Sankarea – 04

Episode 04 –

Sankarea has been a series that’s been full of surprises, with some surprisingly decent directing in combination with a somewhat atypical story. However, it does seem that fanservice is slowly starting to creep into the series. There were plenty of moments featuring Rea’s bare skin in this episode, which were all jarringly noticeable. The fanservice itself isn’t really distracting per say, but it’s not really necessary either. Ignoring the fanservice elements, it seems that the story direction itself will be quite different from what I had anticipated. In my previous post I mentioned how I was unsure as to what this could possible be a conflict after the father issue was over, but I didn’t quite expect more real-life concerns such as rigor mortis (and the implication of decay) to become a more central aspect to this series.

With that being said, it’s not like the whole father debacle is over yet. The father continues to be demonized in every single scene that he appears in, with him taking a bath while surrounding himself with pictures of his late daughter being the latest of his disturbing follies. The storywriters are definitely not holding back in portraying him as a disturbing mess of a parent, and it seems that Rea’s mother is almost equally as emotionally distant from Rea as her father. The mother’s presence is a rather curious one though, where she seems to despise her daughter for reasons unknown. Perhaps she is jealous of all the attention Rea gets from her husband? Either ways, the mother certainly shows an abnormal amount of hostility towards Rea, something that becomes clearly evident when the mother is shown to be more concerned over her own reputation than her daughter’s unknown whereabouts.

Aside from the rather awkward parent-daughter relationships, this series also brought into the equation a rather intriguing conflict; that is, since Rea is a technically a corpse, her zombie status is not immune to post-death effects such as rigor mortis and decay. Rigor mortis is the stiffening of a dead body after death, and usually happens within 24 hours after one has died. Thus, naturally, Rea’s body would stiffen, and it is implied that she would not be able to move at all given enough time. After researching Rigor mortis a bit, I should also point out that while it does disappear within 40-60 hours, at that point muscle tissue would start to break down via enzymes and decomposition. Thus, Rea wouldn’t be able to move around that well due to not having any sort of cell regeneration as a zombie. So yea, long story short, Rea would become an undead “doll” of sorts unless rigor mortis is reversed before the muscle breakdown.

It’s a puzzling conundrum that’s difficult to overcome because it’s not like anybody has discovered a way to reverse rigor mortis; technically nobody has survived death to even try. There’s no precedent to follow, which means our main protagonist might have quite the hurdle to overcome. There is one blatantly obvious hint about the solution though, mainly shown through the zombified cat Babu. Babu has been “dead” for far longer than Rea, so the cat should have been subject to rigor mortis too. The fact that the cat is still flexible and moving means that there’s something that can counteract it, perhaps eating those Hydrancea leaves that we saw last week. This does prompt the curious question as to why the Grandpa eats those leaves in the first place, as well as him mistaking Rea for his late wife.

In the end, while the father conflict continues to build steam and momentum, Sankarea has introduced a few more rather interesting minor conflicts and issues. It will be interesting to see exactly how Rea and Furuya handle the overobsessive father and cold mother, as well as tackle the issues that come with becoming a zombie. This episode also does prompt a few other questions that could shape the course of this series. For one, how do zombies gain energy if their bodies technically no longer have metabolic functions? Can zombies truly not feel anything like heat or coldness anymore? Are there any other unaccounted for side effects to becoming a zombie? How can you blush without blood circulation? The presence of a “zombie” in this series is interesting because, rather than treating one as a mindless enemy to bash away at, a “zombie” instead is portrayed almost as a separate living entity, with specific requirements needed for survival.

Overall Enjoyment: 3.4/5

Screenshots are later in the post.