Despite all the dead bodies piling up and also, uh, un-piling-up (more than fourteen, I’m pretty sure!), life continues as usual for some of the citizens of Sotoba…

Little kids still fall and scrape their knees. Doctors lock their undead wives in rooms and wait on edge for them to wake up. Scheming grandmothers pit father against son. Epic facial hair unceasingly rules the day. Hot blonde ladies in sparkly low cut hot pants jumpsuits prowl the street. And a poor dumb man falls for the old “sexy vampire seduction” trick.

Everybody’s pretty sad and it’s really starting to bum me out. At least Awesome Mustache continues to fight the good fight! Oh, wait. He passes away and Junior Monken Cheese has to deliver the news to Papa “Crazy Eyes” Monk, but all Papa is interested in delivering the mail. Junior is all, “this isn’t my job! I’m a monk!” and Papa is all, *CRAZY EYES*, so Junior is like, “ok, sure thing, pops.”

Then Megumi visits Kaori and Akira’s house and freaks everybody out with the news that Daddy’s dead. This probably doesn’t freak them out as much as finding his dead body, though. But no prob, Mommy calls the new undertaker in town and they show up instantaneously. Now that’s service!

Back at Casa del Doctor, the Doc tries to eat his dinner in peace while his Mom runs her mouth and is generally unpleasant. The Doc muses that it’s been almost five days since his wife dies and he’s starting to get annoyed that she hasn’t Risen yet. So he goes to check on her and SCARYTHINGS and oh, wait, just a hallucination. Oh, wait, again, she’s actually sort of alive? Way to doctor, Doctor.

Ooh! Ooh! We finally get a little sneak-peek into the Vampire Camp! Guess what? They have a House Mom/RA named Yoshie who sends them all to bed when they get grumpy and dispenses advice when needed. Aww, it’s like Vampire College!

Anyway, Megumi is getting impatient that Yuuki hasn’t Risen. Yoshie very unhelpfully reminds her that things are different in big cities – you know, cremation and all. Then Masao wanders over to act like a jerk and Megumi slaps him around. Hey, no horseplay in Vampire College! Lights out!

But it’s not all bad news: Yoshie lets slip that Megumi could be assigned to a big city contingent of vampires. Yay, dream come true! Then we find out (because she has to explain it to Masao, who is a Risen but also totally out of the loop) that some Risens need to take field trips to the city because they can’t hunt in town, or something.

Cut to the Doc filming himself in his dead wife’s hospital room. There’s a couple directions this could go, all of them pretty gross. I vote torture. Torture?? Yes??

Cut AGAIN to the Doc calling the amazing nurse whose name I can never remember – and her house! While she’s asleep! In bed! With a man! In a sexy nightie! And makeup! (I mean, she’s in the nightie and makeup, not the man.) Nurse is kind of a sexpot, who knew? I’m officially off Team Torture and onto Team Hooray For Anime Characters Who Are Sexy And Don’t Look Like Children Or Ridiculous Parodies Of Conventional Beauty, or THFACWASADLLCORPOCB for short. Well, it’s a little shorter.

Back to the Doc. Aw, shoot. I guess I’m on Team I’ll Settle For Torture? First he does all kind of doctory experiments with blood and wifey wakes up but she’s scared and pathetic and unthreatening and now I think I should switch to Team No Torture…

Sooo…torture? He injects her with pesticides (yikes), shakes bells in her face to scare her, shows her religious idols, then cuts on her and sticks a drill in her brain and finally stakes her, all while she screams and struggles. Folks, this is maybe the darkest Shiki has ever been or will ever be.

Then Monkasaurus shows up and the Doc is like, oh hey come on in…TO MY OPERATING ROOM OF HORRORS! Back away slowly, dude. Back away slowly.

Sooo…torture. I have to admit, I thought for sure Shiki would totally botch this scene and make it horror-lite like everything else, but wow. It was pretty horrific. Looking back to the initial preview, Shiki sort of told us it would be bad, but my expectations are so low that I guess I didn’t put much stock in the warning. Wow. I feel gross for being so excited for it.

How do feel about the torture scene? Too gory? Not gory enough? Do you think this is a sign that Shiki is going to get dark for real or just an empty promise? Is “dark” a place where you want Shiki to even go?