Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 05 – Forget the Reasons

While sleeping in a tent on a rooftop above a ruined Tokyo, Akira remembers his childhood dream: to be a superhero. He once dressed up like his favorite Super Sentai-style TV hero and protected the weak from bullies, and now he’ll become a slayer of zombies for the people. Kencho, who decides to bleach his hair so he’ll have more impact as a comic, naturally doesn’t pooh-pooh his friend’s dream.

They head to the nearest aquarium to find something, and note how it feels a little naughty to be in the backrooms where normally only employees would be allowed. The episode takes care not to show us exactly what this item is until Akira needs to put it to use: it’s a puncture-proof sharksuit embedded with chainmail, enabling him to fight off zombies chasing survivors on a bus without fear of bites.

He also takes the effort to paint it so he looks more like a cool hero than a guy in a shark suit. As fate would have it, one of the survivors running to the safety of the aquarium is “Miss Risk Analyst”, but while Akira wants to look cool, his cosplay is ridiculous and he’s quickly gang-piled by the zombies. He slinks back to Kencho and the others exhausted, alive, and unable to impress the konbini girl.

That said, Kencho urges him to talk to her anyway, and while she doesn’t deny that he saved people, she doesn’t understand why he’d risk his life to save strangers without regard to the people who matter to him (like Kencho, or his family back in rural Gunma). After refusing yet again to exchange contact info, they’re attacked by a zombie great white shark propelled by the legs of three zombies it ate.

The absurd yet frightening foe cuts Miss Analyst’s analysis of Akira acting out his fantasy of being a hero to mollify his inferiority and self-worth issues short. Everyone runs for their lives, and when she tries to calm a panicking girl down she gets shoved to the ground and left behind.

Miss Analyst believes this to be the end for her, and she reiterates her hatred of working big groups. But before the shark thing can pounce on her, it’s mounted like a bucking bronco by Akira, saving her once again. When she angrily asks him why, he tells her to forget about the reasons.

Just as someone hungry will eat or someone will want to talk to a cute girl, a hero doesn’t need a reason to save people, even strangers. Realizing this isn’t a world where analysis and logic alone will necessarily save her (again, she’s being chased by a zombie shark with six zombie human legs) Miss Analysis relents.

Knowing full well Akira doesn’t have a strategy, she comes up with one: using batteries to disable the shark’s Ampullae of Lorenzini. Akira buys time while she locates batteries up to the task, and when he falters, Kencho buys him time by once again stripping down to make an enticing target for the monster.

Somewhat disappointingly, even after going through all this, Miss Analyst doesn’t join Akira and Kencho as they head to Akira’s family home in Gunma. She cites irreconcilable differences in their methods: they want to do things before becoming zombies, and she wants to prevent becoming one altogether. It’s a fair assessment, but there’s also room in the middle.

That said, I love her reaction to Akira telling her she’s precious to him now and he’d save her even if he wasn’t trying to be a hero. Her mask truly cracks, and she shows that she’s not immune to certain charms. And even though they part ways once again, she still gives Akira her contact info at the end, revealing her name as Mikazuki Shizuka.

She says, with a wry smile and the wind catching her hair, it’s fine to give the info to him because it’s because it’s unlikely they’ll see each other again. But c’mon…they’re definitely seeing each other again.

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.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 03 – The Naked Truth

We’ve watched the first couple of days of the zombie apocalypse from the POV Akira and the woman in pink (whose name is Shizuku), so it’s good to get an entirely new POV, in this case from the star host Shuu at a gentleman’s club. His latest client is a frightened little girl who has lost everyone and everything, but he promises to keep her safe.

Shuu and his handsome co-workers adopt an entirely different demeanor upon arming themselves, leaving the safety of the club, and setting out into the Shinjuku sun, ready to do battle with the seething hordes of mindless zombies. Akira arrives via motorcycle just as this battle is about to take place.

But let’s back up a few hours, as the show likes to jump back and forward in time. To Akira’s delight, the internet is back, just when he finally has time to reconnect with all of his friends he lost touch with due to his job. He arrives at another solemn moment when he realizes the internet only works because so many fewer people are using it since they’ve been turned.

One man who hasn’t (yet) been turned is his best bud from college and rugby club, Kencho (whose business card reads Ryuuzaki Kenichirou). When shit went down, he just happened to be in the bondage room of a Shinjuku brothel. Thus the woman he was to spend the night with was already tied up when she became a zombie.

He’s been trapped in the room with her for three days with ntohing but water, and he’s starting to fade…until he gets a phone call from an unusually chipper Akira, who asks him to text him where he is and he’ll come for him.

