![]() When he fails, Asuka mutters the last line of the film, "Kimochi warui," which is most often translated as, "I feel sick," or, "How disgusting." The End of Evangelion is possibly about hope, but mostly, it's about the venality of the world, the corruption of the powerful, and the inevitability of decay. There's an implication here that humanity might reform, but in that moment, he attempts to strangle Asuka to death against a horizon that's interrupted by Rei's enormous, rotting head. Protagonist Shinji does ultimately survive by affirming the worth of human life, yet the story ends on a shot of him and Asuka alone in the ruined world. Quiet Rei absorbs Biblical power and returns all of humanity to a single consciousness. The impossibility of reconciling these things is what makes Shiki such a resonant horror story. They exist, they must feed, and they're trying to find a way to do both with a minimum of cruelty. The shiki's actions are vile, but the anime never shies from the truth of their tragic situation. Sunako, their leader, understands this intimately, having been turned as a young girl and cast out of the world she'd known. Their attempt to destroy the town is driven by a desire to make a peaceful home for themselves. But what makes Shiki a truly memorable work of horror is the truth of the shiki themselves. Megumi, the first to die, goes from being a small-town girl with big-city dreams to being an undead killer whose disdain for her hometown gains murderous new dimension. Those who are murdered and reborn as shiki see their lives as humans warped into bizarre personalities. The shiki are hypnotic, undying figures of inhuman drives, as utterly unknowable as they are eerily similar to everyday people. Shiki, which chronicles the destruction of a small town by the inhuman monsters that live in the mansion on the town's outskirts, is a classic vampire story. The real terror, in Mima's mind and the viewer's, lies in her world's collapse - sudden, complete, and impossible to forget. ![]() There's a culprit held to account at the end of Perfect Blue, but their actions are only part of the story. ![]() Mima descends into an underworld of illusion, and the viewer has only her perspective to rely upon, one that draws into question the reliability of reality itself. Frantic cuts disorient the viewer, odd scene changes mimic Mima's increasingly disordered mind, and mirrors, screens, and windows refract a world that has lost its meaning. The events of Perfect Blue are themselves horrific, but it's Kon's dizzying approach to their portrayal that make Perfect Blue the nightmare it's revered as. But as threatening faxes pour in and a website entitled "Mima's Room" - containing diary entries purportedly written by Mima herself - gains momentum, Mima realizes not all is as it seems. Mima, our protagonist, has just left the pop idol group that made her famous to become a serious actress.
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