The first ep of Zom 100 was a banger, no question about it.  Probably the buzziest premiere of the season, and with good reason.  It unleashed a fusillade of Gainax-like craziness on a generation of viewers mostly unused to it.  I loved it myself.  For all that, there were reasons why I was a little skeptical of whether the magic would hold.  Producer Kojima Hiroaki is kind of legendary for insanely ambitious productions, though also for somehow pulling them off (sometimes).  The studio, BUG FILMS, has basically no track record.  And the premiere was obviously something very different than what the body of the series would be.

Fast-forwarding to now, I would put this episode in the “pretty good” camp.  Not the revelatory experience the premiere was, but no collapse either.  If this ep looked different than the premiere there’s a very good reason for that – it was 100% outsourced.  And to Shaft, at that.  Not only that but Shaft is now listed for “production cooperation”, which makes them effectively a co-lead studio for the rest of the series.  That’s a Kojima trademark too, tons of outsourced episodes.  And especially with what one assumes is a smaller studio, I think it’s safe to say we’re going to see a lot more of it.

Gainax to Shaft is certainly a major downgrade in my book.  One can guess that they’re going to restrain their more extreme influences in a co-production where they’re the junior partner, and this was not a hard-core Shinbou juddering nightmare.  I’m going to keep my admitted anti-Shaft bias in check as best I can and try to judge the material on its own merits, but even going in cold it was plain that this week was missing much of the magic that made the premiere such a trip.  To be fair it didn’t have as much to do in the first place, so one could expect a bit less visual flair.  But we certainly got it.

As to the staying power of the story itself, well…  I kind of expected this to struggle to hold up to closer scrutiny, and it kinda does.  Akira is a nice enough bloke but his attitude here is pretty preposterous, if we’re honest.  But it’s a comedy, and the point is that he’s a guy who was so dead inside that the idea of actual death holds little fear for him.  The first thing he does the morning after is go on a beer run – after a brief drainpipe-to-balcony chat with his ill-fated neighbors the Kousakas.  At least he offered to pick up some stuff for them too, not that they’ll be needing it now.

At the konbini he meets another fellow survivor, a young woman named Mikazuki Shizuka (Kusunoki Tomori).  She’s the complete opposite of Tendou in every way.  Shizuka is shopping for essentials (and pointedly notes that beer is not an essential), and is scientifically and systematically working on a survival scheme.  The business with the runaway truck was pretty preposterous, but Shizuka makes an interesting bookend for Akira.  I also enjoyed that in one of the zombie movies she watches for research Miki Shinichirou plays the guy who gets eaten at the end…

It’s a given that Shizuka and Akira will team up soon, and they’ll have company by the looks of the OP and ED.  I like the idea that Akira is showing at least a hint of serious thought – one of his bucket list items is to spend time with his parents (mind you they may be toast already, but getting out of the city seems like a good idea in any case).  That offers some potential for desperately-needed thematic expansion.  Akira’s list is “things to do before turning into a zombie” while Shizuka’s is “things to do to avoid turning into one”, so it’s pretty clear what the game is here – each of them learning to live a little more like the other and meeting somewhere in the middle.  I still see potential with Zom 100, but I’m tempering my expectations – if we get anything like the exhilarating triumph of the premiere, that will be a pleasant surprise.