Summary:

As the victims spread, the priest gets word that the teacher at the local school has also passed away. More and more people are dying as a local police officer has died too and his family fled the town strangely in the middle of the night, while his replacement has glowing red eyes. Even Nao’s kid Susumu and her husband Mikiyasu are done for as well. Meanwhile Natsuno is still haunted by a feeling that he’s being watched at home, perhaps by Megumi’s ghost.

One night Seishin runs into Sunako again. After confirming that the building he’s in front of is a temple and not a church she steps in to admire the morbid stained glass windows. She explains to Seishin how it isn’t sad that young people are dying, because death is universally sad and does not discriminate.

At Toshio’s clinic, the entire staff has a meeting about the recent deaths. It seems that 19 people have already passed away and they are powerless to stop it. They run through various possible diagnosis but none seems to fit. One hospital administrator looks around with shifty eyes as if wanting to escape now.

That night, still feeling that Megumi is following him around even on the bus, Natsuno decides to visit Torhu at his house. Toru confesses to Natsuno that he likes the clinic nurse and that he’s going to ask her out for a drive date that weekend. After that Natsuno sleeps, but is semi-woken up by a feeling that Megumi and tatsumi are sneaking into their room, ready to suck Torhu’s blood.

Reaction:

Well I’ve actually already seen episode 5, but if you don’t know by now that IT’S VAMPIRES, then I don’t know what to say.

Even though the episode was titled ‘Fourth Death’, and Torhu did the classic war movie mistake of talking about a girl that he likes, I was still a bit surprised that he was the next victim. I guess the show did an admirable job of building up the suspense, so I will give it that.

Meanwhile, we have some confirmation of vampire-lore in the fact that it seems like they really do need to be invited into people’s homes before they can enter (Tatsumi+friend being invited by Torhu last episode, and the vampire dad+mom being invited by Mikiyasu to visit their house earlier). We also see Sunako confirming that she’s not entering a real church before going into the building, lest there be any crosses.

Finally one note about the ongoing medical weirdness in the town of Sotoba. So in their little clinic, they have a ton of nurses and support staff, one general practitioner and… A RADIOLOGIST?! I mean really? The most useless of other doctors to have in the town and they have one? How many scans does this guy read a year in this town of 1300? 5? Perhaps this really is set in the 1990s before radiologists could work from home via the internet, but still even then it’s really stupid.

Related posts:

1. Shiki 10
2. Shiki 07-08
3. Shiki 05