Sankarea is either a cute love story or a story about a girl trying to get away from her psycho father to lead a normal life. This is the start of the confusion for me. I came into this the premise of a guy falls in love with a zombie girl. Ok, I got that. Didn’t really like it, but I got it. So I figured that we would be going down the more comedic path where he tries to find ways to getting close to her without getting eaten. Boy was I wrong. It turns out that this is more like two lost souls coming together. The boy who loves zombies more than anything and the girl who wants to live a normal life. Granted, as much as the idea turned me off, I grew to like the show since it went down more of the touching path than the zombie eat brain path. It made it a much more watchable show overall.

The characters in the show were not that easy for me to warm up to. They didn’t seem well organized on a whole. Meaning that each character had his or her’ own traits to kind of pump a little extra life into the show. If these traits were not there, the characters would be even more flat and boring. They are all cliché. Every last one of them. Which is sad really since the show had such a unique story. Either way, you can just kind of block those things out and just focus on the story.

Another thing that just didn’t sit well with me was Chihiro’s look. Why in the world does he look like a cat? From his eyes to his cat ear hair, he just looks like a cat in human form. It drove me batty through the whole thing! It would be fine if others looked like that but they didn’t so it stood out a bit too much for me. Grandpa too was a bit out of place. As much I loved that crazy old man, he was never quite there most of the time. On top of that, there is a big piece of the story that never got told. If I remember correctly, Grandpa wrote the zombie book. What?! How do you just leave that hanging out there like that? What else does he know? What has he done to know what it can and cannot do? I could go on and on with questions as to why this didn’t go forward.

The last bit I’ll complain about is the ending. Now don’t worry, I’m not going to give any of it away. I don’t really like to spoil things too much. So I will try and tip toe around it as much as I can. Let’s start off by me saying that the show should have ended one episode early. I was more than content to leave it where it is on the second to last episode. Alas, this was not the case. What they did was live it kind of open ended. It’s one of those make your own conclusions endings. Could it be going this way or maybe it’s going this way. Well without a second season, I guess we won’t find out now will we. Unless, the manga goes into it. I’m not sure about that part as I didn’t read the manga for it. If you know it does then please comment away about it. All in all, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Now for all the negative things I have said about the show, let me just say that overall I did enjoy it. It was a nice change of pace from the average romantic comedy. It had its ups and down throughout, but the fact is that it’s a solid anime for what it is. It’s cute, lovable, and a bit charming even with all the stuff I said about it above. I do have a soft spot for romantic comedies on a whole so you do have to take that into consideration. Am I glad I watched it? Yes I am. Am I going to buy it if/when it comes to the US? Probably not. I’m not too sure that this is one that I will want to revisit unless I find it in a super cheap bin or something. I can never pass up a bargain to add to the collection.