Sankarea: Sometimes the Anime is better than the Manga
By Prakriti Kumar
Contains several spoilers!
The anime community is engaged in oft-repeated debate — is the anime or the manga better? While a lot of people do prefer the anime, they sometimes miss the charm and story-building of the manga. The fast paced nature of anime and the need to please a greater audience often holds the anime adaptations back from showing their full potential. While there are some exceptions to this trend, none so accurately portrays it as Sankarea: Undying Love.
The story follows Furuya Chihiro, who loves zombies, to the extent that he wishes for a zombie girlfriend. So one day, when his pet cat dies, Furuya decides to make a potion that is said to revive people. However, he is missing one ingredient — a “poisonous” plant. After trying a variety of herbs, he almost gives up but then meets Sanka Rea, who is visiting the same abandoned building to release her stress. She gives him Hydrangeas, whose leaves are said to contain poison, to create the elixir. They feed it to the cat, and while there seem to be no effects, later on the cat leaps back to life, creating Furuya’s first zombie.
At the same time, Rea, who is extremely depressed due to her secluded life at home, tries to kill herself only to succeed in another way. Furuya, who finds Rea to have become a zombie, houses her. The first and the most typical difference between anime and manga is the openings and endings. They are often used to supplement the manga’s story, highlighting the emotions one should feel before watching the anime. However, in Sankarea’s case, these songs bring about a complete change in the mood of the anime. The opening “Esoragoto’’ makes the cheerfulness seem fake and eerie. The ending solidifies this even more, giving a story its much-needed weight. While the songs and OSTs are not the best on their own, they support the anime’s thin plot with a great composition.
Next come the backstories. The choice of inclusion of the characters’ stories helps make the story feel fleshed out and actually have implications for the characters. We soon witness Rea’s turbulent family situation — an aloof, uncaring mother, and an abusive father, one who annually takes nude pictures to ‘measure her growth’. As she slowly realizes that her situation is abnormal, we meet her first friend Nakadai Juri, whose family makes Rea understand what she is missing. When Rea tells her about her father’s tradition, she freaks out, asking her to talk to him about it. But Rea’s father, Dan’ichiro Sanka, is a powerful man and completely in love with his daughter. He bankrupts Juri’s parents, forcing them to move away, home-schooling Rea thereafter.
This whole part helps flesh out the dynamic between Rea and her father. She is submissive, refusing to go against her father, as she knows what the consequences of such actions are. We can feel the pain and distress she feels when she screams into the well, and the pressure of Dan’ichiro on her. Contradictorily, the manga has not shown any of this, and most importantly NO JURI! There is no character in the manga that makes us realize how truly powerful Rea’s dad is, we just have to take her word for it. While they do show us Dan’ichiro’s collection of his daughter’s new photos, his depiction in the manga makes him a very shallow villain, and pretty much just a set-up for Furuya and Rea’s meeting.
This happens multiple times throughout the series, where the anime adopts a “show, don’t tell” attitude, thus establishing solid characters with important futures. Another example is of Aria, Dan’ichiro’s second wife, who explains through flashbacks how he fell in love with Rea’s mom, who died of complications after pregnancy. She also details how neglected and painful the marriage was for her, as he clearly didn’t love her and only loved Rea (yes in the same way as her mother….yes he is a f**ked character). All this explanation comes way later in the manga, and so the final fight between him and Furuya feels extremely pointless at the end.
The fight part is quite similar in the manga and the anime, but the dialogue after the father’s defeat is what struck me the hardest. The anime retains the father’s character and keeps him as the person who would not let his daughter go so easily. However, the manga seems to break his character by having him take a complete 180 degree turn. He lets go of his daughter after one simple fight and suddenly loves Furuya, in the span of two minutes. Suddenly the father accepts him, despite being extremely controlling of Rea for the 15 years she was alive? This is a glaring plot hole, one that the anime tries to fix and adjust to the best of its abilities.
Well, I don’t really recommend this anime (for obvious reasons). Though there is nothing new in this anime, it is still a fun watch and personally holds a lot of nostalgia for me. When I read the manga, I found that there was not much content to cover for this very article and had to shift to the anime. The anime was simple, yet deeper in meaning and complex in its implications.. And thus, despite all I said above, I love the anime. It understands the emotions it deals with and delves into their complications. The final conflict and resolution are quite amateur, but the final episode is beautifully directed, and holds out the hope for life…or death. Thus, the anime takes this pretty comedic premise, transforming it into one with weight, one with consequences and importance, making the viewing of this show a wonderful experience of Furuya Chihiro’s everyday school life with his zombie ‘girlfriend’.
