English Dub Review: Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead “Akira of the Dead”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Akira Tendo was a once hopeful young man who has been at the same company for three years and has since lost every spark of hope he had as its abusive and draining tendencies have sapped him of even the will to live. That is, until the goddamn ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE starts in his neighborhood. But instead of giving into the undead menace, Akira finds his youthful spirit return to him, now living in a world gone mad.

OUR TAKE

The zombie apocalypse genre is already pretty derivative as it is. You’re not gonna revolutionize it at this point when there’s been dozens of hundreds of thousands of stories about zombies, so you might as well have fun with it. With that in mind, having what is essentially an isekai about zombies. Why am I calling it an Isekai when no one actually goes into a different world? Well, maybe it’s because I’ve been watching a few Isekai recently, but this honestly feels like an Isekai. Akira isn’t being tossed through a portal or reincarnating in some other realm in a different body, but the world he’s in definitely changes into something else. The regular world as we see it in most of this episode irreversibly changes by the end. Heck, if you want to get even darker (and that’s a pretty tall feat when there’s already zombies, but definitely not impossible), I’ve seen at least a couple Isekai where the protagonist works themselves to death in the human world because of their job. It would not be out of the realm of possibility to say that Akira may have actually died of exhaustion at home and is now either having a dying dream about how he wishes his life had gone.

Think about it, his entire mood and energy level basically reverses instantly once he realizes he doesn’t have to go to work. The aesthetic and visual tone jumps into overdrive and everyone we meet before that point ends up dead. We’ll meet some previously known friends of Akira later on, but you could argue that’s just his mind’s version of them having a scenario Akira WISHES he could have had with them before he died. I’m gonna hold onto this theory for awhile, but in the meantime this is definitely a good start to a show to keep me interested. The animation is gorgeous, the multi colored blood is a much more interesting look than just red splatter all over (and probably great for whatever creative censorship they may need) and getting to see people just try to adapt to a city full of zombies while keeping an upbeat attitude will at least keep spirits and energy up. And after that, we’ll just see where the story goes, if there’s something we can learn about the zombies to stop them or cure them or whatever, you know that whole deal by now I’m guessing. Let’s Zom some hundreds, or whatever the heck.