English Dub Review: ZOMBIE LAND SAGA “The Nice Bird SAGA In Your Heart”

The girls get covered with feathers and mud in the witty fifth episode of ZOMBIE LAND SAGA.

Overview (Spoilers Below):

With the loss of potential business partners from the hotel hot spring, Koutarou is quick to round up another sponsorship opportunity for the girls. He takes them to a local drive-in where they star in a less than a typical commercial.

Later on, they participate in the Gatalympics, a series of stunts including bike riding across a thin beam and swinging across a mud pit on a rope. While things don’t go quite as they planned, everyone has fun and nobody finds out their zombie identities. The event even ends with a victory speech by Tae!

Our Take:

After a somewhat disappointing last performance (an episode, to be completely honest), ZOMBIE LAND SAGA and Koutarou are eager to make up for lost time and revenue. Franchouchou has lost money that they didn’t even have in the first place – a strikeout. Koutarou’s baseball analogy becomes all too real when he pulls out an actual bat and baseball and slugs a home run right into _ (Of course, she retaliates by sending a fastball that cuts into his ankle like a knife cutting through the air.) To make sure their next project is a winning one, Koutarou has arranged something that’s sure to spell success: a big commercial for an even bigger company.

Since this is Koutarou we’re talking about, it’s pretty obvious that the big business is going to have something fishy about it. It turns out to be a simple local drive-in. But Saki recalls it fondly, saying that she and her bike gang used to stop in after raising hell in order to purchase a number one meal (with a side of lettuce). The fact that Saki remembers her past history with the drive in is interesting. It raises questions about if some of the zombies have kept their memories intact somehow. Maybe the more recently deceased ones? Or perhaps they’ll all regain access to their memories over time as they awaken and live life. Regardless of how she kept her memories around, it’s a lot of fun to see Saki getting so excited over such a small thing. The usually carefree bad girl of the group is even very protective of the restaurant’s poorly drawn mascot bird.

The girls’ reactions to their new shoot outfits are great. Some of them are depressed by the fact that their first real costumes are barnyard animals, while others (like Lily and Saki) are having the time of their lives. Tae has a lot of trouble at first with the new gig. She can’t really recite lines or song lyrics, which makes starring in a commercial a bit of a challenge. She is great at chasing after raw chicken, though, which makes for an unexpected turn in the director’s vision. The final, finished ad ends with Tae crowing like a rooster as the others finish their jingle. I feel like this episode excelled in how it managed Tae’s character, which in the past has felt a little one-note in some episodes and under-utilized in others.

In the second half of the episode, the girls are forced to deal with another half-baked plan from their inept manager: competing in the Gatalympics. These are a series of activities somewhat similar in style to the Olympics, but much less formal and much more funny. From Koutarou and Saki screaming in excited unison to Lily’s magical shooting star rope swinging move, this segment had me smiling the whole time. But I do wonder who those suspicious guys with the cameras and binoculars are…

The Nice Bird SAGA In Your Heart was a very enjoyable episode to watch, and a good turn around from last week’s letdown. While this episode didn’t really do anything special go advance the plot over Warming Dead SAGA, it actually managed to find a lot of humor in the characters and their interactions this time around. This episode was really something to crow about.