Manga Review | Sankarea

Manga: Sankarea
Publisher: Kodansha
Mangaka: Mitsuru Hattori
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Horror, Supernatural

Sankarea is the kind of manga that can be described as a good and bad at the same time. It’s never spectacular or amazing. It’s just good, good enough to keep your attention long enough if you’re a tad bit as optimistic as me. There have been moments while reading this that I thought, “I could just quit reading this and move on to something that is actually 100% excitement. I don’t know if to say sadly or unfortunately, but I with great effort I managed to stick it out and catch up to the series.

Sankarea is a story about love, but a weird one. We’ve had stories of love between women and monsters like werewolves or vampires, but never a zombie love story (“Warm bodies” doesn’t count; it’s not manga, and its way better than this). This time we do get a Zombie love story. IS it a good love story? Well I’m not sure I’d call it good, weird yes, very weird. Sankarea’s plot revolves around a boy, Chihiro furuya, and a girl, Rea Sanka. In most monster stories I’ve read the bloke turns into the monster, however this time it is the girl. How this happens is due to Rea’s father being an over protective incestuous freak who takes nude pictures of his daughter and restricts her from having a normal life (yeah this is some real messed up shit). After meeting Furuya by complete coincidence she and he became friends. This friendship centered on creating a zombie potion that Furuya hopes to use to bring back his dead cat babu. After too many failed attempts he decides it’s too cruel to keep his pet as a test subject for his own selfish whims and proceeds to bury the cat. It is around this point in the story that “Pervy dad #1” finds out about his daughter’s involvement with a boy. As a sick perv, who just so happens to be remarkably rich, he proceeds to capture the boy and stop his daughter from seeing him. This causes a scuffle that ends in Rea falling off a cliff and dying.

This is where the plot really begins and where all the weird starts happening. Rea had stolen a bit of the potion they made and drank it the night before as a means of suicide (one of the ingredients of the potion was a poisonous plant). This obviously failed to kill her, but did bring her back as a zombie. Rea being a zombie leaves her parents’ home and proceeds to stay with Furuya’s family.

kk so that’s the jest of the plot. I won’t spoil anymore of it as I’m not a big fan of spoilers. What I can say is that the story develops at a slow pace, sometimes crawling over topics that would otherwise be considered unimportant. This pace is what initially started to make me want to drop this manga and move on to something better. It does not get any better as you get further into the story, so if you are not a fan of slow plot development then this manga is not for you. It has its few redeeming moments but they are as I said “few”, and short lived. I will also like to point out that this plot so far had not been that surprising. It’s bare bone and to the point, so much so that you can guess the outcome after less than 20 chapters. The rest of the time it seems like pointless filler content. The romance between the 2 main characters is forced. It never seems genuine enough like some others I’ve read before. I just feel like these two just want to love each other but do not truly love each other. That I cannot stand. It’s lame and annoying when you see them clumsily try to be into each other, only succeeding to fooling me just a little during the family camping trip at the river.

Anywho I’m sure you want to know if this manga has any other redeeming qualities, and the answer is yes. They are few though so don’t expect much. One is the art. The artwork is well done and I especially love how Furuya is made to look like a cat, especially in chibi moments. The ecchi sections are also well illustrated, not too much to be hentai but just the right amount to tease and not become the entire focus of the manga.

OK so yeah that’s it the art is all I liked really. Sankarea is not a manga I’d easily recommend to anyone, unless they have nothing else to read and want a bit of weird in their life.