Sankarea: Undying Love (Volume 3) - Fear the Foreigner

Rea is determined to return to school and start her normal life, but she hadn’t counted on a stranger arriving and revealing some shocking truths about her condition. Things will change!

Sankarea: Undying Love (Volume 3) – Fear the Foreigner

What happened?

Rea had even come up with a plan on how she was going to return to school. She had found a jacket and lined the inside with dry ice. That would keep her body cool and if she used an umbrella, she could limit her exposure to the sun. Chihiro tried to convince her to stay home but realised he was no better than her father if he did. Reluctantly, he allowed her to return, but she had to take it easy and check in with him, regularly.

Rea was so excited to be back at school that she quickly forgot about Chihiro’s conditions. She excelled at everything athletic now that her physical limitations had been suppressed. She even did a slam dunk at basketball. She was starting to feel like a normal girl once more, but that was about to change…

Chihiro had swung by his home after dropping Rea off at school and found a girl at the shrine. He didn’t recognise her and Bub didn’t appear to like her. He yelled for her to get away from the cat but it was too late. Bub bit her on the finger. She seemed to fall back in agony, but it later appeared to be ecstasy. Somehow, she knew about zombies and was looking for Professor Boyle… Chihiro’s grandfather!

When she saw him, she put a collar on him and told Chihiro that she was hoping to learn more about zombification from the professor. Chihiro didn’t know what to make of it and went back to school. On the way home, Ranko called out to Chihiro and teased him some more, although it continued to plant the seed of doubt in Rea’s head. Was she in the way? Chihiro tried to reassure her, but it’s hard to say how much impact it had.

Sankarea Volume 3 Darin explains the situation to Zombie Rea

When they got home, they found an owl sitting in the hallway. It went to attack Chihiro, but Darin, the girl from earlier stopped it. She marvelled at Rea, knowing instantly that she was a zombie. She also revealed that she would be staying with them, although Chihiro wasn’t too happy about it. However, his father didn’t seem to mind one bit.

The next day Rea found Darin at her school. Darin thought that maybe it was a “special” school where there might be more zombies and was disappointed to discover that it was a normal school. She took Rea somewhere private to talk and revealed what she knew of the zombie process and what was likely to happen to Rea. However, Darin fell off the roof and was sure to hurt herself until Rea caught her and safely got them to the ground. Well, not entire safe…

Sankarea Volume 3 Zombie Rea loses arm saving Darin

What did you think?

This volume pretty much finished off everything that happened in the anime. There were several shorter chapters that covered the stuff that happened in the Mero arcs and some of the OVA. It wasn’t as long or detailed as the anime, but that’s fine. It mostly felt like filler in the anime anyhow. The real surprise was how much I’m glad Darin has joined the cast. I’m not sure what this does to the Rea-Chihiro-Ranko love triangle as she doesn’t appear to be that involved in anything other than Rea.

The big news is that Darin has been studying zombification for eight years (since she was six… which seems a little bizarre, but whatever) and believes that Rea will lose control in the near future and the ones she has an emotional attachment to will be the ones that she goes after first, unable to separate the feelings of emotions and her impulses. This is the element of danger that the anime only ever hinted at. Things are about to get very interesting.

What have you learnt?

So, Darin has somehow released his physical limiters on her body which lends some credence to the claim that she has been studying them. It also means that it may be possible to change things about their bodies to take on certain characteristics of the zombies. I get the feeling that there will be a downside to things like this. Of course, she could just be bluffing and relying on the poison from Bub’s bite. Seems less likely.

I didn’t really enjoy the way this volume portrayed Ranko as it seemed to push her even further into the role of a troublemaker. I understand what she’s going through and what the author is trying to do, but it felt a little too heavy-handed. I’m sure Rea would worry about stuff like this simply from seeing them together. Maybe, this is the author trying to correct things so that it’s obviously a Rea and Chihiro love story, but then again, if Rea might eat Chihiro… Either way, this is far beyond anything the anime looked at.