I hadn’t originally planned to do a post on this series.  Why?  Combining a genre I loathe beyond all measure (idol anime) and one I’m at best ambivalent about is not exactly the way to unlock my heart.  But the season doesn’t really kick into gear until tomorrow, and Zombieland Saga has generated a fair bit of positive buzz.  So, against my instincts and better judgment, I decided to give it a shot.  Above 9 times out of 10 I regret that kind of thinking where anime is concerned, but the siren song of that elusive 10th time is always calling me onto the rocks…

So – do I regret it?  No, not at all.  Zombieland Saga isn’t nearly as funny or clever as it thinks it is, no – but that said, it’s still modestly clever and occasionally funny (starting with the deliciously terrible pun in the title).  The sense of absurdity is strong with this one, starting with putting a director best known for One Piece and Sailor Moon in charge of this kind of premise.  Zombie idols?  Sure, why the hell not – idol anime are pretty much rotting the brains of anime from the inside out, so we may as well formalize the process.  Kind of like taking “death metal” to its logical extreme.

Both Hondo Kaede as Sakura, the main zombie girl, and Miyano Mamoru (at his most over-the-top) as Kotarou, their manager, are quite funny in their roles.  And Sakai Munehisa’s direction is pretty spritely and stylish for the most part.  This is a MAPPA series so you have to figure production values are going to be pretty good until the studio falls behind schedule as they inevitably will (but not until several episodes in) and the quality drops intermittently.

My main concern here is whether this gag is going to have any legs.  There are pitfalls aplenty here, starting with the fact that many idol shows start out as mold-breakers only to revert to being pretty bog standard idol shows with a twist quickly enough.  And who knows if the humor will hold up – is there more to it than the core joke?  Writer Murakoshi Shigeru has nothing on the resume to give a strong idea of whether he has the chops to pull this off, and since Zombieland is an original series that matters a whole lot.  But for one week at least it was good fun, with a fairly decent sense of comic timing and enough wit in the writing to keep things afloat.  We’ll see how it looks after next week, when the other girls have awoken and those pitfalls start to dot the road.