Hello,
Today we'll talk about the 12th (and final) episode of the spring season 2012 anime series Sankarea that decided to pull a "troll" ending leaving us hanging without a real solution to the events.
Just as we predicted in the previous episodes, they decided not to try and create an anime original ending, but instead left everything unconcluded.
Yes, Rea is still a zombie, Chihiro still has zombie fetish, Ranko is still in love with Chihiro and Chihiro's grandfather is still unable to help anyone...
The main characters did grow in personality since the beginning of the series, especially Chihiro that is acting more and more like a reliable man trying to protect his new "family".
Somehow he start to look less and less like a middle schooler and more like a troubled middle-aged man fighting in order to reach his dream/objective.
In this episode we also got the confirmation that Rea is somehow trying to return to school. I wonder how that will turn up considering the medical exams she has to do...
I was not expecting to see Rea going yandere, but I suppose its a nice way to remind us about how Rea is still an heavily dangerous zombie that may "turn" at any time.
From this point on, the story (in the manga at least) focus more on Chihiro's endless battle to find some means to keep Rea alive indefinitely or even "revive" her completely.
Luckily, he won't be alone in this search because a new female supporting character is introduced in the manga opening many possibilities for a decent ending of this series.
Now the big question is "do we have any chance to see a second season in the near future?". There is plenty of original material in the manga to adapt at least another 12 episode season.
The problem is that the initial pre-order numbers were quite low with the first volume only making around 2K pre-orders in total (between Blu-ray and DVD version).
If they don't manage to break the 3500-4000 copies level, it'll be extremely difficult for us to get a second season and a proper ending to this "strange" romantic story.
Concluding, Sankarea is one of the best series of this season in terms of storyline and production values. I would've expected just a bit more from the ending, but I suppose its all right if they adapt a second season in the future...
Visual Points : 875/1000 (One of the best animation style/quality of the season)
Audio Points : 830/1000 (Loved both OP and ED)
Story Points : 820/1000 (I had to bear through Chihiro's zombie fetish...)
Entertainment Points : 820/1000 (Entertaining, but sometimes a bit too creepy. Especially when Rea's father was involved.)
Characters Points : 880/1000 (Ranko is LOVE!)
Final Points : 16.715/20.000
The series is ranked 44th over 180 series in my rankings (Updated to 29/06/2012 23:59)
See you soon,
feal87