***Warning, the following may contain spoilers for Sankarea. Reader discretion is advised.***
Series Synopsis
Chihiro Furuya (voiced by Ryohei Kimura) has always loved zombies. There’s almost nothing he doesn’t know about them. To the point where he’s developed an unusual obsession. It’s not that he isn’t interested in the opposite sex. He just prefers girls of the living dead variety.
Things would've stayed there. But when Chihiro loses his beloved cat, he decides to put his knowledge to the test. What if there was a way for the dead to come back?
During one of his experiments, Chihiro cross paths with Rea Sanka (voiced by Maaya Uchida). The beautiful young lady grows interested in what Chihiro is hoping to do. Over time, she tells of the suffocating relationship she has with her family. Rea also mentions how it might be nice if she could back and start a new life.
The two decide to bet everything on one final concoction. Which, like all the rest, appeared to fail. Unbeknownst to Chihiro, Rea drank some of the potion.
Afterward, Rea’s family learns of Rea sneaking away and blames Chihiro for inspiring such disobedience. While trying to get to Chihiro before her family, Rea is involved in a horrible accident. One that does take her life. Then the unimaginable happened.
Chihiro and Rea were, in fact, successful with their last attempt. Rea manages to come back as a zombie.
For Chihiro and Rea, death was only the start for them.
Series Positives
I wanted to like this one. I really wanted to like this one.
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| Rea |
The idea of this series grabbed my attention. It reminded me of Dusk Maiden of Amnesia. A series I want revisit one day because I enjoyed it quite a bit. In that show, the lead character fell for a ghost girl. A solid mix of comedy, mystery, and tragedy, it’s worth a look. I thought Sankarea could be something similar. Just replace ghost with zombie.
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| Chihiro |
There were a lot of things I liked about Sankarea. It had many good ideas. Good ideas which were well executed and paid off. In terms of quantity of mistakes, what this series did right outnumbered what it did wrong.
Too bad what this show did wrong, sucked all the life out of it. That’s not a zombie joke. That was what happened. But let’s put that to the side for now.
First thing, Sankarea looked amazing. More than that, it was stunning. Each scene was, at a minimum, well-crafted and beautiful. Then when it needed to make a point, this show turned jaw dropping. I won’t say it was all pleasant to look at. Though that had nothing to do with the animation or artwork. There were parts of this series which weren’t pleasant by design. This show looked nice. Making it hard to turn away.
I’m also not going to lie, Rea was beautiful. Giving her those red eyes was a gorgeous touch.
Unfortunately, the visual charm of this show was a double edge sword of effectiveness. Which is, again, me getting ahead of myself. I want to focus only on the good for now.
The Characters
Let’s address the white elephant. It sure was convenient how Chihiro was the biggest zombie fanatic. Not only that, he had a unique zombie-girls-only policy. A little heavy handed if you ask me. I don’t think this series had to go that far to set up this chance in a million scenario.
But it did. And I have to give it to Sankarea. It made it work.
As we move on from here, I need to tread lightly and be careful with my words. I liked most these characters as people. Yet I loved all these characters as characters. There’s a key difference in that.
For these characters as people, I’ll stick with only Rea and Chihiro. But I want to give a quick mention to Ranko (voiced by Sayuri Yahagi) because she knew how to see the big picture. She had deep rooted feelings for Chihiro. She didn’t like the idea of Rea encroaching on that. She had her insecurities. Except she also recognized Rea had died. The situation was unusual, to say the least. As well as not Rea’s fault. Due to this Ranko could remain on good terms with Rea while still acknowledging her as a rival.
As for Rea, like I said, an unusual situation. She didn’t start off dead. It took a while for that to happen. And that was a good choice. It gave the series the chance to build the tragedy of her death. I’m going to stick with that word “tragedy” even though Rea was more or less okay with it all. I do so because she didn’t deserve what happened to her.
That has little to do with Rea dying, but more of what her life was like before her death. This series drove home the point of this being a girl looking for help. Though her confidence wasn’t great, she didn’t lack it. Though her words were timid, they were clear. The problem was, she didn’t believe she had the strength to give her feelings strength. Rea was searching for support.
When she found it, you could see the happiness she was feeling. Granted, this was after she died. But that had little consequence for her.
Sankarea, through Rea, did a great job of showing a character rise from the deepest of depths.
Chihiro’s role in that can’t be understated. The lengths he went to help Rea couldn’t have come from his zombie obsession. Though zombie Rea was alluring to him, his feelings went further than simple attraction.
Staying up late researching. Always trying to find what worked. Never giving up. And being there for Rea. Chihiro put all his energy to ensure Rea could live a normal life. I can’t imagine someone doing all that for the sake of a fantasy. Or I can’t imagine someone doing that and sticking with it.
Often Chihiro had to deal with an unfortunate dilemma. While he wanted Rea to do all the things she wanted to do, he had to keep reality in mind. Rea was dead. Her body was acting accordingly. Though it hurt him to protest, he knew there were limits. Even then he often gave in and went with what Rea wished.
Fortunately, Rea also realized Chihiro was looking out for her best interest. She was never unreasonable in her requests. She knew what the consequences were and she was fine with them. Although small, this gave Chihiro some peace of mind. Well, that and being over restrictive would’ve made Chihiro no better than Rea’s father.
Hence the distinction for characters as characters. Rea’s father, Dan’ichiro (voiced by Unsho Ishizuka) was a good villain. This was the kind of character you don’t want to see succeed. He was a clear and present threat to both Rea and Chihiro.
As a person though, this guy can go die in a fire. There are plenty of things which fill me with rage and anger. There are, however, very few things I that make me sick to my stomach. What Dan’ichiro was is one of those things. Had Rea not died and Chihiro stepped in, I firmly believe he was on his way to being even worse.
