Part 3: RIP, The Lack Of Closure Our Loved Ones Struggle With As They Process The Pain And Loss Of Our Untimely Deaths!
Wow, there was a lot going on in that last bit, huh? All that business with Ai and Junko and needing to come to terms with the strange new world they were revived in. Still, they managed to grow and heal from it... but the zombie girls aren't the only ones who feel the hurt of being out of time. The next big arc of Zombie Land Saga, episodes 8 and 9, focuses on the people the girls left behind. The people who had to soldier on and live with the loss of these people who were close to them. It's heavy, it's heartbreaking, and it made me cry. Solid stuff to cover on this blog... and boy howdy does episode 8 deliver on that. Let's dive right on in.
Episode 8 is a Lily episode. We've mentioned Lily very briefly, the small adorable former child actress. With the success of their Saga Rock show, and reporters writing an article about them in a magazine, Franchouchou are ever rising in the local idol scene. The episode takes time to focus on a man we've never seen before, a big and burly mountain of a man with a professed dislike of TV who leaves his office at lunchtime while the others watch whatever's on. Spying the Franchouchou article, he's shocked upon seeing Lily. At the next meet and greet/photo shoot session, we see that signed photos of Junko are on offer instead of the typical meet and greet. She found a way to make her Showa-era values work in the strange new world of the future. Bless. Anyway, this really scary big guy shows up to meet Lily, and the creepy vibes the other girls get from him causes Saki to kick him in the head. The man apologizes when confronted, explaining that Franchouchou's No. 6 reminds him of a child TV star from around 7 years ago, a star named... Lily Hoshikawa.
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| Just a happy family. |
If you remember Junko and Ai's tales from last time, you know how cruel fate is about to strike. Lily, tired and stressed, has locked herself in her room while her father demands she come out. She's upset over having started to grow leg hair, and accuses her father of only caring about her when she's on TV. Takeo doesn't think a little leg hair is a big deal, as it's all part of growing up. Lily declares that she never wants to grow up, and when Takeo says she can't look the way she does forever, Lily's retort is that she can too! She doesn't want to look like her father, and so she huffs and checks herself in the mirror. That's when she notices something on her face, at first thinking it's food or something. It turns out it's actually a facial hair. The sheer shock and sight of it induces a fucking heart attack, and that is how Lily Hoshikawa's life ends. Later, we'll see Takeo looking over the shrine to his late wife and daughter, remembering what came after. How Lily was super tired all the time and just wanted to go to the park or something, but he was focused on her career. How Lily's autopsy showed the cause of death as shock brought on by emotional distress. How Takeo blamed himself for working his daughter to death, unable to find any joy from TV any more without Lily at his side and smashing his TV in a fit of grief and rage. A tragic loss creating a bitter and broken man, unable to find joy in the world any more.
The reaction of Franchouchou to Lily's story is... well, it's certainly something. On the one hand, Saki is having a giggle over how butch Lily's given name is, but she does accept Lily in the end. On the other hand, it's a bit of clunky dialogue akin to... how shall I put it gracefully? That it doesn't matter what she's got "down there", and who cares, she's a zombie idol. Kotaro reacts much the same when they ask him about it. He knew all along, and replies with something like "OH WHAT, IS SHE NOT ALLOWED IN YOUR GIRLY GIRL IDOL GROUP ANY MORE?". In the end, Lily did get her wish in a way. She's dead now, and will look like she does now forever. It's something that brings the other zombie girls some concern, but they do accept Lily for who she is in the end. The dilemma, then, comes when Takeo comes back to another Franchouchou meet and greet to apologize to who he thinks is a random idol who looks like his dead daughter. He explains he used to have a daughter about her age, but that he was a bad father who was so focused on himself that he wasn't able to take care of her properly. He buys a Franchouchou shirt in Lily's size, apologizing again for everything and letting her know that he won't be back to bother the group again. All of this leaves Lily with a dilemma. Her father's obviously hurting and still living with the guilt and regret of Lily's untimely death... but how can they help him? Lily's a zombie, and they can't exactly reveal that to him outright. Well, there is something they can do. They may be zombies, but don't forget: they're also idols.
Again, I'm writing up what happens there in case you can't see the video for whatever reason. Watch if you can, and weep you will because... Takeo Go is sent a special invite to the next Franchouchou show, which he eventually shows up to at the last minute. Once the girls see that big burly man at the back of the crowd, they know what they have to do. It's time for a brand-new song, with lead vocals by Franchouchou's No. 6. I have watched this show through four times total. I mention this because in all four instances, this song has a 100% success rate of reducing me to a weeping sobbing mess. Lily's song is written with the specific intent of expressing her lament to her father, to poignantly give him a final goodbye. To let him know that she enjoyed every happy moment they shared together, and that she's okay now and he shouldn't blame himself for what happened. It is a song written to heal his guilt-ridden heart, and to give him some form of closure. To let him move on and be a happier man while his little girl lights up the stage, making people happy as an idol. It's moving, it's heartbreaking, I'm crying writing it up right now, and it works. Lily is able to express her feelings through her song, and touch the heart of her father and heal his pain. Takeo Go learns to love TV again, joining his work buddies for lunch for once and watching TV with them, having a smile to himself as Franchouchou's Drive-In Tori ad plays. What a lovely story. What a lovely bit of utopic healing. I won't bitch about other zombie media as a take that to close this paragraph. Instead, let's talk about how Saki handles a similar issue in the next episode.
