Welcome all, to the last of the new shows I will be covering this season: Zom 100! I couldn’t let it go by without talking about it, so here I am, once again taking to many shows in a season. So without further ado, let’s jump into it!
Starting off, as far as how it compares to it’s premier, I think this episode of Zom 100 is a bit of a step down. And that’s fine! Zom 100’s premier was fantastic, with some very strong visual story telling and some very striking imagery. It’s the kind of premier meant to hook you early. And it’s not like this episode looked bad either. There was some nice animation, nice shots, good story telling. It just didn’t “wow” me the same way, you know? Part of that is no doubt due to just how energetic Zom 100’s premier was, going from a dull office day job to literally blowing out the black wide-screen bars in joy at the zombie apocalypse. That kind of shit was always going to be hard to match. But I think it also had to do a bit with the episodes subject.
Simply put, Zom 100 seems to be setting up this split between a YOLO mentality and legitimate zombie survival. Of truly living your life to the fullest and simply surviving another day. And we can see this in the interactions between our two leads, Akira and Shizuka. Akira is, obviously, the YOLO lifestyle. He finally has the chance to break out and do what he wants with no consequences, to truly live for the first time in years. Shizuka meanwhile is so focused on just surviving that she doesn’t even allow herself the small pleasure of a sweet snack cake. In a vacuum, I think this sort of dynamic can work. The two will learn from each other and eventually find a happy middle ground that works for both of them, moving away from the extremes. But I’m a bit concerned about if Zom 100 can properly balance them.
What do I mean by that? Well lets take a closer look at our leads and talk it. Akira’s first episode was a pretty clearly condemnation of our modern existence, how we work to make money to make it to the next day just so we can work again. There’s no purpose, no fulfillment to it. So when the opportunity comes, he does a complete 180. Now he’s fucking around on motorcycles, doing beer runs, and chatting up random survivors. As Shizuka puts it, he has no plans, no strategy, he’s going to get himself killed and it’s honestly a miracle he hasn’t been already. And after meeting Shizuka, as well as finding his neighbors dead, this seems to be something he’s figured out to, a sobering sort of realization that maybe this total freedom has it’s own downsides.
Meanwhile our new girl, Shizuka, has the opposite effect. She’s going full on, super serious, survival mode. Working out, doing research, and generally optimizing the fun out of everything. We see this in how she consumes media, her treatment of Akira, how she doesn’t even allow herself small pleasures. She’s surviving just to survive, but can that truly be called living? She even makes a note of “mental health” in her checklist, yet she doesn’t seem to really realize what that means. Luckily, much like Akira, she seems to be figuring that out after their meeting. Looking back and wondering what she could have done differently. I’m glad that Zom 100 isn’t just shoving Akira’s version down her throat, saying “Shizuka is wrong, full stop” and instead allowing for some middle-ground, some nuance, between the two. Gives me hope the series will be able to stay interesting throughout its run.
And to be clear, it’s not like the episode didn’t have some good emotional stuff. I actually really really liked the bucket list thing. How not only Akira made one, slowly expanding it out with more personal and less shallow desires, but Shizuka as well. Hers is still short, yes. But Zom 100 left plenty of room in both of their 100 lists to add more goals and more desires. To let them grow as people and figure themselves out. It was actually a really emotional beat for me, especially as Akira is adding stuff that he might not even be able to achieve and are clearly emotional gut punches being saved for later. Stuff like seeing his parents again, or his best friend, or finding true love. It’s this kind of stuff that gives me hope Zom 100 will be more then just a fun colorful romp.
As for what’s coming down the line? Well there looks to be some good stuff judging by the OP, some more characters who will join us along the way and flesh out these life experiences, but also some mediocre stuff. For instance I’m not super enthused by the balloon titty blonde who seems to be joining the cast eventually, she seems like she’s going to be a lowest-common-denominator style character. Maybe I’m wrong and she adds a lot, I’ll withhold judgement until she shows up. But there’s still a lot of room for Zom 100 to shoot itself in the foot, despite this fantastic start.
So yeah, all in all a good follow up for Zom 100. I liked how it’s starting to deepen the narrative a bit, doing more then just a Zombieland style action-comedy and instead looking into why we survive and what makes life worth living. I think there’s a lot of potential here, both for some fun action and some deeply emotional moments. I just hope that Zom 100 is as ambitious as it seems to be, as it’d be a really shame to hype it up this much and have such great early episodes for it to fall into random ecchi bullshit and toilet humor. Still, let’s not gloom and doom it. The series has started strong! That’s like… 4 shows this season I’m watching that are great! So many! Lets hope they can keep it up.
