Everyone Knows and Loves: Shiki

Sunako of Shiki

I wrote about Fyumi Ono on my past blog. She is a famous and talented novelist that writes fantasy, mystery and horror stories. "Shiki", one of her masterpiece of horror, published on 1998. As its first page purposely mentions "To 'Salem's Lot", it is based on Stephen King's bestselling vampire story - 'Salem's Lot - (according to amazon.com) about the slow takeover of an insular hamlet called Jerusalem's Lot by a vampire patterned after Bram Stoker's Dracula--has two elements that he also uses to good effect in later novels: a small American town, usually in Maine, where people are disconnected from each other, quietly nursing their potential for evil; and a mixed bag of rational, goodhearted people, including a writer, who band together to fight that evil.

Fuyumi Ono's "Shiki" also begin to occur a series of bizarre deaths in a quiet small village when a strange family moves into a long abandoned house in the village. They are, as the King's 'Salem's Lot, vampire (in this story,called Shiki), and dead men and women in the village changed into living dead (Japanese called Okiagari). When I read Ono's novel at first time, I was sure it surpassed King's original novel. It was so scary and horrible, and in the middle of story developed rapidly into the perfect storm.

I know, on the other hand, Fuyumi Ono is very famous in Japan, and Shiki has been bestselling book soon; but in other countries, it hasn't translated in English, then almost all of foreign people has never seen this amazing and so scary book for a long time.

Megumi of Shiki

Despite of that, the braking down happened by making into manga by Ryu Fujisaki at 2008, and by making into anime at 2010. The manga version hasn't concluded so far and the latest volume - 9 - just published on last month. However, on the internet, it has already translated in English and everyone can read it by free!

That is why I said that manga and anime has strong retroactive effect. This surprising fact for me was given by my friend on Facebook, Ms. DT. She said to me that she is really fun of anime and manga, and she loves Shiki and want to read its latest volume. I guess she already read the volume of 9 on the internet, she want to read 10, which we Japanese also can't read because it will publish on the winter of 2011. DT lead me to understood that many foreign people knows and loves "Shiki". Many thanks, DT^^