Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 12 (Fin) – Only the Biggest Dreams

Higurashi decided back in college that Akira was the poster boy for everything and everyone he despised, and so now that they’ve been brought back together, he simply wants to see that poster torn down and burned. Akira is such a good boy he seriously considers becoming a zombie to rescue his dad, but his dad forbids it: Akira needs to protect his mom … and humanity.

Ultimately, Akira’s love for his dad and desire to repay him for raising him leads him to acquiese to Higurashi’s demand. The door to the house opens, three zombies enter, Akira screams, and then slowly shambles out. Oh no! Akira’s a zombie!!

SIKE! Akira is not a zombie, but rather a clever and resourceful motherfucker. Employing the professional makeup skills of one of the city survivors, he is made to look like a zombie. When the other zombies approach him, he screams, and the three women take them out. Then, when Higurashi’s guard is down, Akira stops acting like a zombie and separates him from his dad.

Higurashi flies into a rage, or rather a temper tantrum. Then a zombie bites him in the ankle, meaning his time grows short. While the ladies hold him back, Akira desperately wants Higurashi to tell him what he wants … what he really wants, not this bullshit revenge against an assigned nemesis.

Higurashi believes he “peaked” when he and his friends spent every day at the pool during summer break. So all he wants to do is go back to the pool with his friends, instead of the slow descent into isolation that followed. Akira, taking a big risk, ends up crossing off an item from the list: giving a free hug to someone who needs one.

In the moments before he turns, Higurashi gets up and runs towards the approaching zombies, some of whom follow him. One good deed doesn’t erase all of the horrible ones he committed before, but it does matter. Rather than curl up and die screaming, he chose to do what he could to delay the suffering of others. Akira helped him unlock his empathy.

Akira ends up reuniting with a still nude and shit-covered Kencho, Angie, and Shizuka, along with all of the other survivors and villagers. Trapped by the fence and with the horde of zombies coming fast, things look grim. But then Bea rolls up on them and asks that they make way so she can use the water wheel to blast the hole in the fence everyone needs to flee.

There’s a fresh crisis when everyone reaches the suspension bridge only to find it’s out. That’s when Mr. Kumano tosses over a brand-new bridge he built. He promised he’d help Akira and the others if they crossed paths again.

While this is a little deus ex machina-y, I’ll allow it because it’s yet another example of Akira and his friends being rewarded for helping and befriending others. There’s no time and the zombies are coming, so Akira and Kencho hold the bridge up as everyone else crosses, then swing themselves to the other side.

Everyone breathes a sigh of relief to hear the boys’ cries of pain, because it means they didn’t fall to their deaths. The one to help Akira up is his dad, who is proud of his son for saving the village. Later, one of the old ladies thanks Shizuka for serving as the village doctor, while Angie thanks Kencho for cheering her up. Our quartet are legit heroes; it’s only fair they get recognition.

Things turn somber when Akira sits beside his father, who is clearly sleeping through quite a bit of pain. But when he actually asks what his issue is and his mom says it’s untreated hemorrhoids, the mood is lightened considerably.

Akira, no longer fearful his dad is on his last legs, vows to save the world from this zombie virus, as a means to a more important end: getting his dad to go to the doctor and get surgery! When he invites the others to add more items to the list, they do so with enthusiasm.

Shizuka wants too become a real doctor, which is what she always dreamed of doing. Kencho wants to bring a smile to as many people as possible like Angie. And Beatrix wants to restore “Nippon’s” natural beauty, by eliminating all zombies.

That night they add a whole bunch of other, less big items, but all four have big dreams in place and bid farewell to Akira’s hometown in order to carry them out. While their grand mission soon takes the form of a sightseeing trip, everyone’s okay with that. Nothing wrong with living a little while figuring out how exactly they’re going to save this world.

As the episode ended with huge bright smiles on everyone’s faces, it left me with a big smile of my own. This was a much appreciated Christmas gift and serves as a joyful, feel-good bow on the anime year.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 11 – Warring States of Being

Kencho manages to track down Anju, thank goodness, who went after her dog, the only family she has left, but the older baddie ends up cornering them atop the roof of a barn, and intends to push them off. Bea is headed to the water wheel but is knocked off her horse by the female baddie, who engages her in a hedge-trimmer/katana duel.

When the old folks tell Shizuka they can’t run, she throws risk analysis out the window and heroically lures the zombies away. Akira uses a farmer’s hoe to cut back the zombies descending on his parents and the three city survivors he befriended. Our group may be completely split up, like the bad guys, but they’re not really alone.

Akira’s dad is clearly keeping some kind of terminal illness a secret from his son, but even if he wasn’t about to keel over from that, he’d probably still tell his son to stay inside and let him handle the zombies. He may never be an astronaut, but he still has a son with dreams he isn’t interested in outliving.

