Sankarea: Undying Love

RoyalOss Nov 22, 2014

8.7

Synopsis Chihiro is a normal young boy, except that he only thinks about zombies. So when his pet cat Babu suddenly dies he tries everything to revive him as a zombie. While he is secretly trying to create a zombie potion at night he meets Rea, a girl from a famous rich family who is displeased about her almost captive like live. Each night while trying to complete the zombie potion they meet up, talk about zombies and watch zombie movies. But one day when they have just completed the zombie potion Rea is killed in an unfortunate accident. Now Rea is revived as a zombie and Chihiro wants her to be able to live an ordinary free live. Will they be able to live their happy lives, Chihiro with his dream zombie girl and Rea finally being free or will the decaying body of Rea disrupt this dream? Story The story starts out comedic and slightly ecchi, but halfway the story it takes a turn and progressively becomes darker and more violent. This will not appeal to all readers but I personally found this very enjoyable. It lifted up the story from another ordinary comedic story to become dramatic and action filled. The only thing I didn’t like was its ending, not everybody will agree with me on this one and I will try and avoid saying to much. But the manga was taking a certain direction up until the last chapter where a very big cliché appeared to change the direction of the manga to become more ‘likeable’. Not only did I found this a cliché but they also threw away some logic in order to do so. Note: As I understood this was ending was pressed through by the publishers and not the original intent of the writer. Artwork It was good but nothing special except for a couple of things. The artwork of the eyes was very nicely done and the zombie-horror scenes are just great. You can feel the blood thirst of the characters in these dark, violent scenes. One of my favourites for example is a certain full page drawing of a fire scene in chapter 20. Characters Im never that good in character reviews so I’ll keep this short once again. There isn’t much to add anyways about the characters in this manga. I do like how they spend a little time on the secondary characters, such as the relationship between Darin and her ‘mother’. The grandfather of Chihiro and his ex-wives. And Rea`s father and mother, especially the father is nicely made, he wasn’t some cliché villain like character. All of these characters kept on developing throughout the story. Overall It started out as a slightly above normal manga but the turn for the worse in the middle lifted up my rating for the manga a lot. Unfortunately the second turn at the end knocked off some points for me personally. If they continued the path they were taking it would have been an unique comedy, horror, drama romance story. I would have applauded them if they went for the worst case scenario. Despite that I personally still found it more than worth the read. But my rating is stuck between 4 and 4,5 star, while leaning more towards the 4,5 star. So in short. If you like an unique mix of comedy, horror and a bit of gore then this manga is the right choice for you. If you don’t like explicit violence you might be better or sticking to the anime. If you like explicit violence and horror it is definitely worth the effort to stick through the beginning.

nathandouglasdavis Jul 20, 2020

8

It has some playful, ecchi romance that gave me Rosario x Vampire vibes, but its delvations into darker themes make it a much more riveting story. Several characters actually die and the story takes seriously the threat of zombies losing control and eating people, even as it mixes in harem fluff. It introduces three stages of zombie mental deterioration (along with the standard bodily rot): the fresh stage, the turbid stage, and the terminal eater stage. The terminal eater stage is what we normally associate with zombies: indiscriminate, lumbering flesh-eaters. But what's important is that during the transitory turbid stage, zombies will feel a yearning to specifically eat the things that they loved while they were alive. This piece of ingenuity allows the story to seamlessly merge romantic tension into the zombie plotline and creates an interesting dynamic to the zombie attacks. The romance between the main couple is cute, but I also found myself hoping that Furuya would end up with Darin as we got to know fem as a character more. The story did a good job of fleshing the characters out through backstories and conversations. And Furuya's cat-eyed teasing and playfulness helped intersperse some comedy relief. They also did a good job of building story arcs that both made sense and also brought resolution to the various mysteries that are introduced in the earlier chapters (such as with the research facility or Furuya's mother). And chapter 55 was a masterpiece; honestly, the story could've ended right there and I would've been completely satisfied, though the actual ending was pretty good too. My one complaint is that there are several instances of a chapter ending with something intensely gruesome or deadly seemingly occurring, only for the next chapter to reveal that that was just a misdirection and that things weren't actually that bad. If this was done a single time, I wouldn't even take note of it. But it occurred frequently enough that it became noticable, and thus became frustrating. The art is glossy. The humorous scenes, with their sketchy style, initially bothered me, but I think I got used to it. The intense scenes are drawn unquestionably well, like how Rea looks cute while fe's screaming passionately.

kurokam1 Oct 27, 2021

8

a very solid manga indeed. story: a horny zombie obsessed preteen makes a zombie serum to bring his dead cat back to life. it works, all too well, as a girl he met while perfroming the experiment takes the potion with her and accidentally dies after falling from a cliff. she then comes back to life and begins to live with him as a zombie. pretty interesting story in all honesty i had some fun reading it. the ecchi was never in the way of the story and you could enjoy that with the drama, horror and comedy elements pretty well. middle-ending chapters were pretty odd and i wish they wouldve stayed on that dark route to the end of the manga it wouldve been cool art: pretty good tbh like i said the much more violent/gory elements mend well  with the ecchi in the next chapter it never looks extremely out ofplace. i like character design and i like wanko too. characters: i liked every character in all honesty they were all fun as fuck especially rea. the fact that she was a flesh eating monster powered by love is pretty fucking cool. main male can be aggravating at times but with the attractive females and solid side cast around him i didnt even care. Darin's cool too. and Mero too overall a very fun read if you want something relatively quick and easy shonen to digest with some horror elements