Zombieland Saga: Revenge – 06 – Tae-Tae’s Big Adventure

Ookoba Shinta needs a big scoop to maintain his sanity in Saga, and he can’t quite take his eyes of the group of lookalikes of deceased famous people that is Franchouchou. He’s not a fan (though I guess he’s not not a fan either); he wants more answers about who they are and what their deal is.

Well, their deal is pretty simple: they’re 20 million yen in debt, all thanks to Koutarou (who brazenly ignores that fact, thus rejecting reality and substituting his own). They’re out of their creative slump due to the past few events that also didn’t cost them anything, but they still need to get that paper.

He even calls out Tae as someone who really should be at least trying to make some money, though Yuugiri simply sends her on a grocery errand. Ookoba encounters “Number Zero” in a crosswalk and decides to start following her. What he—and we—witnesses is a delightful day in the life of Yamada Tae!

A kind old lady gives her a snack. Some soccer kids give her a snack. She has a snack of edible offerings at the Yamada family ancestral grave. Then she shows up at the supermarket…where my favorite pint-sized bozozoku girl Amabuki Maria has a job trying to pay for a new bike for her mama. Maria can’t help but talk Zero’s ear off whenever they meet; probably because Zero is such a good listener!

Maria and her two BFFs have decided to “tear it up” in a new way, through dance, and invite Zero to a pharma-sponsored dance-off where they proceed to put on, shall we say, a heartfelt and upbeat but ultimately underwhelming performance. They’re no match for the five-time champion Cocco-kun, who is someone in a chicken suit.

Because Cocco-kun represents Tae’s ideal—a chicken big enough for her veracious appetite—she joins him in a breakdancing duel, scaring the shit out of the pharma PR exec but also blowing the top off the competition with her inhuman moves, including spinning on her head so fast her head looks motionless…because it is! Ookoba tries to snap a photo, but Romero ruins his shot.

Tae easily dethrones the fully human Cocco-kun and claims the ¥30,000 Grand Prize, but seems only interested in the Bonus Prize: a 10kg bag of onions—and tosses the cash in the trash. Fortunately, Maria fishes it out and tries to give it back to Zero-chan, attracting the attention of Saga Policeman A.

He recommends she spend it at the tracks…not the horseracing track, as he repeatedly pleads to his chief, but the boatracing regatta. There, like Maria and her little dance troupe, Korosuke’s princess Misa has also found a new way to tear it up, even though she’s yet to win a single race and wipes out almost every time. While the cop is busy, Tae places a bet, demonstrating how easy to use the machines really are.

Misa spots Maria in the grandstand and it lights a fire in her belly, because she’s a Misa on a mission, channeling Saki on her bike and pulling the legendary “eel goby turn” while shocking everyone who bet on her to DNF once more.

Maria and Misa’s Korosuke crew are elated, and then Maria takes a look at betting ticket and realizes to her shock that Number Zero increased her money over six hundredfold with a perfect trifecta (or something…I don’t know all the terminology!)

This means she turned her ¥30,000 into a cool ¥20 million—thus erasing all of Franchouchou (really Koutarou’s) debt in one day, while out on a little grocery errand. She either took Koutarou’s insistence she get out there and make some money, or it happened entirely by accident (after all, she did try to throw that ¥30K in the trash at first).

Zombieland Saga loves the fact that we both desperately want to know and don’t want to know more about Yamada Tae, and spent an entire Tae-centric episode proving that it really isn’t a detriment for her shroud of mystery to remain fully intact, even unto the end of the series. Tae more than proved she can carry an episode without singing, speaking, or her past being revealed, while Ookoba followed her all day only ended up with more questions.

Cheif among those crops up right at the end of his stalking session. When Tae’s head pops off and falls on the ground, Maria just happens to have her back turned, and Saki keeps it that way by pulling her into a romantic embrace. But Ookoba not only sees Zero’s head come off, he snaps a photo of it. Just when he was about to give up, his underling’s joke about those famous girls being revived as zombies suddenly doesn’t seem so far-fetched…

Read Crow and Irina’s discussion of this episode here!

