Sankarea

Sankarea is a romantic comedy manga turned anime which revolves around Sanka Rea and Chihiro Furuya. Coming from two different families and two different paths in life, Furuya's life changes for better and worse when Rea — who dies in a freak accident — is then brought back to life by his resurrection potion.

Plot

Rea comes from a family where there is no individual freedom for her to play off. With an overbearing father whose ready to kill the whole world before letting go of his daughter, Rea can barely even go to school without her father's servants following and reprimanding her every move. Furuya on the other hand lives with his younger sister, grandfather and Babu — his pet cat. He's your average teen whose obsession with zombie related movies, video games and comic books have him interested in the walking dead.

One day, Babu manages to get out of the house and is hit by a car. Furuya, who cannot let go of his pet cat's death, plots to bring him back. Babu filled the void in Furuya's consciousness as he's without his mother and father. It's then that Furuya decides to try creating something that'll bring the family cat back to life, but he only delves into this at night in an abandoned lot.

During the course of a few random occurrences, Furuya — who tries desperately to create a potion that will resurrect the dead — finds himself captivated by Rea who runs away to plan her suicide every night. Never mustering the courage to do so, Furuya's interest continues to grow until Rea notices him watching. She then invites herself to bask in his presence during the late nights and is baffled by this odd creation in a bottle.

When Furuya isn't looking and delves into the manuscript hoping to find a perfect combination to top his potion, Rea drinks a good portion of it thinking it's a drug that'll kill her. When it doesn't, she's back to her late-night escapades and is trying hard to rebel against her father's demanding ways.

Furuya is staring at Rea and her father fighting near the tops of a cliff side when he chases her up to stop her from running away. When Rea slips and falls to her impending death, Furuya is stricken with shock, but even more so when she manages to get up after a few moments in time and realign her broken bones. Because of her impulse in taking Furuya's resurrection potion, Rea has been brought back on her own terms. And with her father disgusted and confused by his daughter's transformation, Furuya finds himself caring for Rea while battling a new problem rising in the near horizon.

Overall

I had so many problems with Sankarea, it took me four months to even get through it. And it's only twelve episodes, each being about twenty to twenty-three minutes of the sort. That just goes to show how horribly it was set up with what many can call the "typical" attributes of an anime, the ones I usually stay clear from.

From the beginning, I knew this would be a tough anime to get through, but I gave it a chance nonetheless. I will go on to admit that Furuya and Rea's relationship was something that was beautiful and it's a shame you don't see it until the last two episodes. To think we — the audience — had twelve episodes and have to wait until the end to make sense of the whole thing is absolutely bewildering. If Sankarea was made up in a different fashion, it would probably be on my top favorite list.

This was worse than High School of the Dead. I thought that was honestly never going to be possible, but I stand corrected.

Let me go on to elaborate how inappropriate Rea and her father's relationship was. When it wasn't defined as to why he was being overprotective or why he was doing what he did, it seemed like he was obsessed or even in love with her. Needless to say that the mere fact he'd have professional photographers take naked pictures of her every year as to celebrate her life was more disturbing than half the things that ever occurred in High School of the Dead. Yea, 'creep' doesn't even define what he is. And it's not until maybe the eighth or ninth episode when you find out he fell in love with Rea's mother (who was fifteen at the time) and died during childbirth. And Rea is an identical copy of her mother that forces her father to act out like he lost his mind. I'm sure this whole situation between Rea and her father wasn't intended to be inappropriate, but it gave off a very vile tone to the viewers who were watching it.

And to add to that, by the end he acts as if nothing's wrong and allows Rea to have her freedom because she's technically a walking zombie and no longer his daughter. From something that Rea has been fighting against all her life to be thrown away so nonchalantly was totally baffling. And Rea honestly gets one episode of freedom where she and Furuya have some intense emotional connecting. And uh, that was all.

Another thing: Furuya would've been a favored character if he didn't have a so-called "zombie fetish" where all he wanted was to have a relationship with a zombie girl (which honestly throughout the anime hinted at things that made me uncomfortable).

In all actuality, he was captivated by Rea when she was human so I assumed when she became a zombie that naturally, his feelings would stay the same. Now, she wasn't a Hollywood tall-tale of a zombie — rather — she had full control of her brain functioning and sustained her craving for blood by eating a special type of flower that grew in a garden near the cliff she fell off of.

The actual problem faced in Sankarea was Furuya uncovering a few facts. Rea is still a corpse so naturally she'll begin to decompose over time. When Furuya begins to understand this, he tries to formulate a way to keep her alive and around, but doesn't come up with an ultimatum. So it's given that by the end, she'll actually die.

Embracing this, Furuya and Rea live and enjoy their moments together. By the end, it took an unexpected turn to say the least. Though I'm yet to read the manga, I've done a little scooping around and found out that in the manga series, Rea eats Furuya because she begins to lose prime brain functioning as she's taking on the actual role of a zombie.

In the anime however, she manages to kiss him, but also bite the edge of his lip — infecting him. They leave you at a cliffhanger which is very open ended and obvious that Furuya would later become a zombie beside Rea. If she's still in control of her mind, this would be romantic, but by the looks of things, it just made my over-analysis of the anime ten times more complex than needed. The manga follows the same ending, except that Rea eats out Furuya's heart. He's still infected and learns to live with an artificial heart of course, but...it's still very cliché to me.

I think having embraced the beauty of Rea's diminishing timeline would be perfect. Unfortunately, they had to switch Rea's mindset in becoming this ravenous monster unable to control her sudden hunger and eating Furuya's face off. Regardless, this was just a horrible anime. From the senseless family affairs to the misinterpreted and uncomfortable scenes, Sankarea is a train wreck.