This Akira on the other end of the line is a far cry from the last Akira Kencho saw: they’d gotten drinks about a year ago, and Kencho boasted about how much success he’d had as a big-shot real estate guy. Politician clients, model girlfriends and day-trips to Paris. Akira, at the time, was thoroughly mired and soul-crushed by his job.

At the time, Kencho told him to simply quit that job, since it wasn’t doing him any good. But Akira didn’t want to hear it, not then, not from Kencho. Now, thanks to the distraction of a car horn (which also saves Shou’s life), Akira is able to clear out the brotel and get to Kencho…so he can tearfully apologize to his friend for not taking his advice and quitting a year ago.

Kencho wants to say something too, but the horde returns promptly, forcing them up to the roof of the building. The door barricade won’t last, and the only thing to do is  jump, which is actually not that crazy an idea in such a built-up, skyscraper-packed district. With the same conviction as he risked his life to buy beer and save his friend, Akira leaps and lands hard but safe on the roof across the street.

Kencho is astounded, but after a beat, he laments that he won’t be able to make that same jump. Instead, he decides to tell Akira the truth: he hated his job too. He had a knack for it due to his gift of gab and talent for schmoozing, but hated constantly lying, manipulating clients into signing bad deals, and maintaining the fiction of the ideal happy life.

He’s sorry to Akira for showing off when they last met, but Akira already knows Kencho went above and beyond to entertain him and their friends at school and on the rugby team. Kencho admits, loudly and tearfully, that what he really wanted was to be a stand-up comic. Akira tells him again to let go of his dour fake real estate job and leap to the rooftop where he is.

Suddenly suffused with confidence (or maybe just reckless abandon), Kencho listens to his friend and jumps—tossing off all his clothes in the process. Akira laughs harder than he has in years at the muscular naked spectacle, but is still able to grab Kencho when he comes up a bit short and lift him up to safety.

I cannot say how Kencho got his clothes back, but both he and Akira have a naked beer session in front of a fire on the rooftop as the sun goes down. Kencho admires Akira quitting his job, dropping everything, and moving on with his life, even as he’s doing the exact same thing simply due to the zombie apocalypse.

Still, it happened, and Kencho believes true success comes from escaping dead-end situations that cause apathy and despair. Akira and Kencho are now free from the jobs they hated, and free to define themselves how they see fit. Akira also gets to cross off another item on his list: Drink and laugh with my best bud.

This was a beautiful portrait of positive male friendship and love. If the ED ever becomes a reality and they’re joined by Shizuku and “Samurai Girl” in a survivor’s quartet, they’ll surely have to wear more clothes. But this was an exceedingly uplifting reunion.

Like Shuu’s struggle to keep one little girl safe at the club showed, nothing is over in this ruined world until it’s over. There’s still hope, as long as non-zombified humans can still breathe, drink, eat, love, and laugh together.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 02 – Risk Management

The zombie apocalypse may be a nightmare for most of Tokyo, but Tendou Akira has just woken up from his nightmare, to a glorious new chapter of his life. After cleaning up his apartment, Akira rewards himself with a cold beer, which probably tastes better to him on this day than anything he has ever tasted. Then he has another one. Then he’s out!

With the staircase full of zombies, Akira climbs down the neighboring building, where he meets and affably greets a surviving couple, whose cinematic scene is interrupted by his sudden appearance. He tells them he needs to head out for an errand, and agrees to get them some ramen and TP—the 2-ply kind, the woman clarifies.

Akira’s bike ride to the nearest konbini is harrowing, but also exhilarating, and his job hadn’t quite sapped him of his athleticism, so he makes it there safely, singing a stupid song about beer. Then he encounters another survivor: a young woman in a tracksuit and hoodie.

He introduces himself, then asks for her contact info, not in a flirty way, but in a “we’re two of the last people alive for miles” way. Yet you can tell from her expression and no-nonsense aura that she doesn’t have time to deal with Akira. Yes, even in the zombie apocalypse, he can’t get a girl’s number!

That said, the woman (voiced by Kusunoki Tomori) has a logical explanation for declining to share info: the fact he’s gone on a beer run under these circumstances tells her a lot about his prowess for risk analysis (or lack thereof). She’s trying to maximize her probability of survival; a reckless goof like Akira would only decrease it.

When zombies come through the door, the woman simply stands there looking at her folding phone. Akira instinctively jumps in front of her, but then she grabs him by the scruff and throws him backwards, just in time to prevent him from getting iced by a runaway Truck-kun.

