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.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 08 – The Beautiful Nippon

Akira, Shizuka, and Kencho are back on the road to Akira’s folks when they come across a wrecked truck on the road, surounded by zombies. Without hesitation, Akira dons his Akirager costume to rescue the survivors, but they, or rather she doesn’t need help. She’s a one-woman zombie-killing matching, resplendent in full samurai regalia. She is Beatrix Amerhauser, German national and lover of All Things Japan.

Beatrix had the awful luck to work her whole adult life to save up enough to visit Japan and experience all she has to offer just when the pandemic broke out. So while she may not have an official list (at least on paper; it’s probably in her head) she’s determined to experience “the Beautiful Nippon” all the same.

That includes having a fancy sushi dinner, hence the truck: she was transporting fresh fish to a sushi chef in Takasaki City. Akira is the first to agree to help, as he wants sushi too, and Kencho and Shizuka go along. But while they have a nifty little plan in place to herd and burn as many zombies as they can, the matches they have don’t work.

As the zombies swarm and draw closer to their precious RV, Beatrix has a momentary crisis of confidence. But Akira snaps her out of it by leading by example—that is, running headlong into danger as usual. Shizuka and Kencho back up their close-range fighting by preparing Molotov cocktails that mop up the zombies. The sushi chef, still alive, treats the quartet to the best sushi dinner of their lives, and it’s enough to make Beatrix weep.

After the great Japanese tradition of sushi, the four continue their road trip, but when a classic Japanese heat wave makes them hot and sticky, they seek out the invigorating waters of a hot spring town. Beatrix finds the ladies’ kimonos aren’t generously proportioned enough to hold her Teutonic bust, so she wears the same robe as the guys.

Akira, realizing that he and Kencho are with two cute babes, comments that under normal circumstances this would be a great spot for a date. That’s when the Shizuka of old comes out, decrying love and romance as wastes of time and resources. She’s also scandalized at the prospect of sharing the only working hot bath with the guys, but Beatrix casts away her clothes in preparation to join them without fear or shame.

When a horde of amphibious zombies emerge from beneath the water, the four have to make a run for it, seeking refuge atop a nearby bluff. That night, Akira wanders off to find a drink of water and comes upon a picturesque natural mountain hot spring. He disrobes and dives in, only to find a nude Shizuka is already there.

They agree to stay on their respective sides of the rock and Akira promises not to peek, and they’re eventually able to relax. Shizuka even apologizes for snapping at him about love before; she tells him after a lifetime of having her opinions shot down by her awful father, hearing and accepting the opinions of others doesn’t come easy.

She continues to say she’s “bad at romance” and tries to act tough by saying she only needs her job, but in reality she’s afraid of being hurt. When Akira points out she’s being very open, she says if she does ever fall in love with someone, she hopes it’s with someone she can be this open with.

She then realizes how that must sound to Akira, but before she can qualify, the two are interrupted by the arrival of a naked Kencho and Beatrix, ready to join the party. Seeing the quartet promised by the OP and ED finally completed is quite simply fun as hell, Beatrix is a great new addition, and Shizuka x Akura is definitely ship-worthy. It’s a shame we’ll have to wait a bit for the last three episodes to air.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 07 – No Need to Obey

Akira may as well be back at the office, as he’s completely under the boot-heel of Chief Kosugi—a constantly apologetic, servile cog in the machine. Watching him, and having to pour beer and endure sexual harassment from Kosugi, dredges up a lot of memories for Shizuka. She doesn’t like those memories, and she doesn’t like watching Akira like this.

Shizuka’s father was essentially Chief Kosugi, only richer and more powerful. So obsessed was he with molding Shizuka into his scion that he told her to get rid of a sickly puppy she found on the street, because she needed to cast aside the weak. When she didn’t, he had the dog put down. Throughout her life, his constant mantra was You only need to obey.

Those are the same words used by Kosugi when on the last day of his servitude they agreed upon, the Chief suddenly switches gears from yelling to acting benevolent, telling the thoroughly downtrodden Akira that he can just stay here and work for him indefinitely.

Up until witnessing Akira in this state, Shizuka had more or less obeyed her father, which resulted in her having a prosperous job but very little in the way of joy. It’s only now that she realizes she wasn’t benefitting herself obeying her father and letting him dominate her.

When she finds Akira’s bucket list in the RV, she reads it over and smiles at how weird some of the items are. Then, in a moment of inspiration, adds a new item to the list.