Osamake – 05 – Making a Comeback

While it’s no match for Super Cub in my book, Osamake takes itself out of last week’s tailspin by getting back to what it does best: illustrating the enduring relationships between Sueharu and the people closest to him. When Kuro’s sisters Midori, Akane and Aoi inform him that Kuro has lost all memories after he rejected her confession, it’s because they consider him their big brother, and only he can make things right.

It’s fun to see three different aspects of Kuro reflected in her little sisters, from Midori’s frankness and assertiveness and Akane’s affinity for analysis and logic, to Aoi’s pure virtuous femininity. They’re not just there to ask Haru to help; they’re there to remind him why he should want to help; Kuro is too precious to him to leave alone.

The youngest sister Akane says it best when she says if he returns to show business she’ll be “proud, but also sad”. She just insists that whatever choice he makes, he makes it from a positive mindset, and not “run away from love.”

As her sisters indicated, Kuro meets  Haru outside his front door the next day, ready to apologize for who from her perspective is her future self she has no memory of. She can’t fathom why she’d reject Haru when she loves him so much (it’s a boon to this series that this fact is never in doubt), and wonders if he still likes her even after she did something so awful to him.

When he recoils from her, she realizes how much that other Kuro fucked up, but she desperately wants him to trust her again. She feels they simply “started buttoning up from the wrong hole”, which is a hell of a metaphor! She wants to start over form the first, correct button-hole, It’s another boon to the series that Haru’s affection for Kuro hasn’t lessened in the least, as he asks her to stay by his side.

Haru and Kuro may have messed up a lot to this point, but they’re still too close and care about each other too much to let everything that’s happened ruin their close, deep relationship. It’s gratifying to see them make up like this, even if it’s marred by Shiro showing up in her car. Her intentions are at least somewhat altruistic, as she came to take Haru to school by car to avoid the press. And yet, she also believes Kuro doesn’t really have amnesia.

Haru decides to test this the best way he knows how: by attempting to feed Kuro a food she knows had traumatized her in the past: octopus weiners! When she eventually lets him feed her one and she doesn’t react as she should, he concludes she must have some amnesia.

And yet, the fact she doesn’t remember encouraging him to do his best for his cultural festival performance brings tears to his eyes, because he wouldn’t have been able to achieved what he did without her. She may not remember that particular instance of supporting him, but she still knows when her childhood friend is troubled and crying for her, so she embraces him warmly in thanks, and tells him she’ll keep supporting him in whatever he decides to do.

Turns out all of this was recorded by Shiro, who busts in to break up the love-in. But Tetsu is there too, and he wants to come up with a way to satisfy all parties. If Shiro wants Haru back in action, he suggests they work through his entertainment club to produce WeTube videos that will surely be popular because they’ll star Haru and will be written by Shiro, the person who can bring out the best in him.

Tetsu personally thinks that Haru can always get back into big-time show business as an adult, but should really enjoy his high school years while he can, because they’ll never come again. It’s actually a pretty well though-out compromise and Haru is definitely intrigued. He’s still going to talk to the agency, but recognizes he’ll have a hard choice to make.

The next day, Haru arrives at the agency where Maria is waiting for him, and we get a nice, efficient little scene that accentuates the bond these two have for each other. When they first met, Maria wouldn’t give him the time of day, and always thought him boring. But when she watched him act, she was captivated by his pure talent for entertaining people.

The only problem is, the agent Haru deals with while Kuro, Shiro, Maria, and Tetsu in tow is…a bit of a dick. He tries to entice both Haru and Kuro with lofty amounts of money he guarantees they’ll make if they sign with him. But when Haru firmly declines multiple times, and the agent mocks her for possibly not being raised right, Haru pours his expensive red wine on his head.

With that, it seems he’s made his choice: performing in videos written by Shiro, possibly co-starring Kuro, for Tetsu’s entertainment Club. I for one am with Tetsu: you’re only a high schooler once. Spend the time having fun with the people you care about, not putting your nose to the show business grindstone. Money can’t buy happiness!

I must mention: at times, probably most times, this episode looked like absolute crap. However, I still consider it a comeback from last week because it got back to why I liked the show in the first place: the chemistry between Haru and Kuro—which even a bout of amnesia couldn’t dull—as well as an enticing way forward for our once and future acting king.