The closeup of the woman on top of Akira has her eyes glittering and hair flowing gracefully in a hail of glass and stone. To him, in that moment, she’s a goddess delivering him from oblivion. But before he can thank her, she’s already off, pedaling her high-end bike like the wind.

Akira wonders if he’ll ever see her again—the OP and ED are spoilers in this regard, but not that that’s a surprise. But there’s still the matter of him having to get home safely, and his bike was smushed by Truck-kun. He finds a scooter with the keys in (one of many, as the pandemic hit at rush hour), then quickly upgrades to a Harley hog.

On his climb back up to his apartment, he greets the survivor couple, only to find their apartment has been attacked and they’re gone. As the sun goes down, Akira drinks the rest of his beer in a less celebratory and more somber mood. He also decides to start compiling in earnest his bucket list of things to do before becoming a zombie.

Some of the items he can already cross off: confessing to Saori, cleaning his room, bumming around. Others are long-standing items he’s never gotten around to, like living out of an RV. Then there’s some has to think a little more about, like going home to spend time with his parents. He ends up with a preliminary list of 33 items, or a third of the titular ZOM 100. Not a bad start!

From here, the letterboxing returns as the episode shifts to tracksuit lady’s POV on the morning of the pandemic. She has no alarm, she simply opens her eyes at the stroke of 6 AM, runs ten kilometers (in two hours and one minute) on her treadmill, takes her course of vitamins, and listens to the news and emergency alerts.

It’s a masterclass in painting the picture of who this person is with a minimum of monologue. She’s no-nonsense, precise, disciplined, and has a strict routine from which she only deviates if circumstances demand it. Mirroring Akira’s path, she immediately starts a spreadsheet, not of things she wants to do before becoming a zombie, but how to avoid becoming one.

She starts by watching a bunch of zombie movies for research (which gives us another hilarious hard cut from the movie to reality), then heads out on her bike and GoPro camera with a list of essentials: water, food, power, fuel, and data. While at the konbini, she considers taking a sakura mochi, but one of the items on her survival list is “minimize sugar intake” so she abstains.

As if to rub her discipline back in her face, Akira shows up on her GoPro stream, then strolls in merrily singing his goofy beer song. She immediately pegs him as a short-sighted naïf who is only thinking about his immediate needs—and thus someone to avoid. The truck crash unfolds as it did from Akira’s perspective, but thanks to her camera she knew it was coming, and to shove Akira out of the way.

The young woman can’t help but admire how even a trope from a stupid zombie blockbuster worked in real life. As such I’m sure she’ll consider employing other farfetched tropes if they’ll increase her chance of survival. Back home, she goes over her video footage, lingering on shots of Akira when they come up.

She’s surprised that a single beer could make someone as happy as Akira looked even in such a state of emergency. She also recalls the sakura mochi she left on the shelf, and wonders if she should have taken it after all. Surviving is one thing, and she clearly has the wherewithal to do so.

But living is something else entirely. Like Akira, she’s been working her ass off up until this time—albeit in a far less torturous job—and she simply shifted her energies from business to survival. That’s not a bad way to be at all, but indulging in the occasional guilty pleasure—a sakura mochi—wouldn’t be the end of the world.

She and Akira represent two extremes in how to contend with this absurd situation. They could learn a lot from one another, so I hope they meet again soon.

TONIKAWA: Over the Moon For You – S2 04 – The Kiss List

One of the many reasons Tsukasa loves Nasa so much is that he’s extremely reliable. He may not be the strongest guy, but whether it’s fixing Kaname’s vacuum or helping Aya avoid failing the year at high school, he earnestly helps out those in need without any thought of getting anything in return. He’s also modest, grateful to and respectful of those who came before him, like the great minds who developed the math he’s teaching the somewhat less great-minded Aya.

After preparing some worksheets that will help Aya with self-study, Nasa goes on to work on a project for a vtuber friend. Tsukasa can see that he must be stiff from sitting cross-legged and typing for such an extended time, so she insists her husband lie down so she can give him a massage.

Nasa admits this is his first massage, which makes Tsukasa happy since “she’ll be his first”. She’s also quite good. Not only does Nasa feel great because his muscles and joints are being taken care of, he also feels another kind of way that a husband feels when his wife is touching him.

He wants Tsukasa to feel good too, so when she’s done, Nasa insists she have a seat so he can massage her. She’s nervous, so only allows him to give her a shoulder massage, as long as he’s gentle. Nasa realizes he’s never touched his wife in this way, and that he feels just as good massaging her as he felt when she massaged him.

