sankarea is lovely
Categories: manga
Tagged: amagami, sankarea
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In Japan, everything can be haremized. Long live Nippon!
Thanks to my readers, I’ve discovered Sankarea. And it’s awesome as advertised. The basic concept is, yes, harem zombie, except not like High School of the Dead where the focus is on survivor horror with some harem-like substance tossed in. (Though I do enjoy Rei just tossing herself at Takashi with him just completely disregarding her. Good job by him at resisting the classic crazy girl hook-up scenario. And, yes, just seeing her ex-boyfriend get zombiefied and gruesomely killed does shove Rei into the crazy category, especially when she threatened to kill herself if Takashi looked at another girl. Fun times! Okay, enough side questing… back to Amagami.)
Speaking of crazy… loved how Haruka had an emotional breakdown because Junichi didn’t peak on her in the bath. Amagami has got to have the most secretly crazy non-violent haremettes. Not sure which concept I enjoyed more… Haruka declaring her love for Junichi while wearing just a towel (excellent move, btw, what hot-blooded male could turn her down at that point?) or that Haruka planned this whole entire date-o around a plush hotel room and Junichi still is as clueless as 80% of the cast of High School of the Dead.
(Haruka is amazing. Oh wait…)
She would have a secretly, newly purchased bikini with her for a date-o on Christmas Eve? Epic date-o planning. She made Junichi late (I’m sure this happens because of her somehow, just the anime condensed this storyline as badly as the final Toradora novel.), drags him to a hotel for a “bath” (but really just an excuse to show off her swimsuit), and they both bathed afterward, which setups the apparent perquisite for Japanese sex. They then go to the penthouse suite… where she takes another bath just because she might have worked up a sweat on the elevator ride up. And she did all this without Junichi realizing what was happening until she showed up crying in front of him wearing nothing but a total. Haruka is a much better strategist than Sumeragi or Light-o. She would have wiped the floor with Ribbons, L, N, and P. If Haruka were with the HSotD survivors, she’d have them safely away from the zombie mess within eight hours.
“Park Boy”… not really a great nickname. But much easier to say than the more accurate “Back of the Knee Kissing Boy”.
(You knew Haruka was sinister when she cheated on a love-love arcade game. Though I wonder if arcades in Area 11 are kept alive solely on first dates by characters in anime and the occasional BlazBlue tournament. Speaking of which, why is the fighting game selection at Dave and Buster’s so poor? Tekken Tag? What is this? 1998? Why not spring for a BlazBlue box?)
(Yes, Capcom is officially the Lindsay Lohan of fighters. They’re willing to whore out for anything. Street Fighter vs. Tekken?! I really hope that was Plan B after Arc Sys said, “Eff U.” I do enjoy all the Vs. games, but at some point, they should, you know, create some original IP.)
Difference between fansubs: fansubber one didn’t explain the significance of Haruka’s wanting to take a bath. Fansubber two did. It’s actually important for both the joke and scene to know the double meaning of Haruka’s words. Sure, if you’re in the population who understands Japanese mating rituals, you know, but I doubt everyone who watches Amagami knows. Much like how I doubt most people who watch Family Guy get all the 80s movie references.
(I’m convinced that Crunchyroll is actually the industry’s most insidious plan to rid the world of fansubs. Once upon a time (like four years ago), there were a lot of half-decent fansub translators who knew to localize and not just copy words from a dictionary. Now? Down to a handful, mostly because if Crunchyroll does a show, they generally do not. Eventually, there’s not going to be any decent fan translators left, and we’ll all be watching craptastic Crunchyroll subs. And they win. We lose.)
Amagami is just going to hijack other series’ posts. I’ve decided on this. I know you’ll just be full of rage when you click on, “gundam 00 movie” and it turns out to be mostly about the final yandere arc of Amagami. Or you might cheer. I’m good with either.
(And I guess the homeless man’s Tomoyo is up to bat next? A rough and tumble tomboy with a girly gooey center filling? This never happens in anime!)
Sankarea is basically about a poor guy who is a bit too into zombies (think about Fuyuki in Keroro with the occult), and he (Furuya) meets a girl (Rea) who starts to like him. Except this girl has the creepiest father ever. Like… he takes nakkid pictures of his daughter and then bathes with said pictures floating around in the bath tub. I’m not kidding. There’s nakkid pictures of Rea everywhere in his creepy mansion that’s a cross between Nagi’s and the school in Utena (the fencing reminded me of it). He makes the cast of Umineko look sane. And the mom knows what’s up because she treats her own daughter like how the mom treated the babysitter in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. Just dysfunctional, creepy family to the max.