Episode 9's open is a flashback to Saki's days as a delinquent biker girl in the late 1990s, and as we get into the episode proper some of Franchouchou are confronted by a modern-day posse of biker gals, led by a tough punk named Maria. Tae, being your stereotypical zombie, tries chomping on Maria's hair buns and only pissing her off more. Things look bad until Saki enters the scene, putting on her own tough punk act. At this point she and we realize some things. Maria's biker "gang" consists of just two other girls, and the three of them have scooters instead of motorcycles. The gang itself, Dorami, is the biker gang Saki was a part of in life. Finally there's the issue of Maria's mother, Saki's old biker comrade Reiko. We'll soon find out that Reiko seems to have lost her delinquent passion, being more of a concerned mother for her daughter. Maria utterly resents her mother for this, feeling that Reiko has become a spineless wimp in her old age. Things aren't helped by the fact that Maria's gang are ambushed by a rival biker gang and then challenged to settle their biker gang feud once and for all. Saki, passing by the confrontation as Kotaro drives Franchouchou back home in his van, leaps out of the moving van and down to the riverside below to bail Maria out. The rival biker gang backs down for now, as Saki tells Maria that she's convinced Maria can't take on a tough biker boss like that. Back at home, Saki faces the music and gets chewed out by Kotaro for her reckless bullshit:
It's here we learn more about Reiko, and what drives her to be so protective of her daughter. Maria has been challenged by the rival biker gang, a challenge that's all too familiar to Reiko. A game of chicken towards the edge of a cliff. Reiko knows it all too well, because in 1997 she watched her best friend recklessly go too far over that edge and plummet to her demise, dying far too young. Yeah, that was Saki, and that's how Saki met her end. Reiko ponders what her dead friend would think of her now, 20 years later: middle-aged with a delinquent daughter who thinks she's got no backbone. All Reiko wanted, even back then, was a happy family and a normal life. She didn't want her happy family to be entangled in the biker life, and yet... here we are. Best friend long dead, a daughter with no respect for her, and following down that same cyclical path. As Saki hears the convoy of motorbikes in the distance, she knows what's up. Before she can sneak out, though, Kotaro catches her and challenges her again. His words, and Saki's reply to them, are iconic.
Reiko, upon realizing Maria's snuck out of the house to accept the challenge, breaks her own bike out of storage to head out to the cliffside. Even when she arrives, begging the rival biker boss to call the whole thing off, things are still heated. Maria lays into her mom for being such a coward and that she'll never ever end up like that. Cue Saki slamming into the parked motorbikes on a regular bicycle. Declaring herself Dorami's Captain For A Day, Saki is going to be the one to take on the challenge of playing chicken on the cliffside yet again. She lets Maria know that, if she's really a Dorami biker gal, she'd know that there was a dumbass who died doing this before. Reiko objects to this recklessness, but it's when Saki says that there's no way she'll die that Reiko has that flash of memory. This girl who came out of nowhere is reminding her an awful lot of her dead best friend. Just like Ai did at Saga Rock, Saki is staring down the material conditions of her own tragic death again. Just like Lily wanted to do for her father, Saki can see the person her beloved friend has become in the years since her own tragic death. She can see the conflict between Reiko and her daughter, and is here to heal it in a matter befitting of an idol. First, though, the game of chicken to the edge of the cliff. History repeats, like it did for Ai, and the rival biker flinches first as Saki goes right the fuck off the edge of the cliff, Reiko's old bike exploding in a blaze of recklessness. It's fine, though. She's dead already. Saki climbs right back up, and when she approaches Reiko to apologize about blowing up the bike...
In her own way, Saki heals the rift between her friend and her friend's daughter, letting each realize something about the other that they hadn't considered before. Maria realizes Reiko isn't a total coward, and Reiko realizes Maria is strong enough to take care of herself. Of course, in all the confusion, Saki almost forgot the important part. You know. Idol stuff, man. As legendary as this is, the path Saki is on as a zombie idol is way more legendary, leading us into a biker-themed Franchouchou song with Saki on lead vocals, and all the biker gang girls in the crowd at the next concert. Maria and Reiko understand each other a little better now, thanks to the works of an undead biker gal and her song. It's a lovely story, and a great companion piece to some of the arcs we've seen before. We've seen a lot with this show over its first three quarters. The hesitant starts, the grim confrontation of the girls' own mortalities and ideologies, and the healing of those poor souls whom they left behind in their deaths. It's time to combine all of that for the show's last arc.
It's time to bring utopic healing to one Sakura Minamoto.
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