Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Sankarea Undying Love: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 7, 2015

Films like Warm Bodies and Life After Beth have taken a perhaps unavoidably whimsical look at what having a relationship with a zombie might be like. For those preferring this somewhat odd subgenre in animated form, there’s the appealing and perhaps unexpectedly effective Sankarea Undying Love, an often sweet if also at times disturbing portrayal of a zombie obsessed otaku named Chihiro Furuya whose fondest dreams come true when a sadly abused girl named Rea Sanka enters his life and, through a series of convoluted plot developments, does indeed become a zombie. Unlike other anime which tend to dabble in either “slightly” dead folks (Yu Yu Hakusho: Anime Classics Season 1) or even outright zombies ( High School of the Dead: Complete Collection, Sunday Without God: Complete Collection), Sankarea Undying Love actually takes a few episodes to fully dole out its central conceit. That same somewhat languorous approach tends to make this series less of an adventure outing than one that concentrates more on character beats, though one that gets regular jolts of energy courtesy of any number of rather disturbing elements. Kind of like a traditional zombie, Sankarea Undying Love shambles rather than runs, but for those with a certain amount of patience, the anime offers some appealing characters and a generally involving storyline.

For a while at least Sankarea Undying Love seems like it’s going to be “just another” zombie rom-com with a certain shōnen aspect thrown in for good measure, but it’s one of this series’ signal achievements, if also a situation that may cause some viewers to blanch in response, that it interrupts a more or less traditional narrative flow to bring in decidedly shocking elements like the abuse Rea has been suffering at the hands of her father. That “little nugget” provides a lot of the impetus for the first few episodes, which are otherwise caught up in a bizarre but kind of funny arc where Chihiro is trying desperately to bring his little pet cat Babu back to life after the animal got hit by a car. It just so happens (in one of those very convenient plot artifices) that Chihiro had stumbled across an ancient text detailing how to resurrect the dead, though some vital information is missing. He takes Babu’s frozen corpse to an abandoned hotel to work on whipping up the menu for an elixir which will supposedly bring Babu back (as a zombie cat). While there, he first sees and hears, and then later meets, Rea, who comes there to vent her rage at her father, thinking she’s alone and won’t be noticed.

All of these crazy seeming plot pieces fall into place after the first few episodes, with the upshot being both Rea and little Babu have been transformed into zombies. This might initially seem to be great news, especially since Chihiro is so completely obsessed with zombies, but once again Sankarea Undying Love doesn’t play the interspecies (?) relationship in a cutesy way, instead showing the at times disturbing physical decomposition Rea undergoes as her “life” as a zombie continues. What’s so interesting about this sort of choice is how breezily Sankarea Undying Love is actually able to deliver it. The show can offer unsettling items like this in virtually the same frame that crazy little Babu is being used for comedy relief.

The anime’s depiction of Chihiro’s home life also provides uncommon levity within a sometimes melancholic aspect, as evidenced by Chihiro’s addlepated grandfather, an elder who is struggling with signs of dementia. Another sidebar plot details a quasi-incestuous relationship between Chihiro and his cousin Ranko Saōji, a girl who obviously nurses more than merely platonic feelings for Chihiro. Over and over again Sankarea Undying Love offers a kind of pastel pretty ambience that suddenly has darker, more troubling, undercurrents lurking just beneath the shiny surface.

The fact that Sankarea Undying Love doesn’t seem to be in any particular rush to get anywhere is really only problematic insofar as the series doesn’t really successfully wrap up an emerging “love triangle” between Chihiro, Rea and Ranko, and in fact seems to portend a treacherous turn of events for Chihiro in particular. That languid approach seems at least partially ill advised when the series devotes whole episodes to throwaway standalone elements that tend to feature supporting characters like Chihiro's little sister Mero. If, however, viewers can tolerate a bit of an unresolved feeling, Sankarea Undying Love is a rather unusual combination of an unlikely assortment of plot devices and tones. Goofily silly one moment and then surprisingly upsetting the next, as unexpected as it may seem, this animated version of having a relationship with a zombie turns out to be very real feeling a lot of the time.

Sankarea Undying Love: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sankarea Undying Love is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While the series occasionally dabbles in stylistic touches like "recreating" the zombie movies Chihiro is obsessed with (see screenshot 10) or offering brief, more graphically oriented, fare (see screenshot 3), this is by and large a fairly rote looking anime with good if hardly groundbreaking character designs and typically less than fully developed backgrounds. Line detail is very sharp throughout the presentation, and colors pop extremely well, aside from the intentionally desaturated and "distressed" looking zombie movie sequences. One pleasant if slight innovation is Babu's character design, with the funny little kitty sporting oddly colored eyes and a kind of rounded ambience that makes the cat as much of a puffball as anything else. There are occasional slight banding issues on display, but otherwise this is a problem free presentation.

Sankarea Undying Love: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sankarea Undying Love features an English dub delivered via Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and the original Japanese language track offered in Dolby TrueHD 2.0. This is not a sonically bombastic series, and so the surround track, while generally immersive, doesn't offer a lot of "wow" moments that would make it a clear favorite. Voice work is very good to excellent on both tracks. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is reasonably wide when considering the series as a whole. There are no problems with distortion or dropouts.

Sankarea Undying Love: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One:

• Episode 3 Commentary features Tia Ballard and Aaron Dismuke.

Disc Two:

• Episode 11 Commentary features Joel McDonald, Terri Doty, and David Wald.


• Textless Opening Song "Esoragoto" (1080p; 1:32)


• Textless Closing Song "Above Your Hand" (1080p; 1:32)


• U.S. Trailer (1080p; 1:02)

Sankarea Undying Love: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's hard to call something that offers as many envelope pushing elements as Sankarea Undying Love does a "pleasant" surprise, but there's no denying the fact that this series kind of pretends to be a lighthearted romp through zombie love tropes while in actuality it begins to peel back a layer of decaying skin to expose a kind of gnarly, unsettling subcutaneous reality that is unexpectedly unsettling. The series takes too long to develop some of its plot strands, and also wastes at least a couple of episodes on needless sidebars, leading to a lot of unfinished business as it ostensibly wraps up. But Sankarea Undying Love is uncommonly ambitious and offers a unique take on this now increasingly familiar subject matter. Technical merits are generally strong, and Sankarea Undying Love comes Recommended.