Shit happens, Rea dies, and she revives as a zombie. And harem hi-jinks ensues. It really doesn’t get much better than repeating almost every harem trope except with a girl who is constantly decomposing and is suffering from rigor mortise with some intestines hanging loose for good measure. Hell, she even has a towel scene a la Amagami except it’s a three-way. Hilarious, good pacing, good story, and it’s a nice complement to Franken Fran. Almost the ginger palate cleanser to Franken Fran‘s fishy aftertaste. Leave it to Area 11 to come up with a way to make zombies look cute, innocent, and non-threatening.
Sankarea is making me rethink my Moe of the Dead idea. Instead of a girl band fighting zombies from an ice cream truck, why not make a harem girl band except everyone is a cute decomposing zombie? Mmm… I might need to work a vampire into this as well.
(Plenty of nakkidness too, except mostly of Furuya’s orange-haired cousin. Little sister, cousin, and mysterious rich girl with creepy dad. Oh, let’s not forget the throngs of costume raping meido. See, for the guys who were originally pimping this manga to me, all you had to say was, “team of costume raping meido.” That would have been much more effective.)
(A few groups working on this one. Note its current ranking is higher than both Mirai Nikki and Deadman Wonderland.)
15 Responses to “sankarea is lovely”
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Am I the only one who doesn’t think Haruka was nuts (For the most part? I mean, man I detect something along the lines of an unhealthy obsession with dogs. I mean, you might even think… nah, she’s not that crazy. Right?). The “don’t peak” trope is classic. Either (a) male is a “pervert” and will try to peak, only to be foiled by some trap (in all senses of the word), (b) male is considered a pervert through some misunderstanding and ends up accidentally peeking and gets the crap beaten out of them, or (c) male is spineless for the most part and “don’t peek!” is a test. It’s the classic “Does ‘no’ really mean ‘no’?” test, and Junichi almost fails it, only to recover by some out-of-character suaveness!
Want amazing daughters, call them Haruka.
But then you’ll have to fight off the urge of incest and the hordes of guys showing up once they’ll hit puberty. The wife won’t like the first part.
I hope there was a Haruka on Tiger’s list.
Haruka Minami or Haruka Morishima, you Americans should have that on the November polls.
Haruka Minami has at least some innocence about her (or cluelessness maybe) yet is still the one in charge. Never cross Banchou Minami.
Holy shit…Who wants a shower? <-Male
@chartsuki: I re-watched this last evening with an academic friend who studies the psychology of relationships. He mentioned that the “Does ‘no’ really mean ‘no’?†thing is almost uniquely American; in European cultures, at least, that’s dealt with in a more straightforward manner. Does this apply to Haruka? Probably not, but in the general (spherical chickens) case Junichi probably made the right choice.
I had an “I can already see the ending!” moment about five minutes into episode 3 of Haruka’s arc, and from there it played out just about how I thought it would : 1) Choose the zaniest dialog options. 2) Profit! It’s too bad that there’s source material to cheat off of, because otherwise Amagami seems a perfect set up for a competition of sorts: Who can most accurately predict the end of each arc at the earliest point within it?
Wow, now I know the fascination with anime in Japan. It’s completely the opposite of every Japanese convention. Talk about escaping from reality. Makes me glad I grew up in the US.
If you are going to work vampires into your Moe of the Dead idea, it has to be Rachel. Every time I see vampires mentioned, the cute loli-goth-vampire comes to mind. She is now the gold standard of vampires to me. Check out the youtube video below and grin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nELvZ0vz-dI
If you enjoyed Sankarea then you will probably enjoy Tasogare Otome x Amnesia, Jason. Here is the link – http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=41618
It’s similar to Sankarea but with a ghost girl instead of zombie, just read for yourself and find out.
Ithekro: No, Haruka Minami’s in denial… as the scene about ‘those things’ suggests. She just tries very HARD to not look like she knows it, just as she tries very hard not to look like a slob in front of others (which explains the instant stripping and the way she was acting like a zombie in front of Natsuki, causing his repeated nosebleed issue).
Haruka Morishima, on the other hand, is manipulative as hell.. but knows what she wants. Still, the way she dealt with the hypocrisy bit (“wanting” Junichi to peek on her) was… I dunno. Time to see how the next harem arc plays out, and time to be thankful that they’re not doing all the harem routes on the same route or pulling a School Days.
I’m reading Tasogare as well. I don’t like it as much as Sankarea, but maybe it’ll get a post in the future.
I have a personal theory regarding this. First, fansubbers translated like crap because they didn’t know any better. Having gotten used to these kinds of translations, anime fans refuse change and demand absolute literal translations and leaving stuff like honorifics in because it’s more “accurate.” Then new fansubbers copy the already established standards and the crappiness cycle continues.
i was gonna tell u about this but then i got lazy
You’re welcome. :)
Note that Sankarea’s got a higher ranking mainly because it hasn’t been licensed yet.
Slurppp, there is nothing more moe than a moe zombie
Since it’s the guy who did Umisho, Sankarea could only be awesmoe.