Review: Zombie Land Saga loses itself on the way to the big screen

When I hear about a new anime movie getting released, I check to see if it's something I have time to catch up on (and also whether it's something I'd even want to catch up on). So it went when I heard about the Zombie Land Saga movie getting a theatrical release date. I had never heard of the show, but I looked it up, found out it only had 24 episodes over the course of two seasons, and decided to lock in.

I'm so, so glad I did.

Zombie Land Saga is the story of seven young women from different eras who died and have been brought back to life in the hopes of becoming a regional idol group that will revitalize/save Saga, a small city in southern Japan. If that premise doesn't get its hooks in you at least a little bit, what does? It's as silly and intriguing a premise as I've ever heard. I dove into the show expecting goofy fun, and yeah, it delivers a lot of that. What I wasn't expecting was how attached I would get to the characters and their community, and how emotional a lot of of the story-telling beats would be. The show is at its best when its either a) diving into the characters' backstories, showing their lives and deaths or b) exploring how the band reaches new corners of Saga and brings in new fans, who end up becoming diehard stans. 

And luckily, that's almost everything the show is. It's unexpectedly grounded in its storytelling, showing the girls going to different events, performing shows, taking on odd jobs to help raise funds or make new friends. It's a fantastic show, one I'm really happy I caught up on. It's a top-tier anime in my book.

And I'm extremely grateful I caught up on the show before watching the movie, Zombie Land Saga: Yumeginga Paradise, because if I had watched the movie first, I would not have been interested in checking the show out. Not even a little bit.

It didn't help that the movie was being shown with its English dub. I always prefer to watch stuff in its native language, and especially so with anime, so I was annoyed there wasn't even an option to watch a subtitled version in theaters. But that is what it is.

The much bigger issue with Yumeginga Paradise is that it almost doesn't at all resemble the show it's continuing. Where Zombie Land Saga is a character-driven and generally quite small-stakes show, Yumeginga Paradise is a bizarre huge-scale sci-fi action epic that feels completely divorced from the show's roots. It's the opposite of last year's Chainsaw Man and Demon Slayer movies, which each represented movies doing what their respective shows do best. Here, it feels like the core DNA of the show, its huge earnest heart, is left on the sidelines in lieu of an explosion-filled spectacle that lacks personality.

Of course, I acknowledge that this direction isn't completely out of left field. It pays off/plays on the final (bizarre) image from the show, which shows a UFO shooting a laser at the countryside. Here, Franchouchou are facing off with a full-scale alien invasion, one that is wreaking havoc in Saga right before a huge expo (which, in turn, includes a huge concert for our favorite zombie idol group). Tae, the only member of the group who is still in full zombie mode (in that she can't talk, chews on everything, etc.), gets abducted by the aliens, and after swallowing a mysterious power source, she gets her personality back, and her voice.

Tae is one of my favorite characters in the show, because of her zombie antics and her fantastic rooster impersonation, and here, we get to learn a bit more about her backstory (without getting too detailed). Unfortunately, her characterization is a bit flat, especially without fully letting us in to what her life looked like. She ends up feeling like a fairly generic action heroine, which is cool, and certainly unexpected, but is also indicative of how weirdly off-course this movie goes. Why are we watching the band fight aliens?? Like, yeah, this is a show about zombies, so sure aliens can exist, but it feels like such a strange ratcheting up of stakes and danger. Usually, our girls are worried about selling tickets or keeping their makeup straight so their zombie identities don't get revealed. Now they're wielding laser cannons? It just doesn't feel like the show to me.

And I get wanting to make a big screen outing feel special, different, big. But I think it's a misstep to go so different that the final product feels this different. 

Of course, it doesn't end up mattering much, because by the end of the movie, things are basically returned to square one. You know, sitcom rules. The status quo settles back in, meaning if this franchise continues in some way (another season or movie, maybe?), we can more or less pretend all of this didn't even happen and go on our merry way. I certainly won't mind pretending just that.

Even if this movie didn't end up hitting for me, I'm very grateful it exists, because it led me to a show that's a new favorite. So cheers to that!