Zom 100 Bucket List of the Dead – 4 [Flight Attendant of the Dead]

Welcome all, to a tremendously late episode of Zom 100! Sorry for that, turns out I got Covid at Otakon and that’s kinda fucking me up. Don’t expect anything to be on time this week, or even necessarily coherent, cause I’m currently sitting here unable to feel my throat. Enough about me though, let’s shift from talking about one deathly disease to another, zombies!

Starting off, this episode was all about Kencho and Akira really spending some time together. Talking about their dreams, being open and honest with each other, and really just rebuilding their friendship. In that sense, it was quite nice. I like that Zom 100 is giving them time to just hang out and establish their relationship before introducing more characters. There’s no big overarching “save the world” plot nor is some kind of super serious survival thing. Hell the premise of the entire episode was going out to get an 80 in flat-screen TV to play games on! And that’s nice! Zom 100 has this levity to it that, when the serious bits do kick in, you aren’t suffocated by them. It’s a nice dichotomy, and one we see in this very episode.

For all that it was enjoyable though, there is one thing that concerns me about Zom 100: Its treatment of female characters. Now this isn’t a new thing, hell in the very first episode had the only real female character treated as an object of desire by our lead. But I had hoped that would be just an introductory thing. Sadly however, this episode does it again by introducing 3 female flight attendants and treats them as little more than sex objects. They show up, suddenly decide to “wine and dine” them and generally don’t treat them as actual… characters. It’s a shame, because Shizuka at least was decent. Zom 100 has the ability to make workable female characters. Its just not committing to it.

What do I mean by that, by “not committing”? I suppose the best way to put it is that Zom 100 tried to have its cake and eat it to. It tried to give at least one of these girls some kind of real backstory and character, walking us through her career and time as a flight attendant as well as using her to continue the previous conversation about what it is to dream. That’s all nice! I liked that Akira stood up and told her that, if it was her dream, to not let others push her off of it. At the same time though… Zom 100 also used her as yet another dead female character our lead was crushing on/hoping to get with, and that’s just kind of… a shame? I think had it started with this mutual admiration and then progressed to romantic interest it would have worked a lot better. As is though it feels more like Akira started out incredibly shallow until he realized “Oh yeah, these are people to”.

That said, none of this takes away from the actual fun bits of the episode. Akira riding the motorcycle into the mall, Kencho figuring out his friend is a bit wild in the apocalypse, ending the whole thing with them stealing a TV from the department store as was their original goal. That was all good fun and I enjoyed it. Zom 100 still has this zany energy to it that’s quite fun. It only ever falters for me with its female characters. The serious stuff? Fine, I dare say it treats Akira and Kencho with respect. But most of the women we’ve met? They either have very little screen time, as with Shizuka, or aren’t actual characters, like with the flight attendants. Hopefully as Shizuka gets reintroduced and we meet the blonde one this will change. For now though? It’s probably Zom 100’s worst point.