The morning they’re to depart, the brainwashed Akira shocks Shizuka and Kencho by saying he’ll stay, parroting the reasons Kosugi mentioned: freedom is tough, the world outside is dangerous, and he’s not good for much, so he needs to stick with the boss.

Shizuka is fine to leave without him, but when he uses the word “need” over and over again, she can’t help but remember her father constantly drilling that into her head. She never snapped back at her father for fear of being thrown out on the street, but she’s officially had it with that word.

Shizuka’s parting words, about Kosugi being nothing but a sad, pathetic parasite who makes himself bigger by putting others down and wants to steal Akira’s free will, his very soul. She stands in front of the image of her younger self and says she’s getting away from this gross shithead with all due haste, because she’s not giving herself over to anyone ever again.

She then shows Akira his bucket list, tells him he’s not a machine or a zombie, and that he should be allowed to do what he wants, not be browbeaten into doing what others think he needs. When he sees the item she wrote—Tell off my jerk of a boss—and Kosugi snatches the book and prepares to stomp on it, Akira protects it with his own body.

His eyes now returned to normal thanks to Shizuka, he fulfills that bucket list item by telling Kosugi off. Whatever the Chief believes he still “owes” him, Akira tells him straight up he won’t be able to make it up to him. Sorry! As for the threat of being eaten by zombies, it’s better than being worked like one.

As Akira is about to leave with Shizuka and Kencho, a delivery van arrives and a zombie bursts out, causing pure chaos and sending Kosugi, who is not built for running, running for his life.

Because Akira’s a good guy with delusions of superheroism, he rescues his boss by coordinating with the baseball players to pen in all of the zombies, then blow them up by igniting propane tanks.

Shizuka can’t help but smile and laugh at the fact Akira keeps pulling off the craziest shit that ends up working. When he thanks her and she tells him it wasn’t meant to be a compliment, they both laugh.

Shizuka didn’t just wake Akira up, but thanks to her words and his actions, now all of them have had their fill of Kosugi as their leader, and abandon him en masse. He believed he was on the road to running Japan, but it only took two days for the sad little king’s hill to melt down into nothing.

Back on the road (and hopefully watching very carefully for more spike strips!), Akira reveals that he literally blanked out whenever he was around Kosugi, so while he remembered the torturous work, he remembered little of his interactions with him. That’s probably for the best.

Akira does go on to worry if he’s cut out for anything job-wise, but that’s where Shizuka comes in to say something Akira would have said to her a few days ago: So what? The time for needing to obey others who don’t have your best interests at heart is over. It’s time to do what they want. It’s the freakin’ end of the world…if not now, when?

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 06 – Equipment Check

Their rooftop haven is out of water, and Tokyo is out of power, so after visiting the Ginza to try on some watches and suits they’d never get to afford in their past lives, Akira and Kencho pack up and prepare to leave for Gunma, in hopes Akira’s parents are still alive.

Rather than take the motorcycle for the 4-plus-hour ride, Akira decides they need to have a kitted-out RV instead, and head to an RV show at a convention center. They have the same idea as Shizuka, and use her own risk analysis to get her to grudingly join them, since she doesn’t have a driver’s license.

As you’d expect, Akira and Kencho turn into excited little boys at the sight of all the cool RVs on display, one of which costs 23 million yen (or $150K US). But even Shizuka can’t hide how much she loves a sumptuous VW bus conversion, even though a lifted Tacoma conversion meets their needs.

Ultimately the choice of what RV to take is governed by the fact the boys were so loud they attracted a horde of zombies. They pile into a decently-sized Hino Cab-over RV and skedaddle; Kencho retrieves their bike and they head out in a two-vehicle convoy. The highways are mercifully empty.

I was ready to sit back and enjoy a fun road trip, but disaster strikes when both Akira and Kencho hit spike strips that ruin their tires. Kencho is thrown from his bike and injured. Three coach buses quickly arrive and block the way, manned by surly baseball players.

Their leader says “Tendou”, and Akira realizes that it’s his old boss, Chief Kosugi. Kosugi is all smiles in offering medical supplies, fresh tires, and the like. But of course, there’s a catch: Akira has to work for him for two days. And considering how often Kosugi lied to Akira at the office, two days might as well be translated as forever.

Akira, Kencho, and Shizuka have no choice but to accept Kosugi’s “kind” offer, and the latter two notice an instant change in Akira. Even he freezes up and can’t breathe or think when Kosugi is in his face, so traumatized he is by the past abuse.

