Sankarea Gets Worse By The Episode

Sankarea returns impressively awful once more – a generic story line accounting for over half the series has withered dull, zero other development is made, and the plot simply jumps elsewhere without a care.

This series has been wasting precious screentime on establishing and building up a long overdone branch of the anecdote with hardly any relevance or contributing importance to the core subjects of the series. Sankarea introduced itself as some sort of horror about zombies – yet since then, it’s simply been playing out as any half-baked harem romance would, complete with the blatant service moments and near-invisible story.

Those central topics of the series aforementioned all regard zombies and their inner-workings, something which is expanded upon within the manga – yet remains unfulfilled in the anime, and there’s no excuses.

Several episodes of this series have gone completely spent on side-stories with not a hint of pertinence whatsoever – such as the little sister based getaway, which was entirely pointless, or the busty cousin focused flashback, which simply relayed the obvious in the most trivial of ways. The episode before this one was indeed a relatively significant oversight of Sanka Rea’s life, useful for understanding the current ongoing situation of kidnapping and whatnot – yet Sanka Rea’s father shouldn’t have had this much concentration to begin with.

An overprotective family member is such a hashed and dried trope – nonetheless, there’s little wrong if the series desired to include such, yet the issue comes in that it’s taken a completely aimless venture, stalled and stretched it, making it last for almost the entire duration of the series. And again, so many matters revolving around zombies, found in the manga, still stand unaccounted for in favor of recycled garbage which had the most expected of outcomes.

And on that note, the series seems to be failing at its own game – this episode feels rushed and with such a horribly assembled conclusion. After spending far longer on the Sanka Rea family than it should have, the series simply has the protagonist get stabbed, where he subsequently learns that he’s magically become half-zombie – followed by a few “Stop it dad!” moments from Sanka Rea, and a sudden change of heart by the man in question. To finish off the episode, spotlight shifts onto a conflict of romance between zombie and cousin.

The father versus Furuya showdown is well-done in some respects – yet the fight is so dreadful in others. A more splendid scene is the Sanka Rea action bit, which was fairly nice despite being excessively soaked in brightness to hide the absence of detail – however, there’s many moments which the animation could have been far better executed, yet instead, seem simply spun together in a feverish race to finish, with a complete disregard, or perhaps, lack of understanding, of any aesthetic techniques or traits.

Looking below for instance, red complements green, and the off-set angling is not bad – however, the blue hue of Sanka Rea’s outfit disrupts the scene, it has nothing to do with green and red whatsoever. Yet additionally, the scene itself is rather basic to begin with – no intense shadows, no powerful lines, no spectacular or dramatic emphasis of Furuya’s fall. The frame is bland to the point of being incapable of evoking emotions.

A failed 'SHAFT-style' attempt.

Overall, Sanka Rea feels as if Studio Deen put everything they had into it – and as result, they wore out fast, with everything beyond the first several episodes simply being a mess.

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