Night Of The Loving Dead: Coda (The Prosperity And Curse Of Saga)

(Continued from 2.5)

Coda: RIP, The Barriers Keeping The Macrocosmic Epic Apocalypse Out Of Saga

Night Of The Loving Dead wasn't supposed to end like this. Not exactly. I was going to post that absolutely buck-wild screencap set of the UFO, do some light screaming about fleeing the space shit in terror, and then that would transition us into the next project. Let me pull the curtain back for you. The next big thing on this blog is going to be me watching a little show from the 1990s called Quantum Leap. In essence, I'm going here because I have major burnout from the other massive long-running sci-fi franchises. Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, they've all let me down and become these monstrous Ouroboroi that are about themselves instead of anything strongly emotionally resonant. Quantum Leap seems like a story that's just about ordinary people and helping to change their lives for the better, with a sprinkle of fantastic elements like the titular quantum leaping. You know, a lot like how Zombie Land Saga is a fantastic story with the supernatural element of the living dead but it's actually about inspiring ordinary people in Saga to be better and come together. That is, until the fucking aliens came in right at the very end. I thought that was it, though. I thought that was the only horrible thing I'd have to deal with.

Then I went Wiki diving into Zombie Land Saga. I uncovered some things as I was in the middle of rewatching the show and taking my notes. These things elicited a damn-near existential crisis in me regarding the future of this singing zombie show I have grown to love. I have to tell you about these things, and the emotional rollercoaster I went on. I discovered them, I freaked out about them, and I had to ask for help in untangling my web of anxious fears about this new information. Before we leave here for the land of Quantum Leap, we have to deal with this. I have to share with you what I found, the sheer nightmarish connotations of it that rocked my internal landscape, and the second opinions and after-the-fact realizations that helped me try to come to terms with it. Hold my hand tight, o partner of mine on this strange zombie land journey. We are going in to the weeds of Zombie Land Saga continuity, and you may never be the same again. I know I'm not. It all started with a simple hyperlink, and that old man we've been talking about...

Pretty sure that's a picture of a statue of Xu Fu behind
the old guy.

I have avoided pulling out any of the pins about the old man yet, because I wanted you to experience things as I did. I am from the opposite side of the planet as Saga, so I didn't know I was supposed to be looking into this deeply. I took the old man as just an old guy, probably a zombie himself, with the power of necromancy and a desire to save Saga. A young Kotaro lost a dear friend to a tragic accident, eventually meeting this old guy in his grief and getting roped into the saving Saga spirit. Through necromancy, they revived Kotaro's dead friend and six others as part of the new plan to save Saga. The rest, as they say, is history. With me so far? Good. Now let's pull out this pin. This old guy is an actual historical/mythological figure from Chinese/Japanese history/myth named Xu Fu. His alchemical exploits included searching for... the elixir of immortality. According to actual Saga Prefecture legend, Xu Fu found the secret of immortality on Mount Kinryu in Saga. Okay, that's not so bad! We're just playing off of the local mythology to build the foundational blocks of the story. Saga is where an ancient Chinese alchemist supposedly found the secret of immortality, and so he's an immortal tied to the prosperity of this place who used that power to raise the dead to save Saga. I'm with you so far... but what's all this about prosperity?

Here is where things start to go wrong for me. I continued to Wiki dive through the Zombie Land Saga wiki, interested in the mythological connection with this old bartender fellow I never knew about until now. You saw in the screencaps from earlier that he kept mentioning the dual ideological nature of Saga's prosperity, and Saga's curse. It seemed like a neat metaphor. Oh. Oh dear. It's no metaphor. No, I regret to inform you that there are tangible supernatural forces at play here, twin sentient forces of prosperity and curse. The Prosperity Of Saga is some sort of canon manifestation of everything we've been talking about. A force which, quote, "blesses with prosperity those who have the strength to decide on their own destiny to save Saga". Now what in the fuck does that mean? How do we define saving Saga? I just took it as a metaphor for coming together and bettering yourselves, living in the utopic ideal. That's just my personal read of it though. It's when you start defining shit that we start to get into the weeds of eyebrow-raising. Peek at the wiki link for the Prosperity of Saga, and you see that they actually start defining moments of good luck in the series as manifestations of this. Like Tae winning the lottery and getting Franchouchou out of debt, for instance. Hmmm. There's lots of ways you could read that, but the wiki writers get to try and solve the show here by defining a bit of good luck as the blessed power of a supernatural force of goodness. 

