In 2004’s zombie spoof film “Shaun of the Dead”, Simon Peggs master plan for surviving the zombie apocalypse was to ” Go to the Winchester, have a pint and waiting for all this to blow over.” The funny thing about this is that barring the Winchester pub part this is likely the best method of survival. A common misunderstanding of many zombie film protagonists is that they assume that zombies are there forever more but when you think about it logically they will all be dead again in very little time. Zombies are essentially rotting corpse’s so if you just hole up in a place with a few months of food and water then when you come out the zombies brains would have rotted and they would all be dead. Unless there’s some kind of supernatural rejuvenation that keeps them from rotting, once you find a place to wait it out then you have won. The reason I bring this up is that in this episode despite how wrong they made it appear, Miki had the right idea by staying where they were and waiting it out. Where as her friends idea was just idiocy but to be fair to her, it was likely an idea born out of boredom and desperation. If I was stuck in a room with my only source of entertainment being a CD player then I would likely try to get out anyway I could. But its one hundred percent certain that she’s now dead and wandering the mall to give Miki an unpleasant surprise next episode. One thing this episode showed was just why Taromaru hates Miki so much and how she joined the school survival group.
This episode clearly takes place before the previous episodes as only there girls are at the school and they look to be running out of food considering the food portions. I think it’s fairly safe to say that Megumi is dead, after all the amount of foreshadowing makes that pretty obvious, and from the looks of things her dead body is in the staff room. Considering that Yuki went to the staff room with a dark look and came back with her car keys. Megumi’s death is probably the main trigger for Yuki’s mental instability as she is the person closest to her in the main cast. Yuki’s mentality does present some rather interesting scenarios as a means of helping the group. In this case proposing a school trip as a guise of venturing out to search for food. However it does make me wonder whether she is somewhat conscious of the situation or whether this is her mind molding the situation to fit her delusion. It does seem like she’s going out of her way to keep herself from breaking out out her delusion. Though the group also goes out of their way to help her keep it. In many ways Yuki is a bright light for the group with her boundless optimism and silly antics. A mentally broken girl is the one thing keeping the group from falling into despair. When put that way, it’s quite messed up.
What’s messed up in a different way is that Mikis been lying around in her underwear which happens to be a garterbelt. Now I am not going to call myself a man highly educated in matters of teenager girl lingerie choice but I don’t think it’s common for young girls to choose such adult underwear for a normal day of school and hanging out with friends. So it leaves me the question of whether this is a part of her character to go for adult underwear or whether the animators figured they would put in some more sex appeal in the anime. Chances are it’s number two but if it wasn’t it does bring up some more questions. Does she wear it because it’s her personal taste or was it to appeal to her friend whom she was with? Saying Miki is a lesbian wouldn’t be farfetched as she does have a rather close relationship with her friend and she does seem to be rather nervous when around Yuki. The heavy blush when Yuki was hugging her could be a sign but baiting like this is common in any female relationship in anime. The show continues to avoid directly showing gore as in any time Miki encountered something horrifying they anime would just blackout and jump ahead. We never really see how the two managed to barricade themselves in a storeroom. It works as this does seem to be Miki recalling her memory of the event and naturally when it comes to the more traumatizing moments her memory black’s it out. Again with gore or any kind of horror, its what you don’t see that truly scares you. Well next time Miki looks to be joining up with the group and while we know she survives this, how well her mind survived it is still a concern.