We get the sob stories of the old baddie, the fat baddie, and the female baddie, and honestly I didn’t even have the energy to break out the world’s tiniest air violin. These three suck. In contrast to our four heroes, they’ve only ever cared about themselves. They have no one to blame for their miserable lives than themselves.

Our heroes don’t usually have to try to reason with their adversaries (because they’re typically mindless zombies), but I like how they try here, starting with Kencho perfectly outlining all of the little ways the old bad guy messed up with his relationship with his wife.

When that doesn’t work Kencho goes Full Kencho (i.e. nude) and dives head-first into the cesspit. The zombies lose his scent and surround the old bad guy, who runs into the over-electrified fencde. When Kencho emerges he is now entirely pixelated (thank goodness) and Anju warns him in no uncertain terms he’s not to come near her until he’s bathed thoroughly.

With the girl and her dog safe, we head back to the house where all the elderly villagers are holed up. Old Man Hiko, typically bedridden, asks where his late wife Akemi is. When they tell him Shizuka is using herself as bait, he asks them what they’re still doing there.

The fat bad guy is armed with a pistol and chasing Shizuka to French kiss her, but Hiko, a sharpshooter, manages to intervene, and mustered the other older villagers to protect Shizuka and beat the crap out of the bad guy. Shizuka, shedding tears of relief and joy, thanks them from the bottom of her heart, but she earned their help by being so kind to them; by becoming a part of the community.

The female bad guy’s axe to grind is that people resented, hated, and mocked her for her unbending, my-way-or-the-high-way attitude towards everyone. Beatrix lists all the ways Germans do things that differ and may even seem ridiculous to the Japanese, but insists there is no perfectly right way to do things.

Beatrix then demonstrates that there’s more than one way to deactivate the water wheel, by leaping onto it and using the weight of the zombies attack to wrench it free. She then balances herself on the wheel and crushes the zombies one by one … but doesn’t crush the woman. Instead, the woman is surrounded by zombies an meets certain doom.

Finally, there’s Higurashi, the ringleader. His three comrades may be defeated, but he proves he’s real boss asshole material by plucking up Akira’s dad, who is on his last legs, and threatening to toss him to the zombies unless Akira lets himself get zombified.

I’m gonna go not very far out on a limb and predict that the MC of this show is not going to kick the bucket in episode 12. Between zombies and his health condition his dad seems like a more likely victim. Maybe our now-dreadlocked recovered salaryman will find some way to talk down or outfox Higurashi. Or maybe he’ll get a last-minute assist from friends new and old.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 10 – Bad Apples

One of the items on Akira’s list is to rock dreadlocks, and one of the survivors from the city happens to know how to make them. She, along with a college teacher and makeup artist all have each others’ backs when it comes to processing and moving past the pain of their past lives being cruelly yanked away from them. Not everyone was in as bad a situation as Akira, after all.

Even so, I loved the teacher vocalizing how a city where everything is so convenient breeds isolation, while the limited resources of a village means everyone is connected and relying on one another. This makes it the perfect place for Akira, Shizuka, Kencho, and Bea, who are all kind and caring people. Shizuka even finds an accidental niche as the village doc because she used to study medical books for fun.

When Kencho notices a young girl with just her dog as her surviving family, he’s determined to make her smile for the first time since arriving. While she initially finds his attention off-putting, his juggling and his talk about Italian etiquette regarding women puts that smile on her face, and she introduces herself as Anju.

Bea, a noted Japanophile with particular interest in the past, clearly finds this village to be the ideal spot to learn more about Japan’s simple agrarian roots. But in the process, a villager shows her what I’ll call Chekhov’s Circuit Breaker. At sundown, Kencho and Akira call out to Higurashi, whom Kencho recognizes from college.

Higurashi ignores them and stalks off. He’s not interested in contributing to society. He only wants to see “normies” like Akira and Kencho turned into zombies before he does. He just wants to watch the world burn, and he’s not the only one in the village with that wish.

The last gasp of relaxing village life comes with a catharsis of sorts for Akira: not only does he get to share a drink with his pops, but he learns that his pops is as big a joker as he is. His dad, whom he only now notices is older, leaner, and grayer than he remembers, always dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but knew he was “too dumb” to make it happen.

While Akira thinks he owes his parents for leaving the village to pursue his dreams, his dad never begrudged him for doing so. All he ever wanted was for Akira to pursue the biggest dream he could; he doesn’t think he can do that in this sleepy village.

And that may well be correct if the nihilists have their way, as they choose tonight to finally enact the plan to cross “fuck up society” and a number of other unsavory items off their demented “fuckit” list.

