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.

In / Spectre – 17 – Stigmatized Property

It’s been a year since Kurou’s cousin Sakuragawa Rikka went into hiding, and finding her remains a priority for him and Kotoko. When we see her, she’s cheerfully interacting with her new property manager Konno Kazuyuki and his girlfriend, Oki Marumi, having moved to her new apartment just a week ago.

Rikka’s trip to the horse races is interrupted by an unannounced cameo by Truck-kun, smacking her head-on and sending her flying thirty meters. A mother tells Kazuyuki and Marumi that she saved her son from getting hit. Marumi calls an ambulance while Kazuyuki checks on Rikka…and is surprised to find her completely uninjured. Rikka even jokes about it being like a TV drama.

She thanks Kazuyuki and Marumi with a six-pack of beer, and they invite her for drinks and a light dinner. Turns out the apartment Rikka has moved into has a dark recent history, as the last three tenants committed suicide within three months of moving in. Rikka offers explanations for the first two when she hears the circumstances: an overworked office drone had a nervous breakdown, and a spurned young woman couldn’t get over a bad breakup.

The third tenant is the strangest, as it was the boyfriend of the woman that was dumped. Rikka understandably isn’t concerned by whatever conditions the apartment might serve up—like Kurou, she’s effectively invulnerable. When asked why she moved in, she tells them the story of her beloved cousin and his truly awful girlfriend, and is determined to break them up before she hurts him.

Rikka suddenly leaves late in the night, again thanking Kazuyuki for his kindness and leaving him her key and some cash for his trouble. The next day, just a hair too late, Kotoko and Kurou arrive. Initially, the couple sees the doll-like Kotoko and wonder how she could be so awful, but then she makes joke about Kurou drinking sake out of her crotch, and then they get it (to be fair, Kurou started it by calling her hairy).

Kotoko’s visit had been foretold by Rikka, since she knew Kotoko is looking for her, hence the need to skedaddle. And sure enough, Kotoko offers logical explanations for all three suicides. The third, which was the one that vexed Kazuyuki and Marumi the most, was simply a matter of the ex-boyfriend moving in to confirm that something about the apartment led to his ex’s suicide. When nothing happened, he became consumed by grief for his role in her death.

She surmises that may also have left no note as a small kindness to his own family, so they could explain his death to the apartment. Once Kotoko and Kurou leave, Kazuyuki and Marumi are satisfied by the explanations. Kazuyuki also thought that while Kotoko may be somewhat awful, he could tell Kurou cared a great deal for her. Marumi says that may be the case for now, but Rikka was concerned about their future together.

On their walk home, Kurou asks Kotoko if she told the pure truth, and she says she instead did exactly what was necessary: tell a believable story with the available info she had that could put Kazuyuki and Marumi at ease. She is also certain there are no supernatural beings in the apartment, as they’d be just as scared of Rikka as they are of Kurou.

That brings us back to a chat between Kotoko and Rikka a year ago when Rikka was staying at Kotoko’s house. Rikka asked what she fears, and Kotoko simply made a joke about a rakugo routine. When Kotoko wonders if Rikka told Kazuyuki and Marumi that she was some kind of awful woman, Kurou tells her that could be the impression some people get of her, considering she doesn’t seem to fear anything.

Kotoko says there actually is something she fears, but when Kurou asks, she simply gives him another Rakugo joke. But as fireworks start to explode in the sky above them and Kurou lifts her up for a better view, Kotoko’s eyes shimmer. I imagine the thing Kotoko fears most is losing Kurou, but is too proud to get serious and say so.

Instead, not knowing what the future holds for either of them, and Rikka still out of pocket, she tells Kurou that relationships between a man and woman tend to go better with a secret or two, then brings his lips to hers for a romantic kiss.

As with the Yuki-onna story, Kotoko and Kurou don’t show up until later, but with Rikka involved in this new “case”, they’re a lot more involved, since Rikka rejects them as a couple. Kazuyuki and Marumi are a nice realistic couple with a cozy, lived-in relationship. This season has shown that the more time we spend getting to know the folks Kotoko interacts with on her travels, the more fun and compelling those interactions are.