Murphy’s law has come into full effect and I must say that you will either watch this episode with a sadistic smile or with a worried interest. The episode started slow with what could be a fourth wall breaking moment of Miki discussing the book she finished. Her words about having read the translated version of the book and that it’s only natural that the original version would end the same seem directed at the manga readers. Basically a wink to let us know that what’s coming isn’t going to change from the source. But I must admit there is some masterful misdirection here. As we all no doubt guessed, Taromarou is now dead or undead in this case as he was bitten. Hardly a surprise as the dog’s death was heavily foreshadowed for the past few episodes. The opening even has gone through even more changes as now zombie Megumi is shown and Taromarou is missing completely. Not to mention Yuki’s hat at the end of the opening is now covered in blood. So we all knew this dog was going to die, yet under this obvious twist was a far more surprising one. I am fairly certain that nobody(who is watching anime only) saw Kurumi’s death coming.
I knew about it but only because I accidentally spoiled myself on that matter and am currently kicking myself for it. I mean out of anyone in the group, I thought Kurumi had the greatest plot armour. She’s a fan favourite and is the group’s main attacker and scout. Killing off Kurumi puts the rest of the group in a much more dangerous situation and her character was one who could get them out of dangerous spots. Well to be honest she isn’t confirmed dead yet as there still some mention of medicine in the lower floors but if that turned out to save her it would be a fairly cheap plot device. Part of me wants there to be something to save her as I do like her character yet I feel her dying lends much more to the story to come. In looking at the situation it looks very likely that she will die and doing so puts Yuuri in a awkward position of killing her turned friend. She did take out a familiar cloth wrapped knife from the ending and she did make a promise to end her life if she ever got bit.
What might surprise people is that Taromarou didn’t originally have this big a role in the manga. In the manga he was briefly shown in a flashback and was already bitten by the time he joined the gang. He had no connection to Miki and was originally found by Yuki and died before Miki joined them. The connection between Taromarou and Miki leads itself greatly to the story now as with Kurumi on her deathbed Miki has to go down and look for medicine. She isn’t quite aware that there’s still a zombie Taromarou in the lower floors. Though to make matters worse the zombies have broken down their barricade and are making their ways to the upper floors. The cherry on top of the tragedy is that Yuki by episodes end looks to have snapped out of her delusional fantasy and now sees things as they really are. Next weeks episode really cannot come fast enough. One concern however deals with the number of remaining episodes as it seems that there isn’t enough to cover the remainder of this arc from the manga. It’s possible they will attempt to make a original ending or they might cut the story off in the middle of the arc. Neither outcome is quite desirable as I am interested in seeing how this all plays out and would like another season.
I thought the implication with the book, is how the manga is apparently different from the anime, though probably both have similar endings. I think that’s a more clever parallelism considering last episode pretty much foreshadowed this last one.
Also, is it just me or are zombie dogs uncommon in zombie movies? I mean aside from Resident Evil and Pet Cemetery I don’t recall many movies having zombie pets.
Finally I kind of expect a clever twist using the buildup on how these zombies have bits of acknowledgement of their former lives. Will that mean that when Yuki sees zombie Megu something will happen?
Also I think direction wise they should unveil the zombies in the next episode, the dark veil has worked well as a buildup to the scaling horror. But I think keeping it in the payoff will be silly.
Zombie stories that are virus-based tend to keep it to only people, as a virus that jumps between species is pretty rare; specially one that changes so much of the host physiology. It’s different in games since they want different enemy types.
Still we’ve have had plagues brought by animals like the black plague.
Still contagion or not between species, do zombies also eat other animals? Or does it need to be cannibalistic in nature the disease?
Finally when does a zombie stops eating their victim? I mean when it becomes numerous wouldn’t the group eat a victim whole?
Misconception, the plague was not brought on by rats but rather the flees that stayed on them. The flees themselves were not affected (due to the vast difference in biology as mentioned) but acted as vectors transferring the disease between people. We have avian and swine flu, but they are very rare and not that virulent. Also they’re a basic influenza, nothing too complicated.
Zombies are very rarely ever displayed eating eachother. Magical zombies just seem to want to kill the living, and viral ones are explained as only wanting ‘fresh meat’ which is a bit of a cop-out. I mean decaying meat is rancid, but what does a zombie know. Also regarding animals I would say yes, they probably would eat anything that looks edible to them.
And lastly, I would say a zombie eats till it’s full, and yeah a big enough herd should pick their prey clean to the bone.
I’ve only seen the anime, not read the manga, so this is just guessing.
I actually had Kurumi pegged as the first to “graduate” from the beginning, and it’s pretty simple: Yuuri is the one who is doing the most to keep the group (mostly Yuki) stable, Miki is the late-comer who gets a lot of story focus, Yuki is the main character, and Kurumi is the one who provides safety to the group… and that safety is the first thing that would logically be taken away to ramp up the tension.
I could go into wild speculation about the order after that, but I’ll skip it. That being said, they did tease a way to save Kurumi in this episode.
“They did tease a way to save Kurumi in this episode.”
Giving the illusion of hope just for it to be taken away is what I see happening. Although to be fair, more than the medicine not working I hope it’s something like dropping it. As to make everyone wonder if it’ll have worked or not. (Most zombie movies don’t use the antidote plot device).
I only watch the anime version, and I thinks I have been spoiled -_- not fair, you should have kept quiet about kurumi’s death
Kurumi’s death is something I mainly figured seeing as she was bitten. I spoiled myself on her getting bitten but after this part I don’t really know if she makes it or not. I just highly doubt she does.
Will be interesting to see if they go with the manga story line, don’t want to spoil what happens there and anyone really interested in the show should read the manga anyway since it’s different enough from the show and way better paced.