English Dub Review: #I’m Looking for a Zombie “I’m Looking For My Friends”

Overview (Spoilers Below):
Aki and her group meet Mikazuki, who is searching for her friends.

Our Take:
In the span of one episode, we got the origin of the apocalypse, the reason for the expedition through the zombified Earth, and a group of misfit survivors.  Yep, we are definitely dealing with another zombie-related anime, all right.  However, given the tone it set in the first episode, it isn’t one that’s going to make us feel depressed like “The Last of Us”.  However, that may change as we progress through the season.  Until then, we have an episode that expands on the crew’s chemistry after their first team-up against the zombie wave.  We follow up where the previous episode left off, with Aki discovering a new lead behind her father’s disappearance through his camera.  However, that gets interrupted by the arrival of Mikazuki, who’s on a journey to find her friends while hiding a secret of her own.
Unlike the previous episode, “I’m Looking For My Friends” steps back from its wacky hijinks and comedy to better highlight the group’s development.  While it still felt like a fun, comedic take on the post-apocalypse narrative, it felt a bit overwhelming.  Fortunately, this episode toned down the silliness a bit to show one of the toughest aspects of surviving a zombie outbreak: watching another survivor lose their humanity.  In this case, Mikazuki was initially seen as another survivor who might backstab Aki and the group for their own gain.  But as the episode progressed, Mikazuki is actually looking to spend her final day as a human due to her being infected, making her death all the more tragic.
With this shift in pace and Mikazuki’s tragedy, “I’m Looking For My Friends” moves the anime’s tone in the right direction without losing much of the kookiness it introduced.  However, if you’re hoping for emotional depth that’sas devastating as “The Last of Us”, you may not find it here.  But as its own, the episode made a good enough effort to make me care for its characters, mainly Mikazuki.  With the group going on a road trip to find Aki’s father, we’ll likely get more wacky hijinks while surviving another wave of zombies.  But if later episodes match this episode’s tone, we may have another respectable addition to the post-apocalypse genre on our hands.