English Dub Review: ZOMBIE LAND SAGA “Go Go Neverland SAGA”

Lily reunites with her dad in a very sweet episode of ZOMBIE LAND SAGA.

Overview (Spoilers Below):

After all this time, Franchouchou’s efforts are finally paying off. They’re getting buzz in local papers and fans are beginning to recognize them. One fan, in particular, seems a bit too obsessed. The huge man comes to a meet and greet and gets to personal with Lily.

It turns out, he used to be her dad in her past life as a living person! Though he came across as creepy, he turns out to just be missing his child. Seven years ago, Lily died from the trauma of growing up into someone she didn’t want to be. Despite the issues she had with him in the past, Lily still loves her dad and takes the chance to show it with a special performance and song.

Our Take:

Wow! ZOMBIE LAND SAGA has been by turns both sweetly innocent and gut-wrenchingly complicated. This week’s episode turns out to be some of each. After a standard morning meeting with Koutarou, the group learns that they’re not doing too badly – the performance at SAGA Rock has boosted their popularity, and now that Junko is fine with a meet and greets, there’s nothing to stop them from interacting with fans!

At one of these events, the gigantic dude who turns out to be Lily’s father comes to see them. Gripped by the memories of his child, he places his huge hands on her shoulders without permission. At this point in the episode, I was feeling pretty skeeved out. So I loved Saki’s badass moment of watching out for her gang – er, group members. She must be pretty tough to be able to knock a giant like that out with a single kick.

The event leaves Lily shaken up, and remembering their life together, which she relates to Sakura later that night. Her mother died when she was young, so the two of them were always looking out for each other. Her dad loved watching TV, apparently, so she decided to become a TV star in order to get more involved with his passion. This is where one of the sad parts of the episode comes in. He seems to have been too focused on other things and not spending enough quality time with Lily. Once her career begins to take off, the distance between them only grows wider. One day, there’s an incident while filming and Lily storms off to her room, where she dies from the shock of growing body hair. Lily’s unveiling as a transgender girl shouldn’t be dismissed offhand as something trivial. Her and her backstory’s inclusion in this episode signify that the staff of ZOMBIE LAND SAGA and the anime industry, in general, is opening up and including more diverse characters and stories, which will only make shows more unique and awesome.

Not only is this area of Lily’s tale great, but the overall storyline with her and her father turns out to be something very sweet. (Even if it starts out a bit creepy!) The bittersweet nature of her song – about saying hello to him again while also acknowledging they will never be together like they were struck me as being quite the ordeal for an undead seven-year-old to go through.

The dub had some excellent lines, like: “If there’s an eyeball open, I want you in it! Let’s have a good ol’ fashioned zombie outbreak!” Lily’s line about her father struck me as being unintentionally funny and really depressing at the same time: “Seeing how much he enjoyed TV made me really happy.”

Go Go Neverland SAGA is a wonderful little look into Lily’s life both before the show began and how it’s been altered now. Her relationship with her father is very sweet, even if it’s not fully fleshed out to the lengths I would’ve preferred. And seeing more trans representation in anime is a welcome surprise! Looking forward, it appears as Sakura may just be the next zombie to regain her memories… and they might make her see herself in a new light.