31 Days, 31 Screams: Resurrection- Day 6 (Zombie Land Saga)

Just undead gals being undead pals.

Hey hey, how about that? I am no longer a ghost writing these things in late September before I leave. I am actually writing in October, the day of, for once. I spent a week watching the subject of today's post and... well, have I got a mouthful. Let us start, then, with the concept of dissonance. Dissonance is used quite well in many a spooky production, showing a happy and cheerful situation completely at odds with the nightmares and terrors that await later on down the line. (An iconic example of this in the medium we chose for today is Higurashi, which you can read about here.) As good and chillingly effective as this can be... well, we've done it, haven't we? What if we did something different? What if we took an absolutely horrific premise, one which sends shivers down the spine... and made that into the happy cheerful heartwarming show? That's just what I spent a week in isolation experiencing, and what I'm eager to talk about today. Strap in, y'all. It's time to talk about Zombie Land Saga.



Zombie Land Saga is a Japanese idol anime. This is nothing new, and there are several of these out there. (Love Live and Idolmaster come to mind as two big ones, but there are lots of these.) Over its 12 episodes, a band of seven young girls with disparate personalities and attitudes join forces to form the pop idol group Franchouchou, singing and dancing their way all over the titular backwater Japanese prefecture of Saga. It's sweet and adorable, and a casual glance at any typical Franchouchou performance wouldn't make one look twice. The dark comedic twist at the heart of the whole thing, of course, is there in the title. Every member of Franchouchou may look ordinary on stage, but they are all in actuality the reanimated corpses of girls who died far too young. From the word go, Zombie Land Saga isn't fucking around. Its opening minutes show us Minamato Sakura, a bright-eyed optimistic high school girl with hopes of making it as an idol. They then show us Minamoto Sakura being blindsided by a fucking truck as her body soars through the air in slow motion while heavy metal music plays. Zombie Land Saga is not. fucking. around. Any passing thought of finding the antics of these girls cute is undercut with the horrific reminder that these are the walking dead, cut down in their prime. Even so, the antics of the living dead are played for total comedy; a good example is episode 3's hot springs episode, in which the girls sneaking out to enjoy a secret dip in the hot springs leads to a terrified sponsor running into all sorts of fucking zombies. It's morbid, it's horrific, and it's fucking hilarious. They even play up the comedy by having one of the girls, Yamada Tae, never awaken to true sentience; she remains a stereotypical moaning and groaning zombie who keeps trying to chomp on things, and she's still a core part of the group.


And then the show kept going and it actually had a heartfelt message to it. Zombie Land Saga, you see, is a show about overcoming the traumas of the past and learning to heal from them, with the support of true friends. We see this near the midpoint of the show with Ai and Junko, two girls who were former idols when they were alive. A bit of conflict stems from their conflicting idol ideologies due to their disparate eras: Junko is a Showa-era idol from the 80's who isn't used to the constant attention of the social media era. Ai, on the other hand, died in 2011, at the tail end of the Heisei era. If only the show had come out this year, in the brand-new Reiwa era of Japanese history, it would have cemented this sense of the zombie girls being from out of time. Ai, meanwhile, is nervous about playing a show during a thunderstorm because that's how she died; struck by lightning live on stage during a thunderstorm. It's Junko who helps her up and lets her overcome this. This overcoming trauma doesn't extend to just Franchouchou, though; those who were close to the girls when they were alive find their own sense of closure and acceptance over their losses thanks to the music of Franchouchou. The father of Hoshikawa Lily, adorable zombie child (and trans girl idol!), has his heart healed by a loving song wherein Lily does what she can to let him know that he was a good father and that he shouldn't blame himself for the past. (Incidentally, this bit had me weeping openly in my little basement retreat.) A former comrade of the hard-edged biker girl-turned zombie-turned Franchouchou idol comes to terms with her loss and grows a stronger connection with her biker girl daughter. Then there's Minamoto Sakura, our bubbly undead protagonist, who gets hit by another truck at the end of episode 10. Up until now, she couldn't remember her past life but tried her best to become an idol so she could remember. Now she remembers her past life, but nothing since she was revived. As it turns out, in life Minamoto Sakura was an unlucky and depressed girl who kept trying to do things right but always had catastrophic bad luck ruin everything. Even her big chance to become an idol was thwarted by her getting hit by a truck... and now she sits in an undead funk. Franchouchou eventually heals their own pal, and the message of the show becomes clear. So your past was shitty. You loved, you lost, you failed, and to cap it all off you fucking died. You're still here, though. Your skin may be blue and your head can pop off now if you're not careful, but you're still here and you're loved. By your friends and by your fans. Pick up that microphone, pour your heart out in song, and let yourself be healed of the wounds of the past. The sweet coda I'll leave you on is quite the coincidence: during Sakura's funk, even Yamada Tae does her best to try and get Sakura to snap out of her depression and get back to things... because Sakura did her best to try and get Tae into the idol spirit. Tae is doing her very best, despite being a shambling groaning zombie, to make her friend feel better. According to Wikipedia, Yamada Tae is voiced by legendary voice actress Kotono Mitsuishi... who, just over 25 years ago, voiced a clumsy crybaby who did her very best to heal her friends and make them feel better. That's right. Usagi Tsukino herself is here, and even death can't stop her from trying to be a healer. What a lovely show.