When Akira tries to pull a fun-loving “new Akira” and chill some beers for everyone, but he’s reamed out for wasting electricity, and placed in the doghouse when the baseball guys think the cold beer is for them. Kosugi also shows Akira his ideal workforce: zombies that are tied up to pull cargo: No will of their own, no need to pay them, and no backtalk. Simply equipment. Chilling.

At no point does absolute contempt and menace drip from Kosugi’s features, nor does he ever miss a single chance to run Akira down, saying he can only hope to be as useful as the zombies. Suffice it to say this is a bad, bad place, and our peeps need to get out of here pronto. With Akira totally under Kosugi’s heel like the bad old days, organizing an escape likely falls to Shizuka, and a Kencho who hopefully heals up fast.

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.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead – 01 (First Impressions) – Out of Office

Tendou Akira is broken. Working at home while easting and watching a zombie movie, the camera pulls back when he finally passes out, and his apartment is a abject disaster. It wasn’t always like this. When Akira was a bright-eyed bushy-tailed new hire at a production company, he was ready to take a bite out of the world…and immediately fell for Saori from Accounting.

When he joins his co-workers for drinks after work, Akira is on top of the world, and Saori even gives him a smile when their eyes meet among the others. But then everyone gets up at the same time…to head back to work. His first day is an all-nighter. Then another all-nighter. There is simply too much work, but he wouldn’t dream of complaining on his first day.

When he’s finally able to go home two days later, all he can do is collapse into his bed, utterly spent. But the next morning he decides to stop complaining, dust himself off, and get back to work. His chipper, never-say-die attitude transfers to his voiceover as he describes what a great company he works for, which contrasts with the awful things taking place in reality—including the CEO assaulting Saori without consent.

Ultimately, there is no way to sugarcoat what is going on at this exploitative company, and Akira loses both the will and energy to do so. Ground down into dust, he apologizes to mailboxes and is shambling around like, well, a zombie. One morning starts with Akira getting a letter stating he forgot to pay his bike parking fee. But when he goes to the office to sort it out, a man is eating a woman—both of whom have been turned into zombies.

Akira runs out of his building to find a full-on Zombie Apocalypse taking place in Tokyo, and all he can think about is how he’s going to be late for work…until he realizes there isn’t going to be work today, or tomorrow, or ever. The moment he realizes this is exceedingly cathartic and joyful, and the show’s house style turns his monochrome world into one of vivid color: blue skies, green trees…and red blood.

While an apocalypse for nearly everyone else, Akira feels like he’s been given a new lease on life (especially since his job was giving him suicidal thoughts), and he fully intends to do as much as he can with the time he now has at his disposal. The first thing he wants to do is properly confess his feelings for Saori, which he’s harbored since they first met.

Only when he arrives at her apartment, the CEO is there. Despite the CEO turning into a Bloater-like super zombie before his eyes, Akira calmly and professionally declares his resignation, before using his rugby background to shove his murderous boss off the balcony.

But if the boss is a zombie, it stands to reason Saori is too. And sure enough, she is. But in the few seconds he has before she rushes him with intent to eat his brains, he declares his love for her, and at least for a moment, in his head, he gets one last smile from Saori, before he has to run for his life. In both the resignation and confession scenes, Akira is essentially the straight man while the CEO and Saori are the comic in these deliciously dark double acts.

Akira stops by a konbini to buy a notebook and writes “100 Things I Want to Do Before I Turn into a Zombie”, which gives us the show’s playful title and also leads to the baller ED theme (which may end up being the OP theme in future episodes). With the affairs of his “old” life all squared away, he has truly turned a new page, and there’s nothing but adventure and excitement up ahead!

That is, unless he’s being overly optimistic to the point of delusion, like he was during his earlier tenure with the exploitative company—the kind on which the show levels ruthless, withering, in-your-face criticism. The contrast between Akira’s chipper-ness and the horrible zombie apocalypse milieu makes for a book full of blank checks the studio, Bug Films, seems fully capable of cashing.

I’m looking forward to seeing what he has in mind for his Zombie Bucket List, and who he’ll meet who still has a good head attached to their shoulders. Zom 100 also happens to be one of the most lushly animated and stylish cinematic series since Chainsaw Man, with a premise nearly as bodacious as Akiba Maid War. Mostly it’s just a bloody crowd-pleasing bucket of fun.