Brief Story Line
Akira Tendo (Eiji Akaso - Kamen Rider Build, Super Rich drama series etc) was a young man who thought he got his dream job working for a commercial production company. Turned out it was his worst nightmare as he worked under bullying boss Kosugi (Kazuki Kitamura - Hell Dogs: In the House of Bamboo, Kill Bill Vol. 1 etc). His only solace was he had a crush on one of his senior Ohtori (Yui Ichikawa - Ju-On: The Grudge 2, Nana etc) who was kind towards him. Akira's best friend Kencho (Shuntaro Yanagi - Tokyo Seimenjo drama series etc) also told him to quit his job.
After working for one whole year, suddenly there was a zombie outbreak and Akira realized life was too short & decided to make a list of 100 things to do before he possibly became a zombie. During his journey to fulfill his wish list, Akira also met with other survivors, including the overly serious Shizuka (Mai Shiraishi - Stolen Identity 2 etc) who looked down on him due to taking the zombie thing too lightly.
So what would happen to Akira and would he be able to complete his list? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
From the beginning of this movie, the manga feel was already very strong with the characters' behavior and expressions that were a bit exagerrated. As we were inroduced to the lead character Akira, we could not help feeling sympathy towards him as he struggled in his supposed dream job and being bullied all the time. Then we got to see life after the zombie outbreak that surprisingly look easy enough for Akira to roam around the neighborhood. During this time, the film actually felt very light and had plenty of humorous moments which made me feel that the zombies were more like background rather than focus.
Mid way through the movie though, it became a bit heavy as we were hit by a surprising turn of event. But once I reached the final third, I personally thought it was a bit of a stretch and did not think it was necessary to have this kind of enemy they had to fight. Probably they just want to add more intensity and suspense. After watching the movie, I tried the anime series which was also available on Netflix, just to do a bit of comparison. Unfortunately it is an ongoing series and only 4 episodes that were already released. It turned out that there were few distinct differences, in particular the main characters and their background story. Since it was only up to 5 episodes, I could not tell if the movie's climax was following the manga.
To me Eiji Akaso seemed quite suitable as Akira. But the person that caught my attention was Kazuki Kitamura who portrayed Kosugi, as he successfully convinced me that he was such an irritating person. Aside from the cast I mentioned above, there were few other support characters as well such as Akira's colleague Yamaguchi (Nakamura Mukau) and Yoshida (Taniguchi Shota), the couple who lived in the same building as Akira, Mikio (Takahashi You) and his pregnant wife Sumire (Hayami Akari) and few others.
I found out from the internet that the manga series was illustrated by Kotaro Takata and written by Haro Aso, the person who illustrated and wrote that amazing Alice in Borderland which was made into a great Live Action series. Both of them were credited as writers of this movie together with Tatsuro Mishima, which made me wonder why they made the climax in such a way. The movie itself was directed by Yusuke Ishida in his feature film directorial debut. Btw, the special effects of the zombies were actually pretty good and sound effects were quite amazing as well as the zombie effects. However the stranded Tokyo settings did not look too good with obvious CGI used.
For a little over 2 hour, I thought the movie was entertaining enough with some comedy and light approach on the zombies. The drama was not too strong in the first half, but it did feel stronger during the middle, only to be ruined a bit (personally) due to the kind of enemy they had to face. I did like the chemistry of Akira with the other main cast. Oh the maturity rating of the film was 18+ as it had violence, sex and nudity. But the anime version felt more extreme and the zombies looked scarier compared to the movie. The drama felt more powerful too in the anime which was probably the reason it was more appreciated. Overall this was likely a much more enjoyable movie for me had it had different approach in the climax. The ending seemed to open up possibility of sequel particularly if they followed the plot from the manga series. So if you like the manga series, you might want to give it a try to see how the live version look. But if you are in search for a scary zombie movie or a powerful zombie drama, this might not be up to your standard.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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