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Jan 15 2011

Categories: episodic review
Tagged: kore wa zombie desu ka

13 Comments »

I MAED AN ANIMU W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1

From the people who brought you Hanaukyo Meido Tai and the studio that brought you Dazzle, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, and Junou Romantica, we have yet another anime about zombies.

… and magical girls. Err… trap… boy… thingamagig.

(Magical Boy Zombie… uh… these are tropes that shouldn’t be combined, much like the raw oysters and peanut butter or Gundam and plot.)

Kore wa Zombie desu Ka reminds me a lot, style-wise and slapstick-wise, of Inukami— not a compliment. There’s just something about an overly ridiculous situation, the male protagonist not really digging the hawt girls he’s staying with, gratuitous fanservice, and all the full frontal male nudity.

(And can you spot all the tropes in the first five minutes? Guy sitting next to window in the second to last seat of the class? Guy narrating about how peaceful this world is… but it really isn’t? The quick shot of the mysterious girl living with said guy? The possibly gay best friend setting himself up for a quip and joke in school? I feel like we’ve entered the age of anime hot pot, where anime is just made by tossing in ingredients into a huge hot pot and then randomly fishing out items… oooo… fish ball… mushroom… beef… tempura…)

Don’t you know, crayfish is delicious.

(Why did the evil crayfish pass up the nakkid little girl to play with the zombie boy? Wait, huh? Also, why does an evil crayfish have rocket pincers? Aren’t pincers already weapon-ish enough? Why the need to make them rocketfireable? And why a crayfish? Why not the vastly superior barnacle?)

Studio Deen doing Shaft being Shaft animation is like watching a McDonald’s “chef” try to cook lamb chops sous vide for a top notch steakhouse.

Why does she need a seiyuu if she doesn’t talk? And writing on a notepad? Seems odd, right, especially…

… since they have a Dyson fan. Why can’t she get a Droid like Celty and text and type all the time? (Or, better yet, if they want to be hip, swype and blindtype.)

(And the fail magical girl didn’t know how to use a cellphone? Fail. Does remind me of an anime project idea I once had… kinda like Gatekeepers with less Gonzo. Basically, the magical girls would fight using app phones! Yes, there’s an app for that. It would kinda be like Nanoha, except they would have to multitouch their phones to execute commands. You can have the aging magical girl run Symbian, whereas the new up and coming one runs iOS. Her familiar would definitely be some cute mascot thingie named “Jobby”. The villainous magical girl who eventually becomes her friend could run Android whereas the real bad guy runs– dum dum dum– BlackBerry OS.)

(Windows Phone would be that magical girl inserted for comic relief. She would definitely emote a la Steve Ballmer. Did I just give you nightmares?)

I like how Studio Deen just dusted off their Higurashi/Umineko filters for the grisly death scenes. Glad to know that’s in their playbook, like how cute moe girls are in Kyoto’s playbook or trainwreck is in Sunrise’s.

(I was going to make an “Angel Beats had less backstory than this” joke but decided against it.)

Animation ranges from bad to acceptable. The character designs just feel… I dunno… lazy? The backgrounds are okay if this were 2004, but not for 2011. Let’s just say I’m not watching this thinking, “Wow, I can’t wait for the BDs.”

Storywise, I have one major problem with this show: zombies are supposed to be braindead monsters! The typical undead loser male lead talks way too much and thinks way too much. Whenever I think zombie, I want some stumbling, rotting corpse walking around going “THIGH HIGHS… NEED MORE THIGH HIGHS!” I don’t want him to go to school, save cute kittens from being run over, and crossdress. Seriously, do we need to an anime about trap zombies? No!!!