It doesn’t matter how vile or despicable a character can be. If they work for the story then they are a good character. And good characters were something Sankarea had.
Atmosphere*
That asterisk is deliberate. There's one, huge exception to what I’m about to say. That exception was the direct reason why I couldn’t enjoy this series as much as I wanted to. Other than that, though, Sankarea knew how to create atmosphere. And there were two areas where this show excelled.
The first was romance. Not only with the relationship between Rea and Chihiro but with all the baggage that came along. Going off what made these characters so good, many times someone had to face their feelings. Often this was Rea or Ranko. And there was a great scene between them where this came to a head.
They admitted their love for Chihiro to each other. They made it clear they had no intention of giving up on him. Yet they also encouraged the other not to give up. This would be a long struggle. They decided to have the best woman win.
The second area took me off complete guard.
Before watching, I noticed Sankarea was listed as a comedy, a romance, and…horror? I thought to myself, “Okay, sure. The zombie must be the horror. I’ll play. Let me see what your version of ‘horror’ is.”
My condescending attitude has never been so wrong. Sankarea got creepy at times. And on a few glorious occasions, downright terrifying. There was one scene, in particular, that was a good as Yamishibai at its best.
This one moment tempts me into recommending this series. But I’m not going to do that because I can’t do that.
Series Negatives
We’re going to start off small.
Perhaps I’m way off base on this one. I could’ve sworn Rea being a zombie was a secret. Or at least it was meant to be.
I would say everyone sucked at keeping it a secret, which they did. Except there were a lot of people who seemed to know. And they had no reason to know. I’m not sure how both Chihiro’s sister and Rea’s stepmother found out. They were never told. They shouldn’t have thought Rea was a zombie. Yet they still knew she was.
This was odd, but not the worst.
There were times when Sankarea chose not to continue the story right away. There were many episode cliffhangers that weren't addressed.
One instance of this was when it seemed Rea was about to turn into the classic Hollywood zombie. The flesh eating kind. The episode ended with Rea looking at Chihiro with an unnatural hunger in her eyes. Then the next episode had nothing to do with it. We instead got filler.
This wasn’t even the worse example. I only chose this one because it was the least spoiler heavy.
And still, this didn’t ruin the show.
The ending sucked. That’s because there was no ending. This show just stopped. I thought maybe the OVAs would continue. That would’ve been annoying. Yet at least there would’ve been closure. No, instead we got sequel bait. This series aired five years ago. I don’t think there’s going to be another one.
And still, this was fine. Sankarea would've remained fun at the very least. I would’ve even considered it a great romance anime worth checking out. Even with all these problems, this series would’ve remained enjoyable. If not for one thing.
Conflicting Atmosphere
As I said, Sankarea knew how to create an atmosphere. When it wanted to be cute and charming, it was. When it wanted to be tense and frightening, it was. To an amazing degree. And when it wanted to be silly and goofy, that was the problem.
This series was way too lighthearted for its own good. While there were funny moments, most were way out of place. There was never any cooling off period. Whenever something serious happened, the next scene would try for a joke.
For instance, when Rea died. It was graphic. Way more so than what the level of comedy this show was going for called for. Especially since the series played up this moment. As it should have. This was the key event that made Sankarea, Sankarea.
It’s hard to be in the laughing mood after something like that. But this series could’ve gotten away with it. Though it would’ve been shaky, the comedy could’ve come back. It tried and would've succeeded. Too bad that ship sank long before this.
Sankarea had a scene which should’ve been an amazing, albeit sad moment. Except it was ruined because it was shrugged off immediately. It was never once mentioned later on. And this show's answer to it was humor.
I don’t want to laugh at this series' jokes. I want it to acknowledge the fact that Rea attempted suicide.
For her entire life, she was the victim of an abusive family. Her stepmother was cold and uncaring, which was bad on its own. But her father…
This series threw about the word “overprotective” like that was what was going on. It wasn’t. He was obsessive. If someone looked a Rea wrong, intentional or not, that person’s life was ruined. Rea couldn’t have friends. She couldn’t go out without being watched. She couldn’t enjoy the things she liked because he father deemed them inappropriate or filthy.
And then there was the sexual abuse. Rea’s father insisted on taking naked photos of her. Something she did not want. She made it clear she did not want it. But that did not stop him. Plus, had things continued as they were, he was on a path to becoming much worse. Much, much worse.
Rea reached her lowest point. To her, there was only one way out. Then when her attempt failed, the disappointment on her face was like a dagger through the heart.
“Wow, that was a dark place you went, show. How are you going to follow that up? Oh, checking on the silly shenanigans of Chihiro’s household. I see.”
F@#$ off. Cut the slapstick s@#$ out. Don’t treat this like it was nothing. I couldn’t enjoy Sankarea after this. It was always in the back of my mind.
This series had so much it wanted to do. And it did all those things well. Except it never took into account how these different atmospheres affected each other.
Could such a dark subject matter and dumb comedy work together? I won’t say it’s impossible. I don’t know how you'd do it. But this wasn’t it.
Final Thoughts
I can’t recommend this one. Even though I know I’ve recommended anime which are objectively worse.
Sankarea was a beautiful series. It had amazing characters. At times this was a fantastic love story. As well as an effective horror story. There are so many things to like about this show.
Yet there were plenty of storytelling choices which were questionable at best. And downright disgustingly misguided at worst. This series took on more than it knew how to handle.
As I said in the beginning, I wanted to like Sankarea. I wanted to give it a thumbs-up. But that's just not going to happen.
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