One of the major themes of the past three decades of animation in Japan has been the movement away from stories about larger-than-life machines — Space Battleship Yamato, traveling 148,000 light years to Iscandar so the Earth can be saved from radiation, or Amuro Ray stealing the Gundam RX-78 prototype to fight for Earth during the One Year War — towards a focus on characters. A big part of this has been the trend in moe, pronounced MO-eh, which is a system of self-reinforcing memes that constantly redefines cuteness in anime girls. Moe is about creating characters that fans will want to be protective of, like Tomoe Hotaru/Sailor Saturn, where the term comes from according to one theory, and it’s made up of many sub-elements, for example moe characters usually have charming idiosyncrasies like Mio’s shyness or the dojikko clumsiness of Mikuru Asahina. The definition of moe is constantly evolving with each new generation of shows, and the newest is Sankarea, the story of a horror film otaku named Chihiro and the girl he accidentally turns into a zombie.
Sankarea explores the moe elements of zombies.
