(TV SERIES) Love You as the World Ends Season 1 & 2 - Love Story During Zombie Apocalypse

While looking through the many new series/movies on Netflix, I stumbled upon this Japanese zombie series which intrigued me. At first I was a bit hesitant as it was having 16 episodes that to me was a bit long, but as I already set my sight on expanding my horizons, I decided to give it a try. All right, I'll head on to it then.

Brief Story Line (Season 1 - Eps 1-10)

Hibiki Mamiya (Ryoma Takeuchi - Kamen Rider Drive etc) and Kurumi Ogasawara (Ayami Nakajo - Let's Go, Jets! etc) were ordinary couple who were so much in love. But when Hibiki was trapped in a tunnel for few days, he returned to a completely different world where it was inhabited by zombies and the whereabouts of Kurumi was unknown. 

Together with fellow survivors that included his estranged friend/police officer Hiro Todoroki (Sho Kasamatsu), part time Korean worker Min-jun (Kim Jae-hyun) with his annoying boss Mr. Komoto (Makita Sports), Mrs. Shoko (Tamae Ando) and her young daughter Yuzuki (Naho Yokomizo), a college student Kanae Hiragi (Marie Iitoyo) and few others, Hibiki tried to seek the safe shelter while hoping he would find Kurumi.

During their journey, Hibiki also met with other group or survivors led by Tsuboi (Toshihito Kokubo). Meanwhile, a scientist named Professor Shuto (Kenichi Takito) was trying to create a vaccine to cure the infected zombies from virus called "golem" and was assisted by another researcher Dr. Yoon Jian (Hyunri) in a facility protected by the army.  

Season 2 - Eps 11-16

Picking up where season 1 ended, Hibiki and the rest of the survivors were trying to search for a place called the House of Hope. It was maintained by a business woman named Mrs. Misako (singer Mari Hamada) along with her son Ren Akiyoshi (Kanata Hongo) and some wealthy, privileged people living there. Things became really complicated when there was dangerous threat terrorizing Hibiki and friends.

So what would happen to Hibiki, Kurumi and the rest of the survivors? Find them all in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

Ya, I had no choice but to split the above story line for clarity purpose since Netflix decided to show all 16 episodes in 1 go and treat it as 1 season. My views of this series would be separated as well as I had varying opinion on the 2 seasons. 

The first season focused a lot on Hibiki's personal mission to find his girlfriend Kurumi while trying his best to survive the zombie attacks together with a group of survivors. It proved to be such difficult task with so many agonizing pains that have to be endured along the way, sometimes even frustrating looking at how close Hibiki was to the love of his life. In this series, the writers put emphasis on the characters development rather than solely on how the group tried to survive. By the time I finished the fist season, I was amazed of how far the characters have changed from the beginning. 

As the focus was more on the dramatic side, the zombies felt a bit like background, hence it probably lack the intensity that fans of zombie apocalypse genre were hoping to see, especially after watching so many such series that were truly suspenseful and gore in nature. Of course there were still some suspense here and there but not to the point where you would really hold your breath. Likely it was due to the not so spectacular special effects that were supposed to make the zombies scary as hell. Those expecting to be having nonstop action might be disappointed too with the scarcity of them. 

With such engaging characters of different but realistic personalities like the selfish type, opportunist, courageous, loyal and many other kinds, it's no wonder that it would be emotional when one of them became a victim. There was one episode in the middle which was truly heartbreaking and frankly quite shocking as I thought the person would be one of the survivors. The first season ended quite nicely and pretty satisfying. 

When I watched the first season, I somehow felt a bit of resemblance with The Walking Dead series, but as soon as I reached the second season where it really focused on the interaction with different group of survivors, the feeling was really enhanced. Personally though, I did not really like the second season's story development of one of the main characters. It felt like the writers were running out of ideas on how to make it more interesting, which was kind of disappointing especially with the way the first season went. I also felt that the second season was having much slower pace and only in the last 2 episodes that the story became really interesting and shocking. Unfortunately we have to wait till the next season to see the conclusion (unless they still wanted to make a 4th season and so on). The 3rd season would start to air by end of February. Hopefully Netflix who is showing it in Asia would continue airing it.

The cast here were generally OK. Even though I have never seen any one of them but some left big impression to me like Ryoma Takeuchi, Kim Jae-hyun and Makita Sports. I am not sure if this series was based on anything as I could not see it mentioned in the opening or closing credits. Oh there was a very nice song titled Not the End by Yasuda Rei which was played during the end and sometimes during certain scenes. Anyway I think the screenwriter Natsuko Ikeda and directors Shintaro Sugawara and Mitsuru Kubota were quite excellent in particular the first season. I just hope that the 3rd season would be better than the second.

Overall this series was more like a love story during the time of zombie apocalypse. I would have loved the series better if the main character was not written in such manner in the second season. Even though the zombies might not be as terrifying as in other series, the story and character depth was good enough to keep me interested. So if you are looking for zombie drama series, then this would be to your liking. But if you prefer almost nonstop zombie chasing with lots of intensity and suspense, then this might not be for you. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars