But what I’ve always dreamed of…was seeing a really cute zombie!
Summary
Furuya Chihiro is a guy obsessed with zombies. When his pet cat Babu dies one day in an accident, his quiet life is interrupted and he digs up an old book of supposed resurrection magic to try and revive Babu as a zombie cat. He uses an abandoned mansion to experiment in, however one day he catches the principal’s daughter from another school, Sanka Rea, shouting out her frustrations of her family life. Furuya promises not to tell anyone what he saw, and in return Rea helps him with his experimenting on reviving Babu.
Impression
This is another series I first became familiar with over the manga, which is why I can guarantee it’ll be a unique experience watching it – not that you wouldn’t have realized from this first episode anyway xD You can’t dub many series as a “romzomcom”, since naturally, romance/ecchi and zombies don’t fit very well together, though it does a really good job of it here in Sankarea. It’s good that it’s kept light-hearted too, and we all know where we’ve seen zombie + comedy mashed together before. (Stop it Ayumu, you can’t get any cuter than that!)
Anyway, the latest in a long line of Japan’s weird and wonderful takes form in Furuya Chihiro and his zombie girl fetish, which actually seems fairly mild in comparison to everything else. Maybe his obsession with zombies stemmed from his mother’s death when he was young, and his desire to see her may have pushed him towards liking the uhh…undead. I dunno, it might not be that since he was fairly casual over mentioning his late mother. Let’s chalk it up to an unhealthy addiction to Highschool of the Dead instead.
Poor Babu. I won’t go into how unrealistic it is to keep the dead corpse of a cat in an ice cooler and attempt to revive him with leaves, but that’s just how it is xD He didn’t deserve to die, but if he didn’t then Furuya would never have met Akiyama Mio-chuan~ uhh, I mean Sanka Rea. Hey, they do look eerily similar minus the change in art style. Even down to the whole getting scared easily and being moe aspects. Heh, I bet she’s scared of barnacles.
In all seriousness, I actually feel sorry for her if she’s troubled to the point of having to scream every night down a well and talk about preferring death over continuing to live. I don’t think it’s necessarily abusive parents, maybe the protective and “my daughter is so perfect” type. Or maybe paedophiles if they’re taking pictures of Rea’s naked body as she grows every year. Seriously, what the hell? You kinda don’t think over it as much though, when she keeps making cute faces like that.
If someone had told me that the OP was from a second season of Hanasaku Iroha, I would have easily believed them. nano.RIPE performed/composed it after all. While I don’t know exactly how appropriate an upbeat song like that would be for how the series later progresses, it’s definitely a nice track, probably my favourite OP of the season so far (since Tasogare Otome’s Choir Jail hasn’t aired yet). Overall, a strong first episode, I’m definitely going to enjoy this.
Side Note 1: I know it’s childish, but…heh, Wanko. I totally get why he calls her that. Why does she let him?
Possibility of Watching: Guaranteed
Possibility of Blogging: Guaranteed
[adsenseyu2]
ZeroG’s Impression
Well, this show is kind of particular, A necrophiliac main character, a creepy younger sister, a perverted cousin, a dead cat and an innocent rich little high school girl. That is quite the cast. It is particular if anything, but it is always fun to see something out of the ordinary, that is why we watch anime after all.
But this show is a romance, a weird one, but a romance nonetheless, it is something I’m not too confident and good with. But since it is a romance about zombies, this might still be quite interesting, if there is indeed a zombie in this show at some point. The ending was quite confusing, I’m not sure if it was foreshadowing, a dream, or if something like that really happened. I feel like it is some kind of joke that will be explained next episode, I don’t think that Sankarea died this early in the show, or at the very least I hope not.
Since this is a Romance, I’ll leave it to vantage to cover, I’ll watch it a little, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this show wasn’t for me in the end, I guess that only time will tell. But at least everyone who were waiting for a great romance story can finally be satisfied with this show.
Possibility of Watching: Average
Possibility of Blogging: Low
ZeroG signing off
As one who also read the manga, I can also say this adaptation is doing a pretty good job so far. What was up with the bowling alley at the end though? Interesting change of location if you ask me.
While they are similar, Akiyama Mio wouldn’t get ten feet near a dead cat and zombie fanatic.
Side Note 1 response: Is it because “Wan” is the Japanese sound of a dog barking?
I’m not too sure either – most of the ED was a bowling alley, so maybe we’ll get some explanation in the future. It looks like some other details have been changed too, since they actually showed Babu’s death and Wanko met Furuya at his house instead of on the way to school.
Maybe he calls her Wanko just to piss her off xD It does sound very inappropriate when you think about it after all.