Sankarea: Undying Love (Episode 10) – Strong… Feelings…

Chihiro finds himself tied up in Rea’s old house and no one wants to help him. Aria shows up and sheds a little light on Danichiro while trying to seduce Chihiro. She’s really been neglected!

Sankarea: Undying Love (Episode 10) – Strong… Feelings…

What happened?

Chihiro is furious about his current situation and is desperate to get out. He’s prepared to scream and shout until he gets his way too. Then, the door swings open to reveal Rea’s mother, drinking from a hip flask. She enters the room and tells Chihiro to call her Aria. She then asks how far he’s gotten with Rea now that he has to babysit her.

Chihiro can’t believe that Rea’s mother would talk about her that way, and that’s when Aria reveals that she is not Rea’s mother. She is Danichiro’s second wife, although she’s known him longer than that. When Danichiro was growing up, his family would carefully select the maids based on a number of criteria. It was all to find a suitable partner for Danichiro.

Aria was quite certain that she would be the one to successfully land the prize and it looked good for a while, but then he lost interest. Bizarrely, he met a girl after a fencing tournament. She was fifteen and in a wheelchair. He was besotted. He asked her to marry him and after silencing the objections of his family, they conceived a child. However, the girl died not long after childbirth, leaving Rea motherless and Danichiro a broken wreck of a man.

Aria looked after him, nursing him back to health. He rewarded her commitment by marrying her, although to this day he still has not consummated the marriage. On Rea’s fourth birthday, the butler secretly showed Aria what Danishiro was doing with Rea. It broke her.

After revealing all this information to Chihiro, she made a move on him, but even tied up, he managed to slip her off. Then, the maid came to collect Chihiro to deliver him to Danichiro who was waiting for him.

Sankarea Episode 10 Aria Sanka frustrated

What did you think?

I think I’ve finally worked out why I hate Chihiro. He’s completely dead inside. I don’t know how he could listen to Aria’s story and decide that she was as big a problem for Rea to deal with as Danichiro was. The question now is where does this come from. I wonder if my theory about his zombie fetish may be a part of a bigger problem. He’s awkward for sure, but he also can’t pick up on clues and misreads people. I felt sorry for Aria and even more so that she was so starved for attention that Chihiro seemed like a suitable outlet for her. She can do so much better than Danichiro and Chihiro.

I was quite surprised to see that this wasn’t in the manga either. There’s a chance that Danichiro and Aria’s past will come up after volume two, but not in this way. Again, the anime has delivered a good addition to the source material. It certainly didn’t feel like filler either. It felt relevant and timely. I’m definitely changing my overall opinion of Sankarea: Undying Love, although my thoughts on Chihiro have probably gotten worse.