Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 3 (Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead)

This is an interesting well to come back to, of sorts. I have a little bit of a history with anime involving zombies, which a cursory glance back at the archives will inform you about. This isn't subversive in the same ways as that, as it's telling a story about your traditional zombie apocalypse. It's the way the tale is told that made this a standout for me, though. I have not seen all of the show (it's still airing weekly as I write this) but I watched the first four episodes in a row and treated it as a mini animated movie about the end of the world via zombies. Even that's doing the show a disservice, as this thing is doing some wonderful work with not only its visuals but its storytelling.

There's an old adage that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. This show does indeed imagine the end of the world, but it also does imagine the end of capitalism at the same time. That statement does this a disservice. Its first episode is practically singing anticapitalist praises as it shows our protagonist Akira slowly lose all motivation and happiness in life as an exploitative job works him and everyone employed there into soulless husks, grinding away and becoming figurative zombies as they piss away the best days of their lives. It is a hellscape, an utter nightmare which has drained Akira of all joy and meaning in his life as he contemplates death because at least then he wouldn't have to go to work tomorrow.

Then the end of the world comes. Then the zombies run rampant through Tokyo. Society is collapsing, and that means Akira doesn't have to go to work any more. The drab monochrome of Akira's meaningless life up to this point slowly starts to see bursts of color, red blood and then blood of every color in the rainbow. Akira's world blooming into the beauty of full color as he flees the onrush of living dead, happy for the first time in years and finally free to do whatever the fuck he wants now that zombiekind has ripped capitalism's shitty fucking throat out has a dissonant beauty to it. A bunch of strangers dicking around in a mall has nothing on it.

The remaining three episodes are great in their own right, with Akira and his new carefree lifestyle imprinting upon and inspiring the survivors he meets. There's a practical survival-minded girl who makes a list that parallels Akira's own bucket list of simple joyful things he wants to do before he dies: her list is practicality on how to survive a zombie apocalypse, but there's no joy to it like Akira's. Encountering him may have changed her mind a little, as she laments not breaking her no-sugar rule when she wanted to take a sweet from the store earlier. Other people, like Akira's best friend Kencho or the flight attendents those two encounter in episode 4, also come to the same epiphany that Akira did about how they actually fucking hated the capitalist grind and now that it's dead and gone they can live. 

It's a simple little show about finding your own joy and bliss in a doomed world, but it's so much more upbeat than most zombie media that I found it hard not to be charmed by it. Lord knows we've had enough takes about people being unpleasant to each other once societal norms collapse. This is a show where people take joy in society collapsing, because it frees them from the bullshit holding them back and sucking away their happiness for the sake of capital. Workers of the zombie apocalypse world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.