A typical slice of life romance with a rather quirky twist

——————————————————————————-

The story starts as a young boy sets up ‘camp’ in a very run down mansion and he hears footsteps. He looks outside to see a young girl approach a well and she suddenly screams ‘Noooo’ down it.

We now get introductions, the boy is Furuya Chihiro, a first year at Shiyou High, he loves zombies and he fantasises about zombie romance… an odd fetish that no one, not even himself knows why…

He lives in Shiryouji temple and we are introduced to his grandfather Jogorou, his father Doon, the chief priest, his sister Mero, who’s 12 and Babu, the family cat who they adopted after straying into the temple. His mother died when he was very young and so he doesn’t feel lonely without her.

But then one day, an old neighbour of his accidently ran down Babu and he was thrown into despair. But then, he comes up with an idea, he got out a battered old book from his cupboard that was considered useless, but he’s convinced that it’s a book about resurreccion. He digs Babu from his grave and goes to a deserted mansion that even the locals stay away from to start his ‘ritual’. On his second day there, the event at the very beginning of the episode occurred.

He keeps Babu in his room in an ice box during the day and leaves for school.

We now find out that his schools. It’s an all boys’ school and there’s an all girl’s school next door called Sanka academy, however they’re separated by a small river. There’s a girl of note there, Sanka Rea, daughter of the school’s principal and also the girl who screamed down the well.

Saouji Ranko, his cousin comes to visit him and gives him a much needed ‘cheering’ up.

In the evenings he continues ‘work’ on resurrecting Babu. A page was badly burnt and it’s illegible, only the instructions ‘insert poisonous herb orally’ could be read. He tried something but didn’t work, so he’s considering giving up as he feels sorry for Babu. But then he hears footsteps and sees Rea appear again. Just like last time, she screams down the well again, cursing that she’s born into the Sanka family as she wants to be a normal schoolgirl. She also says she wants her father to stop taking ‘revealing’ photos of her to show she’s grown… this causes Chihiro to drop the bottle of juice he’s holding and Rea notices him.

She doesn’t wants him to tell anyone what he’s seen and Chihiro says he can understand that she’s probably got her own problems. So the attention turns to why he’s here, and after finding out about how he wants to see his pet again, she wants to help him.

After a bit the conversation turns to relationships and Furuya doesn’t hesitate to tell her that he wants a zombie girlfriend. She then says some strange things about becoming a zombie and then bids him farewell for the day.

The next time he sees her, her guts are falling out…

Thoughts:

Well, not sure what to say… a zombie fetish huh, that’s new to me, I knew it existed, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many zombie related stuff out there, but wow, kinda hit me by surprise here. What’s the term for this? Is it the same as necrophilia? Well anyway, let’s not get into detail about this, I’m not a particular fan of zombies, and I don’t mind horror but not a fan either, so I suppose I wouldn’t know a thing.

However, that interesting plot device aside, it’s pretty much like any other slice of life romance. Girl school and boy school separated somehow, some lecherous boys really like one or two particular girls on ‘the other side’ and somehow the main character gets in contact with the girl and the romance starts there to the envy of his friends and classmates. But after a few episodes we’ll soon forget about them and concentrate on the romance, or something along those lines. I don’t mind these type of animes, they’ve added in an interesting twist and it’s more than enough to carry me to the next episode, for now.

There were two voices I recognised in this almost immediately. First was that the opening theme is by nano.RIPE, I found myself thinking why it reminds me of Hanasaku Iroha and then I know why. Secondly I think most of you should also heard, is that Mero’s seiyuu also voices Index, if you watch index then you definitely should’ve recognised that distinct voice.

Back onto the opening, it’s a nice song, nano.RIPE’s songs always have that feeling of something moving very fast. I always imagine myself running along a long road when I hear their songs. Well, at least their energetic ones. So I enjoy  it, and it also made quite clear that this anime’s not going to be a ‘serious’ one, but a rather light-hearted one, i.e. even though they’re messing with the dead it probably won’t end up like ‘Another’.

I wonder, is it that rare in anime for a highschool main character with both parents? Someone’s always dead, though I suppose they always make the more interesting characters.  And speaking of interesting character he was definitely ‘interesting’ when he told Rea about his strange fetish straight away after only meeting her, guess he truly doesn’t care about getting a living girlfriend then, not the type of thing you say to any girl straight away…

Well, all in all, a quirky twist to what seems to be a typical slice of life romance anime. As I said, it’s interesting enough, I’ll see how it develops. Also, I’m pretty sure that last scene was a dream…