Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 04 – Perfect Attendants

Akira and Kencho have a pretty sweet setup on their Shinjuku rooftop, gathering everything needed for stay-at-home camping, an item on Akira’s list. The episode begins with a harrowing FPS shooter picking off zombies, but it’s just Akira playing video games.

Since his list is well short of 100 (only 33), he decides to add one of his own bucket list items: becoming a stand-up comedian. He also wonders if Akira is being realistic with the “wine and dine a flight attendant”—maybe score a date with a woman first!

After the two look down at the available women in the area—all of them zombies and one of them quite flatulent—Akira sticks to a more readily achievable item: playing video games on a super-big-screen 8K TV. They head out on the motorcycle—the perfect vehicle for transporting giant TVs.

When the path to the Ikebukuro electronics store is blocked by wreckage on one side and another runaway zombie Truck-kun, this one a tanker, stars to bear down on them from the other, Akira remembers how Shizuku saved him from the konbini Truck-kun and decides to go for the gusto.

Revving his motorcycle, he races towards the oncoming tanker, using another upturned car as a ramp to leap over it, then escaping the resulting conflagration by motoring down into an underground mall. Unfortunately, they’re immediately in danger again, as a horde of zombies dwells in the mall.

They manage to race to a store and lower the shutter before the zombie mob can get to them, and before they know it someone is shining a flashlight on them: more survivors! Specifically, an older salaryman who is scared out of his mind (constantly muttering “It’s all over”) and three women.

When Akira and Kencho assure them they’re not infected, one of the women (Reika, voiced by Hikasa Yoko) breaks out the booze, while the other two (Maki and Yukari) gather snacks. Just like that, Akira and Tencho have stumbled into a post-apocalyptic…mixer?

But here’s the real kicker: Reika mentions that they had just got into Tokyo from LAX—the three of them are flight attendants, which means Akira’s item of “wining and dining” can technically apply. That said, Reika is a lush, and the other two don’t seem to be having much fun.

Akira, so inexperienced in things not related to his exploitative job, manages to ask Yukari if she has a boyfriend, which…not the best time dude! However, when he sees how well Kencho is getting along with Maki, Akira decides to try raising everyone’s spirits…by chugging a bottle of tequila.

I love how Reika, so surly up to this point, gets a kick out of this and joins in. Before long, everyone’s trashed, Akira is passed out, and Kencho is naked and doing his stand-up routine.

Akira eventually comes to and has to run for the bathroom to pray to the porcelain god. To his shock, Yukari, the victim of his boyfriend question, comes to check on him, and even pats his back while he boots so he’s more comfortable. Meanwhile, it’s revealed the salaryman in glasses is infected, and he turns just when Reika is alone with him, drunk out of her mind.

She initially thinks he’s trying to get with her when he jumps on her, but she is very soon disabused of that notion. Kencho and Maki, having hooked up in the mattress store (as you do), hear a faint scream, and while Kencho is curious about what’s up, Maki wants to go another round.

Unfortunately, when Kencho and Maki check back on Reika, she leaps on Maki like a lioness on a gazelle and rips her throat out. When Reika then turns on Kencho, he has no choice but to use lethal force, which fucks with him even though Reika had become a zombie.

While this carnage is happening, Akira is feeling better, and Yukari talks to him about how it’s her third year too, and the job is not the glamorous thing she dreamed of. Akira can only speak from experience, but he believes his production job was a “borrowed” dream, not one that came from his heart.

If Yukari truly dreamt of being a flight attendant, she shouldn’t let something like the odd irate passenger ruin that dream. In the middle of having this very pleasant, gentle chat about their lives, the salaryman pounces on her, and bites her in the neck.

Akira punches the zombie down the stairs, but the damage is done. Nevertheless, in the minutes Yukari is still Yukari, she gives Akira a hug and tells her she remembers now why rubbing his back felt so nostalgic. On her first flight as a kid, she was extremely airsick, but a flight attendant helped her feel better by rubbing her back.

From that point on, Yukari wanted to be like that cool lady. And so she’s confident it is her real dream: she’s a flight attendant. Peoples’ lives are in her hands on a daily basis, and that’s how she wants Akira to remember her as she pushes him out of the way and tells him to run while the salaryman prepares to jump her again.

Akira runs, and is, as you’d expect, incredibly messed up by having to do so, and having to say goodbye to someone as gentle and sweet and courageous as Yukari so damn soon. But in this new world where death is always around the corner, one can’t let oneself become consumed by despair.

Akira reunites with Kencho, who is now being chased by Maki and tells them they need to get out of there. But they won’t be leaving without a giant 8K TV, which he happened to pluck in the meantime. The fact that Kencho did this for him launches Akira into a bout of cry-laughter.

After the absurd image of the two carrying the very tall, wide, and thin TV on the motorcycle, the two best buds are back on their rooftop campsite before sunset. When Akira dies again in his video game, now writ large thanks to the 8K, he pauses and thinks of Yukari’s words to him, and decides to add another item to his list: Remember my childhood dream.

Author: magicalchurlsukui

Preston Yamazuka is a staff writer for RABUJOI.