Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 3 (Zombie Land Saga Revenge)

Idol stuff, man.

I always end these marathons with some variant joke on how the real horror before me is NaNoWriMo in November. This right here is a horror lurking in the future for me. This season of Japanese cartoon television, aired in the summer of this year, was good and resonant enough that it practically demanded I do a patented Frezno-brand deep dive project about it. It pissed me off and terrified me because of the work I'd have to put into it, but honestly? It won't be as long as Symphogear. I can live with that. So, consider this a rare moment of brevity before I give into my excesses and tell you fucking everything about this show and how it made me cry. First, though, a primer. Two years ago, in preparation for another spooky marathon, I took the first season of this show with me on vacation. You can read those thoughts right here. Two weeks ago, I blasted through it all on a rewatch on vacation in that same place. Here are some thoughts on that.

With Zombie Land Saga Revenge, it's a cemented fact: Zombie Land Saga is now my favorite piece of zombie media. It ain't even close. Sorry, Shaun Of The Dead. Woe be to World War Z. In fact, I'll lay a little groundwork for me to pick up on in like six months or whenever I get at this. Zombie Land Saga is the Symphogear of zombie media. "Oh fuck, did you drop a good one there, past me". I'll be saying. Zombie Land Saga, in its first season, was all about healing from trauma; the psychological trauma of one's anxieties/fears/regrets, and the physical trauma of literally having died and finding oneself to be the living dead. In short, ZLS Revenge runs on that theme to even greater effect. The main arc of the season is Japanese idol group Franchouchou, in secret composed entirely of the decomposed living dead, plotting a revenge concert at a massive venue in which they previously performed and totally bombed at. The first season was Franchouchou's rise, in between they fell, and now they're going to rise again. They're the undead, it's what they do best.

Over 12 episodes, we get even more of what made the first season shine. The undead girls of Franchouchou (re)live and learn, face new situations that bubble up new regrets and melancholy new feelings, and really work through them. There's some wistful angst over their fate as the undead, and how they can't ever physically grow again, but they're not alone and have good friends to help them. There are even wilder resonant twists at play as the series goes on. Tension over people honest to God finding out that these idols have been dead all along is played out twice; once as instant acceptance by a fan, and a second time late in the season as a threatened narrative collapse with a reporter learning the secret. There's an entire two-part episode set in Meiji Japan to give the untold backstory of how zombie girl Yugiri lived and died, and it doubles as a sort of karmic cycle story about how an attempt at the utopic ideal failed, but we have risen from the grave to give it another go. The show's final episodes show the girls dealing with the devestation dealt to their home prefecture by a massive storm, both helping themselves heal and helping the citizens in need by boosting their spirits with their song and dance. 

It's just a really sweet show, okay? As sweet a show can be involving undead girls playing idol. So much zombie media leans into "who are the REAL monsters" territory wherein the collapse of society reveals the darkness of the human soul. Fuck that. That ain't Zombie Land Saga. Zombie Land Saga reveals the light in the human soul that can shine even after death and regret and failure, and how you can use that light to inspire others in need. The true utopic ideal. People connecting via song, connecting via dance, connecting between life and death. That's Zombie Land Saga Revenge, and the revenge it gets is blowing every other bit of zombie media out of the fucking water for me. 

It also has an absolute gonzo teaser for a potential Season 3, and I've no idea where the show will go if it goes all in on that. Let's talk about different spooky shit instead.