By tearing down the barricade and allowing the zombie horde to pour out towards the village, these four baddies intend to turn everyone in town into zombies, so at least they can have a laugh before they themselves are turned. Their list is fundamentally nihilist compared to Akira’s due to the fact they assume they can’t or won’t survive.

The irony is that if they’d simply not fuck everything up here and actually contribute something to the village, they would gain the protection of all the other villagers and be able to live long lives together. But of course, the spirits of these four have already been broken long before the pandemic.

When Higurashi and his pals confront Akira and his, Akira concedes that people should have the freedom to do whatever they want, but only if they don’t affect the freedom of others, which Higurashi clearly is. So it becomes a good-vs-evil clash of opposing bucket lists.

Akira, Kencho, Shizuka and Bea have one goal: to stop the zombies and foil Higurashi’s plan to destroy the village and its people. I’ll put my money on the folks who are thinking about more than just themselves, and who haven’t given up on life!

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 09 – Voice of the Forest

I thought that episodes 9-12 were delayed, but turns out I was off by one episode, so that counts as a BONUS in my book! We also get the full OP in all its glory, complete with more singing and dancing. As the gang draws closer to his home village, Akira recalls the last time he saw his dad was literally looking down on him as nothing but a simple country farmer. Shizuka can tell he’s nervous about reuniting with them, but come on: in what world would they not be happy he wasn’t killed in the zombie apocalypse.

While stewing in his nerves, Beatrix has to shout at him to brake (did he learn nothing from the last time he met an obstacle on the road?!): the only tunnel into the village is blocked by sandbags and construction vehicles, holding in a dense horde of zombies. The good news is Akira doesn’t recognize anyone, and it’s blocked on both sides, so the villagers are likely safe. The bad news is, they have to go the long way ’round.

As they hike through the dense mountain forest, a shout rings out: a non-zombie old man is being chased by a zombie boar. Thankfully, our gang now has an expert archer among them, and Beatrix makes quick work of the porcine menace. The old man, named Kumano Masaru, is grateful for their help.

A master carpenter, when the city became rife with zombies he retreated to the wilderness, and has begun building his own treehouse from scratch. As an item on Akira’s list relates to treehouses and he’s always dreamed of building and living in one, he’s happy to help out, even if it delays his family reunion.

While helping Masaru, Akira learns about how the tree and the forest can tell you how to build the house, if you listen carefully. He also learns Masaru had to kill his wife and son when they became zombies. He plants the idea that when a child finally comes around to repaying their parents, it’s too late, but that goes both ways.

Kencho, Shizuka and Beatrix end up chipping in, and they get the house done in one afternoon. I know this because Akira is ready to leave without spending the night there, as spending time with Masaru has made him eager to see his parents. I’m willing to suspend my belief that such a large and elaborate treehouse was completed so quickly.

After a similarly comically wild journey across a very narrow mountain pass and a creaky rope bridge, the gang finally arrives at Akira’s village, which is incredibly pretty and idyllic…and also looks exactly like the remote village in every horror anime I’ve seen. There’s a brief few moments when Akira and the others fear the village is abandoned. It turns out the lion’s share of the villagers are in the common hall, drinking, dancing, and socializing.

One of them recognizes Akira and tells his parents, and when Akira sees them, he launches into a very detailed apology for never coming home the last three years and not giving them anything in return. His dad responds by punching him on the top of his head and telling him to stop spouting nonsenses, and telling his friends there’s plenty of empty rooms to go rest up.

Not the warmest reception from his dad, but he seems like the classic stoic aloof anime dad type who doesn’t easily show emotion, so it tracks. We learn that a convoy of survivors from the city sought shelter in the village, but only a handful made it there after someone infected among them turned most of them into the zombies trapped in the tunnel.

The city folk look out of place—particularly a group that looks like they’re up to no good for some reason—but Kencho, Shizuka, and Beatrix love how homey and nostalgic the place is. After he’s unable to help out his mom, who doesn’t need it, he goes out to the fields with his dad, who seems to be hiding a terminal illness from him. On their way home at sunset, those four ne’r-do-well-lookin’ cityfolk walk past, and Akira thinks he recognizes one of them.

This lad, whom I’ll call Boilerplate Okamoto Nobuhiko-voiced character, gets his own backstory. Unlike Akira who was a cog in the corporate machine being ground into dust, he was a NEET, and considered himself outside the machine of society altogether. As the days passed, his resentment turned to rage.

When the apocalypse happened, he celebrated like Akira, but because he wanted to see everyone die and everything burn. He came upon three other society-hating sociopaths like him who traveled to this village, and now he’s planning to release the tunnel zombies on the unsuspecting village. They have their own “dark” bucket list, which I’ll henceforth be calling their “Fuck It List.” It’s with this enticing new threat looming that we press pause on this season, as the remaining three episode airdates are TBD.