Sankarea: Undying Love (Discussion 7) - Tease of the Dead!

Rea’s father has finally given up on trying to control her life… er… undead life! This means that it’s now up to Chihiro to look after her and find a way to preserve her body!

Sankarea: Undying Love (Discussion 7) – Tease of the Dead!

What happened?

I have just finished rewatching Sankarea: Undying Love. Now, I can get back into the manga without any hesitation. This discussion was originally posted in 2019 when I first watched it with Yomu from the Umai Yomu Anime Blog and is still incredibly accurate. Overall, I’ve enjoyed the series more this time around, but the same problem persists and that problem is Chihiro… and the complete lack of a zombie apocalypse even though it looked like it was going to happen for a teeny tiny moment.

As with the other discussions, nothing beyond this point has not been changed. We will be discussing episodes twelve and thirteen. These are our opinions from 2019 which were cryogenically frozen so that they could be reanimated in 2022. All right, that’s enough of a tease. Let’s get on with it!

Sankarea Episode 12 Ranko and Rea together

What did you think?

This is it! We’ve now reached our final Sankarea collaboration post, but worry not, because like a sexy zombie we’re going to rise up once more… We’ll get to that later, but for now, it’s ZomRomCom time and there’s likely to be some Chihiro bashing! For our final post, we’ll be looking at episodes twelve and thirteen. So, Yomu. How’s it going and would you care to start us off on episode twelve?

Well, episode 12, in my opinion, was just as much of a letdown as many of the previous episodes. Episode 11 had hinted at some strife between Rea and Ranko, but we didn’t get any strife… instead Ranko just sort of passed the baton to Rea, for some reason. I didn’t expect it because it didn’t seem to make sense, because in all of the previous episodes Ranko has been willing to fight for Chihiro. What’s your take on the love triangle being dismantled like that?

I didn’t feel like it was dismantled but it did feel like Ranko was telling Rea not to give up because she wasn’t going to. It was as if she wanted to fight for him. Why two girls would be fighting over Chihiro in the first place is another question altogether?

The thing that really got me was how Chihiro had been fighting to protect Rea and get her away from her father, but once he’d done it, all of a sudden it was really hard work and a lot more pressure than he’d imagined. Then he started turning into her father, trying to control what she did and where she went. He’s a real catch, ladies!!!

Sankarea Episode 12 Yasuda Chihiro and Mogi

That makes sense. I was looking for blood and got civility, which led me to think the triangle was done for. Which, to be fair, it basically was considering we’re nearing the end of the anime. Chihiro never ended up finding out the secret to keeping Rea from decomposing though, instead, she is just chowing down on hydrangea leaves all the time. It almost feels like they forgot about that plotline.

Maybe they realised that there was no way they were going to fit everything in after wasting an entire episode on Mero and her friends. Also, let’s talk about how Chihiro deals with his disorientated grandfather – just stick your arm out and wait for him to clothesline himself! Honestly, he just came across as the whiniest protagonist ever, which was absurd considering he’d achieved his dream (minus the keeping her from decomposing part).

It’s been fun watching this series with you, but I am not going to miss Chihiro one bit! It also felt like they were worried that they made Rea’s mother too relatable so they had to show her being mean to Rea.

To be fair, Rea’s mom never had any love for Rea anyways.

I almost wonder if the series would have benefitted from being a bit MORE ridiculous… more ecchi, more zombies, et cetera. Just fully commit to it. And speaking of zombies, what was with that episode 12 ending? With Rea biting Chihiro or something and drawing blood. For a moment I thought that something was going to happen, so much so that I wanted to watch episode 13.

Only to find that episode 13 doesn’t bring it up at all, and just goes on with regular life as if it never happened…

Sankarea Episode 13 Rea tells Chihiro about her slam dunk

Yeah, it almost looked like it was all going to go zombie apocalypse in the final seconds. I had my fingers crossed, but it never came to be and, as you said, episode 13 decided not to even bring it up except maybe hinting at it with the lady on the plane that had the zombie owl…

It definitely would have benefitted from being a little more over the top in almost every aspect.

A zombie apocalypse would have been amazing. Really makes you think… they should just make Highschool of the Dead season 2 instead of this. At the very least they could have learned a thing or two.

It would have been money better spent that’s for sure.

Sankarea Episode 13 Darin Arnschent Kurumiya thinking

But in the end, I think that what this anime probably suffered from the most (aside from an awful protagonist) was a disconnect from the source material. You can tell that there were plotlines they wanted to follow, but couldn’t due to being restricted to 12 episodes. And I firmly believe that the Mero & friends episode was filler. The ending was clearly hinting at more to come too, with the owl girl as you mentioned. Overall, it’s another case of the anime being unable to capture the source material in 12 episodes (+ a bonus 13th episode).

I don’t usually judge an anime by its adaptation from the source material, but you can always tell when the anime failed to fit content in or tried to fit too much content into a limited number of episodes, and Sankarea really felt like this was the case.

Agreed. It definitely felt like there was too much going on, but then when so few series are guaranteed a second season that seems to be the case. If they had really focused down on the story of Rea becoming a zombie it could have been a much stronger story. I would have had her dying and coming back as the climax of the first season and spent the time exploring how much she hates her life and how Danichiro won’t let anyone get away from him. It would have been a pretty decent psychological thriller.

That sounds pretty good to me. You getting any writing ideas from all of this? Haha.

Always absorbing ideas. Some of the best ideas come from watching or reading bad stories. You tend to spot what went wrong and then try to work out how to make it better. I think the base idea is pretty interesting, but the execution left a lot to be desired. Still, we got to meet Ranko and Rea, so it wasn’t all bad.

Sankarea Episode 11 Rea saw Danichiro stab Chihiro

And Rea’s mother! Who actually ended up being one of the most genuine characters in the anime. In the end, would you recommend that people watch Sankarea?

If someone came to me and said “Hey, I like zombies, but not scary zombies!”, I would say, “Boy, do I have the anime for you!”. In reality, I see no scenario where that ever comes up, so it seems unlikely. I know we’ve had a lot of fun bashing Chihiro, and he totally deserved it, but otherwise, it wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t that good, but not terrible. Odd is probably the best way to describe it.

Sounds about right. I’d say Sankarea is the anime that you put at the bottom of your to-watch list, and keep it there until there are no more anime left on the list. In that situation, I’d say Sankarea will probably do a good job in providing some “OK” anime entertainment. A below-average anime that still has some quirks, so it’s not a complete waste of time.

And there you have it. I think that’s a great way to end this collab. To summarize, you’re better off reading our discussions on Sankarea: Undying Love than watching it for yourself, unless you have run out of all other anime. Well, it’s been a blast doing this project with you.

Yeah, thanks for this collaboration! Definitely was fun – discussing anime like this is part of why I made my blog in the first place because I don’t have any personal friends who are into this sort of thing.

And that’s it! It’s been an interesting ride, to say the least, but alas all good things… all right… all mediocre things must come to an end. I hope you’ve enjoyed our discussions and gentle Chihiro bashing. Thanks for reading!