Sankarea - Episode 0 (OVA)

I don't think there's anything that can scare Mero...

With this being an "Episode 0", it makes sense that it acts as a prequel that takes place prior to the start of the story, ending off right before Rea screams into the well. It further highlighted the differences between the Furuya and Sanka families and how the parents treated the children. Additionally, in regards to the Furuya family, small bits were shown on the mystery behind Furuya Yuzuna. We now know that her death was most likely a murder—and a bloody one at that. How she died remains unknown but I think this fact will be revealed later in the story.

Something that this episode added to the main storyline was the fact that Chihiro and Rea had actually met prior to their "first" encounter (referring to first TV series encounter), although I don't think they realized this at the time. A tiny bit of symbolism also came in to play in the form of the resurrection elixir manual and hair clip. For Chihiro, it's obvious why the manual was important to him as he came across it after finding a picture of his mother. However, why Rea seemed to treasure her hair clip so dearly is not yet known. A good guess is that it's a memento of her mother. This leads into the point that Chihiro and Rea are like a fated couple—both lost their mothers, whom they barely knew, and hold on to one item as a vague reminder of the past. I really liked how the absence of dialogue in that scene did not take away from the scene while also reinforcing the common saying of "a picture of is worth a thousand words".

Overall, this was a decent OVA episode that served at least some purpose. The nude shots of Rea that were thrown in at the beginning are sure to please those ecchi fans while the related-to-main-story content will appeal to those who wanted a meaningful episode. The second OVA episode is set to come out in November, which is a while after the season ends. Because of this, I wonder what it's going to be about. Will it be a recap episode? A short extra? Or an informative episode dedicated to filling in some gaps that were left by the TV series? I guess I'll just have to wait and see.