Oh, but it gets a little worse. For every blessing, there must be a curse. This is easy enough to wrap one's head around, as the old guy kept ranting about this in the actual show. It, too, has a canon manifestation of bad luck and misery. The Curse Of Saga is... wait, "the primary antagonistic force which has plagued the Saga Prefecture since ancient times and continuing into the present day"? Now hold on a minute here. It's just a bit of bad luck, it's not like it's a fucking arc villain or the final boss or something! The Curse Of Saga is a malevolence determined to make Saga fade into obscurity, for... reasons. Okay, hang on here, slow down. I made a big show at the end of Season 1 about Sakura and the other girls standing tall against repeated instances of bad luck and misfortune, saying "fuck that, we're Franchouchou". It was a nice sentiment, a personal statement against a nebulous concept. You don't have to make it a metaphysical supernatural foe engaged in direct combat with Sakura to--

"The curse basically turned Sakura into its own personal cosmic toy so that she would never achieve anything in life before it finally decided would lead her to a car accident, and the fact that Ai and Lily went far enough to startbringing fame and recognition to Saga, only to have both careers tragically cut short, which largely implies that it intentionally held back and gave some points of hope to the prefecture so that it could instigate some incidents that destroyed Saga reputation."

Oh no. Oh dear sweet God no. No, you don't understand at all. The tragedy of Sakura's constant bad luck and her overcoming her insecurities and pessimism, becoming an inspirational figure herself to people like Maimai... is not at all improved by making it all the work of some sentient curse. The same goes for Ai and Lily, hell, all our girls. The resonance and sympathies I felt for Junko having died in a plane crash in 1983 and being an idol out of time are not\ enhanced by the explanation that a sentient curse working to destroy all of Saga wiggled its intangible fingers and made the engines of her plane explode! You understand that, right? You understand that what made me love this show is the deep interpersonal microcosm of the humanity of these zombie girls learning to live and hope again? Not some sort of grandiose lore where a bad luck demon made them all die and had to be overcome with the power of song? I sincerely hope you understand that, and why I'm beginning to freak out a little.

Tae dressed to impress in life.

And then I found out about the Sagako. As I have gathered, there is a piece of Zombie Land Saga spinoff material called "The First Zombie", a manga set in the year 1989. That would be an era transition year, between the Showa and Heisei era, and given what the old guy was saying about the curse manifesting because Franchouchou wasn't saved before the era transition between Heisei and Reiwa... well. I have not read the manga yet. Perhaps one day, when I have a stronger will, I will read it and tell you all about the things it does. Some of the things it does might even come up in the main show, given all its talk about curses. The First Zombie, as far as I can tell, focuses on a group called the Saga Sagako Busters. Led by a living Tae Yamada, they fight against the literal manifestations of the Curse Of Saga, monsters called the Sagako. Looking through the Wiki gallery of them, they look buckwild. The last one is... wait, the UFO? That thing's a manifestation of a sentient curse sent to destroy Saga? As I was reeling from all of this, one sentence on this Wiki page utterly destroyed me. Are you ready? I'm sorry for this.

"Bad luck - When hidden in plain sight [the Sagako] can generate bad luck events at different levels to demotivate those trying to bring glory to Saga. In fact, it is a Sagako who is responsible for Sakura's miserable life by constantly giving her bad luck until she discourages her and finally kills her with a truck."

NO! NO NO NO NO NO!!!!! YOU CAN'T FUCKING DO THAT!!! You can't just take the story of Sakura, of overcoming bad luck and pessimism and the circumstances of her own death to rise above, and retcon in a goddamned fucking INVISIBLE BAD LUCK DEMON just out of frame who was LITERALLY INFLUENCING HER FATE TO MAKE IT ALL BAD LUCK BEFORE DIRECTLY CAUSING HER DEATH!!! How the FUCK is the story of Zombie Land Saga and the tragic deaths of all these girls improved, IN ANY WAY, by the revelation that there were bad luck demons just out of frame causing it all? It isn't! It's an answer to a question nobody asked! It's a question that never should have been asked, because this just isn't a grand epic show about demon fighting and the fate of the world and sentient bad luck! It's a goddamned show about humanizing zombie girls and bringing people together with their songs! How hard is that NOT TO FUCK UP WITH MACROCOSMIC EPIC BULLSHIT???

This shit broke me. This shit utterly broke me. I could laugh at Doctor Who doing the Timeless Child because of how outlandish it all was. At the very least that show had the tone of epic adventure and grand stakes. This is different. This is a full swerve from one type of story to another. A show about the small important things in life, slowly poisoned by a very different sentient curse. The Curse Of The Grandiose. Over time, many of the shows I love have betrayed me in one way or another. Betrayed me, betrayed the values of itself and me, let me down. They've all done it to varying degrees, and until now Zombie Land Saga was innocent. With this shit, it betrayed me. Zombie Land Saga betrayed itself. It injected the grandiose, the macrocosmic, the epic, into a story I went to in order to escape all of that. A zombified Ouroboros becoming less about the people of Saga and the zombies who died, and more about its own made-up bullshit, swerving me at the last second into it. Rest in peace.

