Zom 100 is back everyone! After some production delays, which reflect in the show itself as well, we’re back with another episode. This week Shizuka join the team proper, though I kind of thought she did that last time, and immediately get into trouble with the gang. Is it any good? Well lets dive in and find out.
Getting right into it, overall I thought this episode was on odd one. With two clear halves, one comedic and the other serious, both of them solid on paper in their own right, Zom 100 fails to find a good balance. One moment we are joking around about our favorite RVs and zombies, the next we’re having abuse-based PTSD induced panic attacks. The tonal whiplash between these two was just… It wasn’t great. I feel that the episode would have been better spent making the entire thing comedic and then ending it on a sort of cliffhanger at what is currently the half way point. Give us a clear delineation between the two tones, let us see that playtime is over and give us an episode break to get mentally prepared for what is honestly some kinda traumatic shit. Don’t understand what I mean? Well lets dive into details.
Starting off, the first half. Like I said, this was perfectly fine. Some jokes, our characters dicked around, they met up with Shizuka. She was a bit of a kill joy for a bit, focusing on “What RV is the most logical choice for survival” while our two idiots just had fun with all the expensive cars. Still it was fun, and she eventually found an RV that even stirred her heart. That was nice, it was cute, classic Zom 100. Even the zombies breaking in and finding them was done comedically, with there being no real threat as they all piled into the nearest RV, and not one any of them actually wanted. As far as comedy goes, this is what Zom 100 has always done. But even this comedic first half wasn’t free from Zom 100’s apparent desire to be “taken seriously”.
What I mean is that even before all of this started, reality had already begun to creep into the episode. Mentions of how they couldn’t stay here anymore, that they were running out of food and water, how the city was overrun and zombies kept increasing. Even talk about how, even in the apocalypse, you can’t escape from work. For me, as someone who was enjoying this show as a sort of anime “Zombieland” that tried to keep its serious undertones subtle, this was kind of a disappointment. Not a huge one, not until the second half of the episode at least, but it certainly set the episode up to be one if that makes sense.
Speaking of the second half, this is where things start to get a bit iffy. Again, not because the content itself is bad, I don’t think it is. A look into how abusive our modern corporate culture is and how it can affect us, even long past when we leave it, fits well into what Zom 100 is trying to do. I just don’t think it fits in this episode. We went from 0, dicking around with RVs, to 100, shutting down due to a panic attack at the mere sight of an abuser, in like… 2 seconds. Does that bother anyone else? Am I just being crazy here, that this destroys the tone and pacing of the episode? Because had the bosses introduction been the end of it, a cliffhanger for next week and a visualization of looming responsibility, it’d have been fine. But it wasn’t.
Now to be fair, I do want to talk about some of the stuff I mentioned that was good. The visual metaphor of treating zombies chained to a truck the same way as Akira, framing them side by side visually and metaphorically, was great. How Zom 100 portrayed the boss, berating Akira before stealing his idea and presenting it to everyone else as his own, was great. How the end of the world doesn’t mean freedom from abusive people, that classic “Human v Human” conflict that we see in a lot of zombie movies. I also liked the hints that the boss was lying, that he wasn’t going to let them go after just two days, as its something I had picked up on as well. Once I had switched to “Serious mode”, a lot of this stuff just clicked. It just… Zom 100 didn’t prime me properly for it.
So yeah, all in all this was a weird but decent episode of Zom 100. The individual segments I quite enjoyed, the comedy is still fun, the serious stuff is still affecting. They just didn’t mesh together well this week is all. Hopefully now that we’ve transitioned Zom 100 can be a bit more focused in its delivery next week, as it won’t have to juggle comedy and PTSD near as much. At least… I hope it doesn’t. I’m going to be concerned if it’s going for a bunch of laughs in the middle of Akira working past some pretty serious trauma. Not only would that lead to the same tonal dissonance, it would also undermine him a bit. Still, no use crying about an episode that hasn’t happened yet. Lets just wait and see where Zom 100 goes with it, eh?
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