've been brainwashed and that they can no longer change their perception of the world. "We'll just wait and see (2 more weeks). Everything will be back to normal by then." Disappointed and dejected, the doc leaves.
He goes to the district office to create a scandal, only to find out that every single worker has been replaced. They claim that no one died and that he's just peddling controversy for controversy's sake. He tries to disprove them with written records of his findings, but instead he is rebuked by the mother of the family, who happens to be chilling in the office at the time. She openly tells him to shut up or else. After such a stern warning, he realizes that he might be screwed. You can't negotiate with these vampires, diplomacy will never work - they want blood and they see you as cattle, always.
At the same time, the vampires begin to make a mockery of the village's sacred processions to bury and mourn the dead, turning them into a cheap TV-tier show performance that shocks many villagers. They open their new funeral office, where bodies are preserved in the hidden basement right after the procession for the ease of mass turning the dead, all led by a gay eccentric vampire. A new clinic staffed by vampires also opens, now that they know the doc is openly hostile to them.
Later, the doc is approached again by SchoolMC, who tells him that he's not alone. Apparently, SchoolMC was lucky enough to turn into a golem variant, he refused to bow down to the family, and he was really pissed off and determined to fight. A small ray of hope for Team Human.
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The end is near. Some villages, aware of the vampire problem, decide not to fight and join the winning team. More of the core cast are killed or turned. The doc also gets a night visit from the mother of the family, who bites him and instructs him to burn all evidence. Even his liberal monk friend is on his way to full betrayal (which he does later). Is this it? Is this the end?
As things descended into utter madness, the vampires openly gloated about their victory and became arrogant and careless. That's what the doc decided to exploit. And it just so happened that today was the day of the village's holy festival. Seizing the opportunity, he persuades the mother and invites her to go out at night to meet the people of the village. Scenting no mischief, she readily agrees, but as they approach the center of the holy ground, she begins to freak out. Everyone's attention is on her, and she orders the doc to let her go at once. But he refuses. What?! A goy refusing the master's orders?! He reveals that he has been bitten by SchoolMC, overriding her control, sending her into a frenzy, but it's too late.
He invites the villagers to check her pulse, and they are horrified to find that there was none! And she was very cold to the touch, as if she were dead. The father of the loser girl who was turned first happens to be nearby and recognizes the smell of the perfume he noticed in his house at the time of his daughter's death, and it hits him - this is in fact the murderer of his child, right there! More and more of the villagers quickly figure out for themselves who the real culprit is, while the doc breaks into a smile. We're so back, and so close!
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However, the shabbos goy, the father of the family, literally drives in guns blazing, but the local powerhouse of an old man recognizes that his son, the driver, has been turned. He gets so mad that he becomes a spitting image of a red-faced demon and overpowers the car all by himself. The son, shitting bricks, hits reverse and speeds away.
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