In order to get what he needs, Ayumu must help finish… a manga?
What They Say:
In order to defeat Chris and get Haruna’s magical power back, Ayumu meets with Nene, the mightiest of underworlders. In exchange for her help, Ayumu and the others help her illustrate her comic. Meanwhile, Saras gets ready to put on another concert.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While the series has turned its focus towards the defeat of Chris in order to help Haruna, it’s really just an excuse to come up with weird and wacky things for the diverse group of characters to do together. With Ayumu working towards figuring out different kinds of weaknesses that Chris has in order to defeat her, he’s making deals wherever he can. And it’s pretty necessary to find something to use against her as she’s an S-Class megalo and that means big, big trouble to defeat. Luckily, they do have a few avenues to pursue in order to find something to help and there’s even a few hints in the past as we get a cute, girly scene involving Eu in the past, before she lost her voice.
The focus for this episode has the group approaching someone from Eu’s past who is a pretty powerful member of the underworlders named Nene. Well, that’s her short pen name for the manga she draws in the human realm. We see a bit of her in the past and how Eu views her, which of course doesn’t jive with how she is in the present, taking on the look of a busty, tired and cute redhead who wants to help but needs some help first. She has what it takes to defeat Chris, but she’s swamped with deadlines and errands and Ayumu shows up at just the right time in order to help her out. Or be taken advantage of, whichever one you think works best. Of course, he’s smart enough to not be the only one to do all of this as he draws in Haruna as well.
Bringing in Seras and Eu is unexpected for him though and just makes the whole process even more complicated as it goes along, especially since Nene is so outgoing and it sets off the other girls about how she is. The episode as a whole is focused on this kind of wacky back and forth banter and silliness, which work well enough for a lot of it, but also stands out all the more when it goes to just doing the actual work on the manga. The softer moments are done well enough, for what little we know of Nene, but the whole event also just puts a bit of a strain on Ayumu when it comes to how he has to handle his relationships with others in the group since he’s disappointing Saras. But really, it says less of Saras when you get down to it since she knows what he’s doing, and he should deal with it as well.
In Summary:
With just one more episode to go in the broadcast season, Is This A Zombie? pretty much is working through the story arc it’s working with about as you’d expect. Ayumu gets a bit closer to things in how he has to deal with Chris in order to help Haruna. It’s a flaky, nothing kind of plot that the series has thrown in and it’s not something that’s really capturing the attention of seemingly anyone. This episode itself does work well enough for what it is and it’s largely because it’s just silly stuff as the group works together to help Nene in order for Ayumu to get what he needs. It plays up some mild fanservice, the usual beating up on each other that goes on and a bit more history for Eu, but it again feels like an episode where it’s just there rather than being a story that keeps the viewer engaging. The emptiness of this season is really striking compared to the first.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