As we know Tsukasa and Nasa are not the most physically intimate couple, and a lot of the, shall we say, physical activities in which most loving couples engage both before or after marriage, don’t come easily. That said, day by day, little by little, they are becoming more comfortable with each other. That has a lot to do with how kind they know each other to be.

It’s ultimately Kaname’s conniving that jump-starts their physicality, as one day out of the blue she rudly asks Nasa how many times he and Tsukasa kiss and do it per day. She also informs him she’s been diving into the depths of blue YouTube, something I’m sure Nasa doesn’t want her talking about.

However, when Kaname produces a list she wrote up that indicates the various meanings of kisses to different parts of the body. Neck, ear, hand, hair…each kiss sends a different message. While Nasa isn’t comfortable discussing this with Kaname, he also doesn’t refuse the list she prepared.

That list makes Nasa’s subsequent interactions with Tsukasa a little tenser than usual, since he can’t un-read the list, and thus knows what he’d be “saying” to Tsukasa were he to kiss her here or there. When the two go out for an evening stroll after a grocery run, she catches him smelling her hair as it flows in the night air.

Tsukasa tells him he can touch her hair if he wants, so he does, though she’s a little weary of being seen out in the open. Nasa assures them it’s dark and “should be fine”, so the hair-touching commences. It’s interrupted when the two spot Yanagi-sensei with Taniguchi-sensei, who have clearly hit it off since they’re now going on evening strolls…and kissing.

When the bashful couple returns home, Tsukasa is given some green grapes by Kaname…along with the list of kisses. Nasa decides to use the opportunity to kiss her on the throat, indicating need. She counters with a kiss to the ear: seduction.

Gradually, the two start making out by kissing various parts of their bodies—while remaining fully clothed, and without getting too amorous, mind you! It’s cute as hell, and precisely the kind of stready yet significant progress one would expect of a couple still feeling their way though that aspect of their marriage.

Made in Abyss – 11

Thanks to the careful ministrations of Nanachi the Hollow, Riko’s arm is stabilized and she’d given another 12 or so hours of life to play with.

Turns out Nanachi had been shadowing her and Reg since they reached the Fourth Layer, but only revealed herself out of pity for Reg, who mewled like a “lost little kid” when Riko went blue.

She warns Reg Riko is far from out of the woods: to save her life, he’ll have to go back out into the Goblet to collect a number of items within those 12 hours.

Then another sound comes from the tent, and Nanachi introduces Reg to OH GAAAAAAAH JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE HELL IS THAT … THAT THING? Honestly, after the “meat” Ozen brought back to life and last week’s gruesome ordeal, you’d think I’d be more desensitized to the horrors of the Abyss, but “Mitty” provides another, well, layer of darkness and dread.

Nanachi makes it clear that Mitty in her current form (which is barely a form at all) is nearer to the rule, not the exception, where Hollows are concerned. Both Nanachi and Mitty ascended from the Sixth Layer. Both were changed irrevocably, but only Nanachi maintained her humanoid form and mental faculties – an “exception among exceptions.”

Mitty is…well, hollow. For most humans who undergo such a transformation, death by their comrades usually follows, but not in this case. Nanachi not only hasn’t put Mitty out of her misery, but keeps her around like a kind of pet.

Perhaps it’s an act of penance. In some flashes of the past we see what is probably a pre-ascent Mitty—a girl with eyes the same reddish hue as the eye of post-ascent Mitty—and a younger, post-ascent Nanachi being praised by the White Whistle Bondrewd the Novel, who is happy “the experiment” was a success. Perhaps Nanachi and Mitty were the subjects of that experiment, and only Nanachi survived (relatively) intact.

Reg collects all the items on Nanachi’s list without too much difficulty, only to learn that just one of those items—the purple mushrooms that grow on shroombears—was necessary to save Riko; the other things were merely for Nanachi to eat. But Nanachi makes a good point: she cannot forage for food while tending Riko, so someone had to.

Reg is also instructed to wash Riko’s soiled clothes at a nearby riverbank behind Nanachi’s hut. The utterly gorgeous verdant landscape he beholds is peppered with graves, somewhat souring the awe with melancholy.

But Reg starts seeing things – the field of flowers of fortitude, Blaze Reap marking a grave – and also hears his own voice speaking to Lyza. He wonders if he buried Lyza, but remembers Ozen said “no one was buried” there.

The thing is, “no one” could be construed as “nothing human”—i.e., a hollow—but when back in the tent, what’s left of Mitty suddenly approaches a sleeping Riko. Does this behavior suggest that Riko’s presence is somehow drawing out the humanity in Mitty, like the mushrooms are drawing out the piercer’s poison? Does Mitty recognize Lyza’s daughter?