Sankarea is your stereotypical ecchi comedy with a very bold and weird premise. - The boys in the series go to males-only school and are constantly horny by the other side of the river, which has a prestige girls-only school. This alone can make the viewer feel how desperate for sex they are, although I don’t see why they can’t go have some fun with them after the school is over. - The protagonist, whose hair for the lulz makes him look like he has cat ears, doesn’t care about all that because he is content at masturbating (out of screen) while watching zombie horror movies. As if that wasn’t enough, he has this hot cousin named Wanker (Ranko actually, but it does sound similar) having the hots for him and constantly doing ecchi foreplay by bringing him even more zombie movies to keep masturbating (out of screen) as well as not to miss the chance to make him horny with her body. Very healthy; how considerate of her. Not that he seems to give a damn about her, since she is not a corpse. - So the protagonist’s cat dies and he decides to raise the dead, since it sounds like a very arousing thing to do. He finds there Rea, the hottest girl from the prestige school, who is fed up with her life as a role model, as well as her father taking nude pictures of her and scaring away all her friends. She agrees to let him kill her as means to get rid of her misery. As a reward for turning her into a zombie he can do all sorts of necrophilia-related deviant things with her. As interesting as all this mess sounds, it is not much of a good show by miles. - The first hint to that is the animation studio, which is none other than DEEN, notorious for trashing the adaptations of whatever it gets its hands on with poor production values and pathetic directing that cares only about fan service. I can’t say anything about the director by the way, since this is his first full anime work. Prior to that he only did a few scattered episodes here and there, and none where exactly quality material. In this particular case, they tried a bit more though; so at least it doesn’t look horrible and even has a few artistic overtones in it. It uses stylized backgrounds from time to time and makes good use of lightning effects to make dark places to be unsettling. Now don’t imagine it is awesome in production values; they are simply far better than what the studio usually does. I can say something similar for the soundtrack, which is easy going (and thus completely unimpressive) J-pop you will forget ten seconds after the music stops. - The premise of the show ends up being its biggest setback. Although the hook of the show is zombies and fan service, something which seems to work all the time in luring in the casual viewer just by curiosity alone, it is still nothing more than shallow dumb fun in the likes of Highschool of the Dead or Kore Wa Zombie Desuka? . It tries at times to offer some depth by including heavy and unsettling themes, such as horror (boogie-boogie, dark places and necromancy), social drama (the unbearable pressure of social demands that may lead teenagers to deviant fetishes and suicide), and incestuous love (hurr-durr, I take nude pictures of my little daughter, hurr-durr, I rub my boobs on my cousin’s face). But it never happens in a serious manner and all those issues are nothing but a generator for erotic situations. Meaning, despite the seemingly interesting premise, the show is still mostly a dumb ecchi harem. And of course despite the really bold image it gives you at first, it is doing nothing but patting your crotch with several hentai premises which of course never head anywhere because this is not a hentai show. Seriously, do not go in expecting something amazing to happen because you will be greatly disappointed with how little they did with all that and used them as nothing but tired softporn. So you basically get this constant cocktease where: - On one side Wanker is constantly trying to go incest with a blunt harem lead. She is the typical dumb blond with a hot body that likes her cousin for no apparent reason other than keeping her company. Get real bitch! And go look for a guy that doesn’t live in the same neighbourhood you do. - On the other side you get Rea, constantly being moe and naked and defenceless for him to do all he likes with her. Ever heard of a moe zombie? Here it is, conveniently getting stiff so you can throw her naked without complaints in your closet. And she doesn’t even act like a zombie to begin with, since all she does is not trying to eat brains but sucking on Wanker’s boobs and catboy’s tongue for the lulz. She also doesn’t eat, drink, or go to the toilet; she costs nothing to maintain her and thus is the ideal sex doll all otakus dream of having. But at the same time, what if anyone else tries to do something she doesn’t like? She then gets all powerful and kicks ass and then runs to cry in the lap of her useless boyfriend, as if he protected her by doing absolutely nothing. How convenient. - And of course there are also the parents of Rea, who are completely messed up. One is an incestuous sadist and the other is a drunkard slut. - Yeah, sounds dumb enough to keep watching and does feel interesting if you don’t try to see it seriously. But just like all DEEN shows it is mostly fan service. Despite at the attempts of the show to flesh out Ranko and Rea, they are still presented as nothing more than half-naked horny sluts after a boy with no redeeming qualities. I mean everybody is constantly admitting that he has absolutely no talent and is a deviant pervert on top of everything else, yet they still like him for not much of a reason. Trying to cater too much the pervert audience, are we? And as I said, do not expect any sexy developments to the above spicy relationships. Nothing really progresses because they are either constantly interrupted by random people passing by them or turn completely chicken to go for the real thing. And even if one could accept all the retarded fan service as part of the story and still try to enjoy it, this still does not save the show from having inconsistent character reactions considering their sexuality. It’s as if the show deliberately makes them turn from horny beasts to cowards when the time has come, just for the sake of not turning the whole show into a messy hentai.- The protagonist went to all the trouble of getting a hot zombie girlfriend and has another hot live one in reserve, both of which are willing to do anything he likes with them. And yet he is doing nothing; thus rendering the whole premise useless. He couldn’t wait for that moment when he would have his own zombie chick, he even had wet dreams about it, and now that they are at his lap, he goes all shy and gentle? This is a complete character rewrite! He also does nothing in the whole show. Seriously, the chicks get all the focus and he is just there as the passive observer for us to identify, like deviant stalkers who film and peek and masturbate at teen girls but never actually trying to go for the real thing. The epitome of NEET mentality modern anime strive for as means to cater the main audience; boy I hate that. He is also weak and stupid, so again he has no redeeming qualities even if you don’t try to identify with him and instead seem him as an individual personality. - The two chicks are doing something similar. At first they have no qualms to be naked and outgoing with him but as soon as they come closer to the actual thing, out of nowhere they start to feel embarrassed and scared. This is a lame excuse of a cock-blocker! Also, seriously, Rea’s plan was to become a normal girl by turning to a zombie??? Are we efing kidding here? - Rea’s parents are also such contrived element in the story. They are supposed to be there for some drama and sick romance but they are completely underplayed since by the time you get to know more about them, the story is almost over and they just go away like nothing much happened. - Furthermore that resurrected cat Babu is more than obviously the only thing that progresses the actual plot. Everybody is running after it and do or learn stuff just because of that cat conveniently pointing them at stuff. It gets annoying to see them not having free will to do anything on their own or the knowledge to figure out something without the scriptwriter continually using that cat as a plot devise for that. It is a cat, ok? It is an animal mascot, it shouldn’t be doing more things plot-wise than the supposed human-intelligent protagonists. It only makes them feel stupid and useless. Seriously, you are not going to be watching this for the plot. And this rather disappointing, since unlike most ecchi shows I really like the premise in this one and I can imagine several interesting arcs coming out of it. Yet I get nothing since the fan service is there all the time, jumping in the spotlight and kicking to the side any attempts to make something intellectual out of it. And yes, I say intellectual since this is the only way a show won’t be forgotten a month after it is completed. No matter how outrageously hilarious the premise sounds, if they go completely GAGA with it, you will forget it very fast or won’t like it for long altogether. And this is the case with Sankarea. If you really think about it, almost half of the show was filler, since it was wasted on the hot cousin, the oblivious family of the protagonist, and the sick family of Rea. They weren’t even important to the longrun, since the core theme was about “what to do with a zombie” and not random incest side stories. Unless of course random softporn scenes count as important to you. Thus you get an interesting premise that is ruined by too much fan catering. I once again blame DEEN for that.
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