The hunt for the zombie vaccine lands the gang in Osaka, where both the zombies and our leads are raising the bar. When they need an economic miracle to get into high society, their friend Takemina lends a hand, but capitalism is built on greed, you know?
For me, I am almost certain that the literal philosophy debate last volume is the best that Zom 100 is ever going to get. It’s wildly uneven, as a rule, but that section was so inventive and funny that it made everything worthwhile.
We start out here with some playful jabs at Osaka and its people, as the zombies haven’t evolved… they’re just super boisterous. It’s silly, but a cute enough way to mix it up, even if they don’t do much with said zombies when the volume is over and fine with.
No, Osaka is run on tinned food, which makes for a pretty solid basis for an economy, as it turns out. This leads to a modern-day system run by a Canning Chief and a high society group living in a castle, who tax the land and lure the workers into a casino with promises of wealth. Said group also happens to hold our heroes’ only lead on the zombie vaccine.
To get their in, the boys start a bar, after drafting in their slightly shifty college buddy, Takemina, who knows his way around a hustle. I quite like what they did with his character, even if he’s yet another in a long line of disillusioned people we keep meeting (bonus points for the Rube Goldberg joke though).
Speaking of philosophy, does it count as fan service if the guys are suggesting the women wear skimpy bikinis to serve drinks, the women balk at it (poor Bea is so funny during this), but we get the ‘imagination view’ anyway? That’s pretty ‘have your cake and eat it’, though I did appreciate that Bea is as voluptuous as Shizuka is toned. At least the art gets the details right.
After the boys learn they can’t run a bar worth a damn, they get introduced to the casino, which is a cautionary tale that also has one of those ‘all or nothing’ death games that cannot possibly be operating on pure chance or the place would be bankrupt, based on the odds alone. Nobody bothers to bat an eye at this.
It’s the first sign that this storyline is about to start tugging hard on its narrative threads and, rather than withstand such scrutiny, they slowly begin to unravel. Subsequently, the bar hits the big time with some amusing little tricks, the bustling night life is a nice change of pace, which all leads to a not-so-unexpected heel turn.
What IS unexpected, however, is who it involves, and this is where the story starts to really collapse in on itself. The idea that Akira would screw his friends over as thoroughly as he does is a lot to swallow, and I think the author knows it because they try and justify the hell out of it.
They quickly dismiss the notion that he’s just running a scam on the higher-ups, which makes him come off as a real backstabbing jerk and, point about capitalism or not, it kind of dumps on all the character development they’ve worked to establish to this point.
With just a couple of pages trying to set this idea up it falls absolutely flat. While I’m glad they didn’t take the obvious choice of having the new guy screw them over, it’s not like something is automatically better because you go with the more surprising choice.
The other parts of the story are fine. I enjoy this manga for the most part, but it rarely flat-out impresses me and this current plot is certainly not unwelcome as capitalism eats our planet alive, but it’s both heavy-handed and underbaked.
3 stars - I appreciate the attempt here, I really do, but the execution leaves me really wanting and it does a fair amount of damage to what it had done already, which is a heck of a pill to swallow.