That's how I felt when I uncovered all of this. That was my strong visceral reaction. I had to share it with friends before I wrote this. I had to get it off of my chest to explain to someone what the beloved zombie show had done to me. Most importantly, I had to see if I was overreacting. Could there be a glimmer of hope in this inky blackness of grandiosity? Well, there's one hope I've come to as I'm writing this. All of this bullshit about Sakura being killed not by happenstance but by an offscreen literal bad luck monster is only on a Wiki. There is a chance, just a chance, that The First Zombie doesn't go into this shit explicitly. We could just be dealing with an overactive Wiki editor who feels the need for everything to be canonically explained. Time will tell on that, I guess, but it still doesn't solve the fact that the show itself canonically ends with either actual aliens or a bad luck demon cosplaying as a UFO. It's also a little disconcerting to me that someone passionate enough about the show to edit a Wiki about it would feel the need to set aside all the emotional resonance in favor of treating this show like it's an MCU movie. Well, I shared all these concerns with a friend and guide, someone who's helped me untangle my messy thoughts before and who I look up to a great deal. Let me share with you some of their insights, in my own words and theirs, and maybe we can close the book on this amicably for now.

Even with all these retcons, the fact that bad luck and misery aren't fixed and set in stone is still true. They can be overcome, be they just by personal growth and determination or the helping hand of tangible prosperity. That's exactly what still happened to our girls in the climaxes of both seasons. They suffered, they grew from their adversity, and overcame it to make something more out of their afterlives. Fighting fate and destiny? That's just a macrocosm of reclaiming your own personal identity. Like, say, reclaiming zombie status as something positive instead of a mindless thing to be shot in the head. There's also the possibility of cultural misunderstanding. As I freely admit, I'm on the opposite side of the planet from Saga. I do not pretend to fully understand the folk spiritual belief system over in Japan for a second, and the best I can do is acknowledge there's something there that I'm not getting here in the West. I mean, after all, I'm sure an erudite Sagaite would have picked up on the old guy being a Chinese alchemist from local myth while I had to Wiki it. My guide even reminded me that half the plot of Sailor Moon is overcoming fate and destiny to make a better future, and with the knowledge of who voices Tae that makes an interesting comparison point.

As always, much thanks to my guide for giving me the push I needed to untangle this confusion. An understanding voice who let me voice my fears and worries about this show I love dearly, giving intellectual reassurances and things to ponder upon to help work through this knot. That push helped me to realize something myself, something that could help power through whatever Zombie Land Saga has on the horizon. I wrote it myself, even, in late January of this year when I was introducing this project to you all. At the end of my mini zombie movie marathon, I posited some hypotheticals. "What if zombies weren't bad, but good?" and all that. Well, one of the hypotheticals I posited to lead in to analysis of this show's first season? "What if these zombies didn't rise up to destroy society, but instead to save it?". Then it hit me. A sudden and simple little brainstorm, a smooth blade with which to cut through this Gordian knot I'd tied myself into. If there is indeed some malevolent force of bad luck and misery and other malfeasance dedicated to wiping out Saga in some sort of, dare I portmanteau, Sagapocalypse? If the girls and their utopic nature have to overcome said Sagapocalyspe to save their home and its people?

If that is the case, then the story that season 3 of Zombie Land Saga will tell is a simple but subversive one. It will be a story about seven zombie girls stopping the apocalypse. It will be a complete reversal of the traditional, unimaginative role of zombies in most pieces of zombie media. The creative folks behind this show will be taking a story told by many, crumpling it up, and then telling a better story. A story about the humanity of zombie girls, of Saga coming together instead of tearing itself apart, of Saga being saved, both literally and figuratively. You know what? That's a story worth telling. It's a story that they've begun to tell, with Saga coming together after that destructive hurricane to rally at the Franchouchou show. If they have to rally together against aliens or demons or whatever? So be it. Saga will prevail. Franchouchou will prevail. It isn't about the epic, the grandiose, the bad luck demons. It's about seven zombie girls and their song. That's what this entire project has been trying to convey to you all. Whether it succeeded or not, I can't say, but I took a shot at it and I will learn and grow from any failures in doing so to become a better me. Like those seven did. 

Now I have to say goodbye to them, and goodbye to you all for another little bit. Quantum Leap is next, and I have my own hopes and fears about that show which I'll express next time in a big prologue manifesto. Until then, this is the end of Night Of The Loving Dead. I leave it in a fitting place, firmly in the past and buried in my internal landscape, but ready to be revived at any time. Will I revive it to tackle the First Zombie manga, and all the bad luck demons it holds within its pages? I don't know yet. We will be back for sure whenever a Season 3 of the show or a movie or whatever's next happens. Until then, seven zombie girls have earned their peaceful rest in my head and heart. I hope they've earned a peaceful rest with you as well. Sakura, Ai, Junko, Saki, Lily, Yugiri, and Tae. Thank you. I believe in you, and I'll trust that when we meet again, in another life, your lyrics will still focus on the microcosm of Saga even if they're raised against some cosmic threat. 

Until then, girls, I'll believe in the song in my heart. But, before I go, let me take a page out of your book. Let me rewrite a guide I encountered near the start of this journey, to better reflect the story we've learned from watching your afterlives...

January 31st- May 20th, 2021

TO BE REVIVED...