Sankarea: Undying Love (Volume 6) - Cat Scratch Fever

Chihiro follows Bub one night to see what he’s been getting up to. He finds a fox that’s caught a kitten. Then, Bub attacks, killing the fox. However, it wasn’t to save the kitten, but rather to steal its prey!

Sankarea: Undying Love (Volume 6) – Cat Scratch Fever

What happened?

Rea’s concerned about her situation and seeks to get some answer from Darin, however, she just wants to study Rea, which might mean cutting her up and poking around her brain. Of course, Rea’s not willing to do this, well, not unless Darin goes shopping with her and a bunch of other friend-type activities. Although the brain poking might have to wait a while.

Meanwhile, Chihiro is worried about Bub and whether he is entering the Turbid phase. He follows him out one night and comes face to face with a fox holding a kitten in its mouth. That reassures him that it’s not Bub leaving half-eaten bodies everywhere. That’s when Bub attacks, killing the fox in seconds. At first, Chihiro’s concern returns, but then he thinks it might be so that Bub can save the cat. He couldn’t be more wrong.

Sankarea Volume 6 Rea takes Darin shopping

Bub killed the fox so that he could steal the kitten for himself. Chihiro tries to reason with what he’s seeing, telling Bub that he will look the other way but Bub can’t just eat all the pets without drawing attention to himself. He tries to capture Bub and take him home, but he attacks Chihiro, leaving him bloody and cut. Tora, the owl known as 18 attempts to save Chihiro, but he tries to block its attacks and takes even more damage.

Amazingly, he caught Bub and makes it home. He goes to Darin to see what she has to say on the matter, and also to challenge her about Tora. She tells him that Tora was trying to save him and had he not blocked her first attack, Bub wouldn’t have been in such a bad state. As it is, he’ll never be able to walk again. After talking with his grandpa, Chihiro decides to burn Bub and finally release him from this undead state.

Sankarea Volume 6 Chihiro sees Bub kill a fox

However, Rea walks in and saves Bub from the fire. She refuses to let him go since he was made the same way she was. Well, not exactly. Rea consumed the poison when she was alive where as every other zombie had it put into their bodies when they were dead. Could this be the key why Rea was able to pull back from the Turbid phase?

Chihiro discussed this with his grandpa who told him that because of his condition, this fell on Chihiro to fix. However, he warned him about Zoma and Darin, who had no doubt worked out the significance of Rea. When Chihiro got home, he discovered that Darin and Rea had left… for Zoma…

Sankarea Volume 6 Rea saves Bub from the fire

What did you think?

This was a fascinating volume with my favourite parts being the conversations between grandpa and Chihiro. When asked why he made the zombie formula, grandpa said it was his ego and seemed quite upset that he went that far. I feel like Chihiro and Mero’s mother was brought back as a zombie at one point and then had to leave so that she didn’t attack and eat them.

I found the whole part with Bub to be incredible tense too, and not just because Chihiro kept being an idiot and falling into the zombie trope where the living protect the zombies because of previous bonds. When he finally put Bub in the fire, it felt like he’d maybe learnt his lesson, but then Rea rescued him. I still think he’s being incredibly reckless. There’s always a chance that Bub or Rea could attack one of his family members. She did go after Ranko a while back so there’s no telling just how in control she is.

What have you learnt?

It took grandpa telling Chihiro how much he regretted his actions to get him to truly realise what he had done and how it was up to him to rectify his actions. However, the real exciting piece of information in this volume was that Darin realised that Rea had consumed the poison before dying. She even wonders if Rea did actually die that night rather than from the fall. Maybe, the fall was just the thing that showed everyone she was undead.

She just woke up and assumed she was still alive but did she check her heart rate or anything else? It makes me wonder if there were any clues that she was dead back in that part of the story. If there are, that would be some legendary foreshadowing. This is why I think it’s best to complete a series before you start to release it. It’s hard because you’ve no idea how well it will do, but the level of foreshadowing and consistency of the story would be next level.