Summer 2023 Anime: Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead

Synopsis

Initially, Akira Tendo was a dreamer and a passionate young guy. After three years of toiling away in a vile business, he was reduced to the status of a clockwork man who had lost all desire to survive. Akira discovered the city to be overrun with zombies when he went to the management office to pay the parking ticket one morning. Even the boss, Otori, who Akira fell in love with at first sight, became into a zombie, which is when the tale of the man who was reborn as a result of the zombie began! (Source: BStation)

Comments

Have you ever felt so stressed that you hoped that an apocalyptic event would happen the next day? No, don’t lie, you’ve been there. Me too. There must be at least once where you hope that “Man, I wish there’s a zombie apocalypse tomorrow so I could avoid my deadline”. You must have been thinking about that at least once in your life. Except, of course, if you’re living a happy-go-lucky life like the K-ON! characters. But in the current era where social and economic instability haunts young workers, I doubt that.

This makes Zom 100: Bucket list of the Dead so funny. They’re the answer to our fantasy that maybe we could leave all our stress behind when something outrageous happens, even though that outrageous thing may be dangerous to us. We want to escape, after all. And it’s really easy to indulge ourselves in the “anything but this” moment. Zom 100 understand that. When Akira celebrate the zombie apocalypse moment, we precariously celebrate with him too. What differentiates us the viewer from Akira is, well, there’s no way we’ll be happy if the zombie apocalypse really happen. It creates a sense of irony here. There’s no way we want to experience a zombie apocalypse, right? Yet, we also secretly long for it when we’re stressed. Noticing this irony actually makes the joke even funnier. Their comedy may be dark, but their apocalypse is colourful as heck.

Moreover, Zom 100 communicate its tone in a very creative way. The blood is flashy. The story playfully jumps between plot points (Especially in episodes 2 and 3), and the internet in Akira’s world is still working for some reason. Oh, Akira even has his “love at the first sight” scene during zombie apocalypse. This is maybe the most fun Zombie apocalypse experience since Zombieland or One Cut of the Dead. Either way, Zom 100 is a fun zombie show with a clear and important message: working for a black company may mess up your mental health, but it could help you survive a zombie apocalypse.

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Screenshots and Trailer

The Indonesian Anime Times