「No Zombie No Idol Saga」 (No Zombie No Idol Saga)
“No Zombie No Idol Saga”

Our latest Zombieland Saga takes the girls back to their idol work as they prep up for their biggest concert yet at Arpino, the same stage that Sakura vaguely remembers Ai performing on back when she was alive. And Sakura’s sentimentality towards this notion is what ends up fueling this episode’s conflict where she becomes disillusioned by her team members for taking a trip to Mount Tenzan too lightly. While it doesn’t have the level of gravitas or emotional pull as the last four episodes, Sakura’s plight, Kotarou grappling with his management style, and the last few minutes come together to create an interesting episode.

A majority of the episode is spent on the turmoil going on with Sakura where she wants to take her performance as seriously as she can. However, being stuck in the forest and spending days on setting up a camp to stay comfortable is wasting her time and investment into the performance itself. It might have been a roundabout way for Kotarou to get the girls together, but it wouldn’t be something she would have caught onto when she doesn’t see it as an ideal way for her to practice her routine with everyone else.

Much of the responsibility to get the girls together falls on Kotarou, but the episode shows that he’s having difficulty expressing the abstract ideas he has in mind for them. Whereas he was trying to get the girls to “climb the mountains from within,” he was clearly losing Sakura by purposefully having the girls find the details on what they need to do on their own. It is fascinating to see how he acts more mature and has more clarity when Yuugiri speaks with him regarding what he should do about doing more to help Sakura.

Overall, the episode in itself served mostly to reinforce the band’s unity as a group by throwing a wrench in Sakura’s perception of her role or place in Franchouchou. Although it was very funny to have Yuugiri slap Kotarou only to reiterate exactly what he was telling her, it would have been nice to see more of Yuugiri. It was a high expectation I set on myself with the preview, but I was anticipating writing on why I really love Yuugiri as I did with Saki and Junko. It could’ve been more exciting throughout the episode, but it did have the benefit of having the biggest bomb-drop in its final moments as Sakura remembers her past. With van-kun visiting Sakura once again, she has to face an even larger cluster of memories from her childhood up to her demise. It’ll be awesome to see how this all pans out next time around as she starts to piece together her connection with Ai, how she kicked the bucket, and what her home life was like.

Preview

9 Comments

    1. 1.) Sakura acting mighty chipper.

      2.) “Be careful around traffic.”

      3.) Sakura moving in almost the same manner and the same types of shots as episode one.

      4.) Me: Here comes Truck-kun.

      HalfDemonInuyasha
  1. So I picked this anime after I saw Mother’s Basement’s video. I actually quite interested with this. Shame, I thought this is going to be Yugiri’s episode but at least we know Sakura’s struggle now and the next episode.

    https://randomc.net/image/Zombieland%20Saga/Zombieland%20Saga%20-%2010%20-%2028.jpg
    Tae is the only weird one among the group. Some said she was the very first zombie ever born. Another said she switched brain with the dog somehow.

    One Pinch Man
    1. My guess has been that she’s never been acting like a zombie but was a “legendary” wolf girl side show attraction or something and has been “awake” the entire time and they’ve just been slowly training her to act more human.

      qwert
  2. I do hope to see more about Yuugiri’s past but it’s more focus on Sakura instead. Well, at least it’s good to see that she seems to remember her past now. Based on the preview, I think that she is a good girl who always tries her best but probably fails at what she want to do.

    HoHo
  3. At this point I am half convinced that the Universe is trying to make things right Final Destination style by causing zombies to experience the circumstances of their deaths if they recreate the same situation. Sing in an open air concert when you died to lightning? Happens again. Run out onto the street full of hope and get hit by Truck-kun? Yup. Die during a game a chicken by riding off a cliff? Check. Zombies are probably an aberration in the kharmic scales so when the kami see someone running around that is supposed to be dead, maybe they just try again. It just does not stick because they are zombies.

    Franchouchou should avoid planes as much as possible……

    Mechamorph

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