6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Furuya's not interested in the living, he's got zombies on the brain! When Furuya's cat dies, he decides he's going to try and bring it back to life. In the process, he stumbles across a girl whose failed attempted suicide has turned her into a real zombie! What's Furuya going to do now that the thing he loves the most is right in front of his eyes? Watch what happens in this campy romantic comedy about the undead.
Starring: Maaya Uchida, Ryohei Kimura, Sayuri Yahagi, Yuka Iguchi, Shiro SaitoAnime | 100% |
Foreign | 96% |
Comedy | 27% |
Comic book | 23% |
Romance | 23% |
Supernatural | 12% |
Horror | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Japanese: Dolby TrueHD 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Four-disc set (2 BDs, 2 DVDs)
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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.
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 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.
Disc One:
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.
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