Friday, April 27, 2012

Preview: Sankarea


Chihiro Furuya has all the qualities of a normal harem anime protagonists. He's a totally normal guy that isn't good at anything, has two friends, one of them totally perverted, a hot cousin who's always next to him and is   a lit bit too friendly and a cute and quiet (Rei Ayanami style) little sisters. But he has an unusual characteristic: he has a zombie girl fetish. His dream is dating a cute undead girl. When his cat Babu dies, Furuya, whose family runs a temple, gets an ancient book from his grandfather's library that has a recipe for a zombification potion. Furuya goes to an abandoned building to experiment and try to discover the last ingredient since the last page of the recipe was blurred. Suddenly, he hears a scream and sees a beautiful girl screaming in the direction of the bottom of a nearby well. This girl is Rea Sanka, daughter of the renowned Sanka famliy that owns the Sanka High School, a school for girls near Furuya's school. Rea seems to be a perfect lady from a good family. In the next day, he sees her again, but she notices him. They end up trying to ressurect Babu together, but one day Rea makes a strange request: she asks him to ressurect her...


I did my own synopsis because I wasn't satisfied with the ones I found. They tend to depict the anime as just another shounen romantic comedy. That isn't a lie, I guess, but it doesn't really fit with what was shown in the first episodes. I wasn't really interested in Sankarea, but a friend recommended the manga a while ago and I decided to give it a chance. And I was surprised. The anime has shown an unexpected dose of drama and a very disturbing theme. And I don't mean the zombie thing. And this theme is shown in a rather serious and realistic manner.


Furuya isn't an original character in the universe of the boy meets girl anime protagonists, but at least he's not a mediocre one. He isn't as wimpy as most and is able to deal with Rea like a normal person, instead of being too shy, too rude or too horny, as most do. Rea is cute and super nice and she also acts normally around Furuya, not being aggressive or falling madly in love with a guy she just met. She also has a sad and tragic side, which was well explored.

The first episodes of the anime were good and made me interested. I already had some disappointments, including with an anime that mixed zombies and romantic comedy and had some interesting aspects. It was Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka. But Sankarea, at least until now, is far better. If they manage to find a balance between the drama and the inevitable romantic comedy, it'll be a good anime. I really hope they find it, because the possibility of Sankarea becoming another generic harem anime is always there.

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