Sankarea – A Zombie Is Fine Too

A zombie girl and an adolescent with a fetish for the undead make Sankarea’s fourth episode quite a complex affair – multiple layers of relations exist, and while some are living ideal, others aren’t too joyful.

Upon the conclusion of the episode prior, our heroine had become a zombie – continuing along with this latest spectacle, the focus is not even a second off. This fourth installment takes us directly from that point – yet now in the perspective of the perverse father. After Sanka Rea’s shuddering slam into the earth like a comet, the only difference between her and a rock from space is that she somehow managed to arise after her impact with the planet and trot off.

Her pulse is no more, and to say she’s a human, one would now be lying – she’s truly become a creature of the living dead, and thus she abandons her father as she determines she’s no longer his daughter. Sanka Rea walked away with Furuya, and her father merely seemed too crushed to try anything in turn – currently, he lay in the bath with his estranged yet brilliant photography scattered around him. He looks to have given up on everything – now relaxing as he laments the loss of his daughter.

Even with the calamity he’s caused, this fellow still doesn’t seem to realize he’s the source of it. As he rested in the bath, it didn’t appear that he changed personality-wise, however he did look to have given a rest to his demented actions – having lost spirit to carry on with them. Yet his wife arrives, bloated with selfish motives, she apparently thinks of Sanka Rea only as a tool to progress herself as she confronts her husband – and during this scene, the recurring butler shows up to share info on Furuya.

Hearing the name “Furuya”, Sanka Rea’s senile father is worked into a frenzy, and he apparently learned not a single thing after being responsible for his daughter’s death – a cycle of stupidity churns onward in the Sanka household.

As for Sanka Rea, she’s clearly quite excited about being a zombie – meanwhile, our protagonist is drowning in uncertainty. Rea has many a reason to be giddy about this – she now believes herself to be free of her father’s grasp, able to do whatever she’d like, and she can do it with the boy she who she has an obvious romantic interest in, our main character.

She became a zombie – however it’s not as she wanted to experience a life eating brains and limping around, she just wants nothing more than to experience the life of an average girl her age, and she’s hoping our hero can show her it. Furuya finds it difficult to accept that a girl was willing to give up so much for something so simple – yet he’s unaware of what she had to endure. Additionally, he does clearly like her himself, and as he pauses to think for a moment, she’s actually become the bishoujo of his dreams, a grey skinned lifeless dead girl.

Interrupting this splendid moment however, the cousin comes storming down to the home of our hero – upset that he abandoned her in a shaft an episode ago. Of course this leaves our Furuya-kun in a position quite tight – “boy meets girl” may be a wonderful occurrence, yet “girl meets girl” is not, not when there’s a boy between those two girls, otherwise it would have been the ultimate outcome.

Yet in any case, our protagonist attempts to smooth this one over – dragging the cousin away somewhere else, and leaving his zombie bishoujo companion to her own devices for the time being. An aspect worthy of notice, the usual events to unfold in an incident as this is that Girl A, Sanka Rea, would get into a major fit over who Girl B, the cousin, is – and from there, it’d be a nekofight for romance. However, that doesn’t happen here – a more reasonable and logical approach is taken versus the route preferred by most dramatic harem comedies.

Left alone, Sanka Rea grovels a bit in the solitude – she wants to be with Furuya, not sitting in silence, lonesomely.

No matter, she uses the opportunity to take a shower – thinking that the home is currently vacated aside from herself. However as she messes around amusingly with the hygiene trinkets of the middle-class, Furuya’s crazed grandfather walks in – Rea’s reaction to this will cause an eruption of giggles, and that’s as the circumstances are all so awkward. Sanka Rea is a partially invited guest now meeting with lunatic of the home – a fellow who reacts nothing like expected. He ends up latching to her – mistaking her for deceased wife.

Sanka Rea succeeds in escaping back to Furuya’s room – and there she merely lies down, still wet and in nothing more than a towel. Noticeably, she’s lost much of the vigor she had earlier – curiosity rises as to whether she’s sleepy, suffering a side-effect, or something else, yet as our hero arrives back home, he figures it out, rigor mortis is taking over her body. When a corpse becomes just that, a slab of flesh without a living soul, chemical changes cause it to stiffen up.

Sanka Rea’s soul still lives, but her body is dead – and to this, our hero realizes something needs to be done.

Wonderful indeed is it to see Furuya is preparing to go any distance necessary to protect Sanka Rea – yet there’s minor details which have a major relevance to this current issue. Recall back to when Babu hunted down the poisonous leaves and ate one – most likely, these are required in the diet of any healthy zombie, an aspect evidenced by the fact Babu was looking better than ever during the start of this episode.

The problem is how Furuya will learn that Sanka Rea requires these as sustenance for survival – assuming they indeed are needed as mentioned. And besides that, don’t forgot that Rea’s father is mobilizing his idiocy. It’s a mystery why he cannot understand that if he loves his daughter so dearly, he must not treat her with such inhumane authority – although hopefully, the series will eventually chime us in as to how or why he became as he currently is as it is somewhat a topic of curiosity.

If he’s going to keep reappearing in this anime – we’d only rightfully like to know why he’s so driven.

Sankarea gave us an introduction from zero, developed to a solid foundation, and within that, we reached the impasse between Sankarea’s desires and those of her father – that stalemate remains, although with alternative options of a solution, and several more reasons for concern simply stacked alongside it, such as Sanka Rea’s deteriorating well-being.

This series feels as if a clock is slowly turning – and before Sankarea can finally live as she so longed for, she must somehow overcome the challenges presented to her before her gradually ticking time is out.

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  Sankarea – Oppai Revealing Panic Attack
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  Sankarea – Zombie Bishoujo Feasts On Oppai
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  Sankarea – When A Bishoujo Becomes A Zombie…
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  Sankarea – Busty Cousin & Zombie Bishoujo