Sankarea – Before The Cousin Became Busty

Sankarea’s seventh episode is simply beautiful as it consists of a truly lovely look into the past of our protagonist’s well-developed bishoujo cousin, Wanko – an exploration of her background, and of her love.

This episode shuffles between real-time and a flashback – yet all of it is delivered either from a first or third person perspective surrounding Wanko. To actually see the progression of her emotions and personality as they build is touching indeed – however it is also slightly sad, as no matter what Wanko does, it looks that our protagonist remains oblivious to the obvious, her unadulterated love.

Wanko’s first encounter with Furuya was very long ago – a time when she was still a toddler, and the meeting occurred once the families gathered. She was traversing through a graveyard – though not surprising considering her gender and age, this adventure is fairly frightening for her. Being surrounded by rotting corpses buried in the Earth, Wanko nears a point where she’s about to burst in tears of terror – yet a “prince” comes to her rescue, an indifferent kid with funny hair, and an equally peculiar shaped head.

Later, she learns the identity of this fellow to be her cousin – yet, it was immediately upon meeting him back in the cemetery that she determined she fell in love at first sight. Their families met more frequently for an assortment of reasons – and Wanko would make effort to close the gap between herself and Furuya, however, that is when she came to see his odd style of individuality.

While Wanko makes an emotionally moving amount of advancement in character over the years – Furuya never changed. Even from his childhood, Furuya was obsessed with zombies – doing naught but reading books on them, and watching horror films. What follows can’t be helped – Wanko initially loses her crush on Furuya as she sees him as pathetic to some degree. Or rather, how can she like him? He doesn’t enjoy going outside at all, he seemingly overlooks everything she tells him in favor of his own preferences, and he’s an apparent “crybaby”.

Before we know it, the mood evaporates – Wanko loses interest in Furuya, and subsequently, an unrelated gap in their meets occurred. Their families did not come together as often as Wanko’s father was chasing business ventures – meaning that now, Wanko couldn’t have much a relationship with Furuya even if she wanted to, which at that time, she no longer did.

Amazingly however, there’s a drastic turnaround – Wanko’s family eventually relocates to the same city as that of our protagonist so her father can open a restaurant, and now these two are quite nearby to one another.

Meeting again after much time apart, Wanko still felt the same, her love is smothered out – and she doesn’t even want to interact with Furuya since she was well-aware that he’s merely going to entrap himself in a zombie fiction. Yet Wanko isn’t one to leave her cousin lonesomely – and so she does make effort to play with Furuya, yet she only receives his typical lack of care for anything but zombies in response.

At this point, Wanko had just about given up – she no longer felt it even worth bothering to attempt to talk to her cousin Furuya, yet her mother came, who notably always had quite a fondness for Furuya, and she suggested Wanko drag Furuya along to a video store and pick out an anime the two can watch. A bit deficient in manners and chivalry, Furuya shows little respect for Wanko as he darts towards zombie movies and rents one all without any input from his cute cousin.

Furuya’s a child during this time, so of course he can’t be blamed – however this is key as it shows what sort of child he was. He wasn’t exaggerating one bit during the series’ start when he said his life revolved around zombies.

In any case, on the way home, Wanko is fed up with Furuya’s zombie lust and thus she takes affirmative action – yet she ends up running into a beast of a dog as she was dashing off to the video store in hopes of returning the zombie movie out of anger. The only emotion flooding her now however is fear – her eyes water up, and she’s scared, with absolutely every reason to be.

Yet Furuya actually does something heroic – he’s terrified himself, however seeing his cousin in danger, he grabs a pipe from a pile of construction material off to the side and then flails it around to shoo away the dog. He certainly did not look a valiant prince whilst doing it – though his deed was definitely noble, brave, and impressive.

Following the incident, she fell in love with Furuya anew – and it’s understandable entirely. A fantastic feature here is that this isn’t the usual “girl loves good for nothing guy” – Furuya not only comforted her, but he saved her from harm, two separate occasions during two varying times. A conflict of personal hobbies does exist – yet opposites attract after all, and Furuya has proved to be her prince indeed.

Over the course of this childhood where she came to love Furuya – her personality adapted to react to his, she picked up more confidence, a stronger pushy attitude as needed to keep Furuya in check, a tsundere side, and of course, her feminine cuteness has been flourishing inside all this time as her romance remains constant. This relationship is far less whimsical than anticipated – and in fact, is quite worth a tear or two as it’s a marvelous tale of childhood love.

Exquisitely sincere are Wanko’s emotions – and returning to real-time, she’s clearly only strengthened her ideals. She’s recognizing of her challenge faced, the tough competitor who is a zombie girl by name of “Sanka Rea”, yet she’s not intending to give up whatsoever.

Regarding this series as a whole, it’s stunning when one stops and thinks back from this episode to the start. Sankarea has gradually gone through the back-stories of each of the three main characters, vigorously threshing them out till all their positions of past and present have become understood. The series essentially presents the viewer with information – and it leaves it up to the viewer to interpret it as seen fit.

Everyone has their own struggles, and they’re all reasonable in their own way – yet life is a competition in some respects, and the characters happen to entangled in just such a scenario, thus one can only hope their preferred character scores the happy ending they seek.

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  Sankarea’s Cousin Is Surprisingly Significant
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  Sankarea – Oppai Revealing Panic Attack
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  Sankarea Shows Cousin’s Oppai In Manga
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  Sankarea – Busty Cousin & Zombie Bishoujo