Komirai's avatar


  • Joined Jul 7, 2012
  • 19 / M


Jul 13, 2012

In this review, I'm first going to give my overall opinions of the anime, and then go through particular aspects such as the art or the music. I didn't look at Sankarea from an ecchi-anime perspective, more as a shounen/romance/supernatural series, so that's what my opinions are based on.

Story (5/10)
So at the beginning of the season, Sankarea was one of the animes to watch, seeing how this zombie like genre will plan out after I was high praised from High School of the Dead, but that's a whole different thing. While zombie stories aren't a new concept, I thought the setup for this one could prove to be very interesting, and could tackle the genre in a new light.. or something like that.

The first few episodes definitely delivered that. The settings were superb, the character interaction was great, there was a good amount of suspense and mystery over the characters and the imminent zombification. I was all set to love this series. (To be clear, nothing really happened in the first few episodes in terms of development, it was just setting up the story. I still liked them.)

However, I feel that the series, in terms of storyline or any plot development whatsoever, quickly went downhill. Once Rea turned into a zombie, the story kinda fizzles out a little. There is still some drama, in terms of family issues, but I felt like it was all a little disappointing in its conclusion. Having said that, it was the aspect of the show that turned this whole anime from being a simple light-hearted zombie thing into something with actual depth.

A few episodes break away from the two main characters (Furuya and Rea) and focus on side characters, such as Mero or Wanko. I really did enjoy these episodes, as they gave you a better insight into the characters and a different perspective on events, although they did not necessarily add anything towards the overall plot.

The ending was completely disappointing (well, not so much in terms of the romantic aspect you could say, although in my opinion this was still left largely unfulfilled) - rather than having any conclusion to the story, it just stopped, much as any other episode would. Now, I'm not sure if this series is supposed to have a sequel anime (which would be nice, in terms of clarifying events! Everything was left sort of open, no questions answered properly sort of thing), so that would pacify me a little, but if it did, I don't think I will be watching it.

Art (10/10)
I honestly think the animated style of this was outstanding. As mentioned above, I loved the settings (mostly the abandoned building and all the scenic shots). At some points, I couldn't stop myself from pausing the episodes to simply stare at the sceneries, partly because they were so detailed that I honestly couldn't tell if it was animated or just a photograph! I liked the clear-cut character design/style.

Music (7/10)
Generally, the music was very good, and worked well within the series and added to the atmosphere of different situations.
Opening Theme - "Figment" by nano.RIPE
A really nice theme, I thought it was a great song, and I liked how it fitted with the series.
Ending Theme - "Above Your Hand" by Annabel
Nothing in particular to say about this... It was a good ending theme, I guess!

Characters (7/10)
None of the characters particularly stood out to me. They all clearly have their plus and minus points, but they were all a bit... meh. Best word to describe it.
Furuya was adorable (appearance wise, I thought his cat-eared hair was really unique), and I thought his status as a zombie otaku was cool (obviously, it is sort of the crux of this series...). He had his good moments, and was generally a likeable character.
Rea was very sweet, and I would almost be keen to say I disliked her but she has some awesome moments where she proves that she can stand up for herself, despite her quite innocent nature...
Wanko was a fun addition to the series - most of the fan service did come from her - and she was a loud and boisterous character, who stirred things up a bit :)
Dan'ichiro.. the bad-guy character. And a really, really great top class creepy person. Ugh.

Overall (7/10)
Although the anime had really bad storyline, the whole weird relationship was anew to me so I was wanting to go on but it all honesty this anime is not something really worth watching. Its like, something you really don't need to be like ''OMG, I need to watch that''. All this anime is supposed to be in genre style it disappoints in. But the characters were alright and story was meh, if you can get through the first three episodes, but if you like art then hell watch it. So, I wouldn't recommend it but if you want to just watch something then give this ago, also if you want something with an alright romance with a girl zombie in it then I would say give this a shot, but other than those reasons I wouldn't bother.

5/10 story
10/10 animation
7/10 sound
7/10 characters
7/10 overall


RingoStarr1991 says...

Nice review I agree with most of your points. It started out great then became boring; manga is deff. much better IMO

Aug 2, 2012