Title: Sankarea
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Supernatural
Publisher: Kodansha
Artist: Mitsuru Hattori
Serialized in: Bessatsu Shonen Magazine
Translator: Lindsey Akashi
Full disclosure: I read Mitsuru Hattori’s Sankarea manga knowing what happens for the early part of it because I watched the anime in Spring 2012. And after reading the manga version of it, the anime expanded on certain moments that this first volume could not. I say it in a manner that shortchanges the manga, but that’s more personal preference currently. This is still a pretty solid, surprisingly funny work where the story revolves around a young high school student who’s into zombies and a young woman who is seemingly perfect…not.
Rea Sanka has been raised in seeming perfection, and with her dazzling looks and the fact that she attends Sanka Girls Private Academy, there should be little wrong with her life. Except there is: she’s tired of having her life controlled by her father Danichiroh, where she can’t hang out with her friends and she has to deal with him taking pictures of her growth on her birthday naked. She’s tired of living the normal life, and she lets herself loose by shouting into a well somewhere near an abandoned hotel in Shiyoh. But her latest revelation stuns the main protagonist, Furuya Chihiro, who happened to be attempting reanimation of his dead cat nearby, and she learns he’s been listening to her rants…for who knows how long. However, now these two meet, and thus, their story together begins.
Sankarea is a shounen through and through, so obvious tropes and less serious situations occur that obviously won’t change your perception of the genre. However, Hattori switches things up by introducing Furuya, who can’t find himself interested in anything other than zombies, and Rea, who not only isn’t perfect, but she’s naïve to the point of innocence. Taking advantage of this fact, normal scenes where the main male character is embarrassed or blushes at the sight of a girl almost asking to be taken advantage of is brushed aside or put in a “are you kidding me” mode, which makes it about as refreshing as possible while sticking to the main tropes. It also manages to be witty in instances – you get a taste of that in the first few pages, where Furuya remarks about Rea being raised properly, but getting buzzed by his friend as a know it all in a joking manner. This actually turns out to be true, since Rea proves Furuya knew what he was talking about…because he’s seen her do so more than once!
The art in Sankarea ranges from pretty to look at (one instance where Rea moves towards Furuya in Chapter 1) to decent, to what exactly happened here (an example of this is later in the volume, where Danichiroh collapses to the floor, and looks awful line and proportion wise). You should mostly expect some cute chibi characters, nicely drawn girls (the part where we say hi to Furuya’s cousin Ranko), and maybe some good looking backgrounds every once in a while. The story is ok, but of course, you wonder how the story can evolve from Furuya attempting to reanimate a cat to Furuya now having to live with how to take care of zombie Rea. I’m interested enough to know how though, and considering this is the source material, I expect it will come up with something better than the anime. It helped that this was a fun and quick paced manga, so definitely will be on the lookout for Volume 2.
