Kore wa Zombie desu ka?

Have you ever seen an anime you were convinced was going to be really cool and interesting and only just to have it let you down to no end? Welcome to my experience with Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka. After two episodes which presented a genuinely interesting and refreshing take on the harem genre (interesting takes on mythological creatures, nobody particularly interested in each other romantically, basically just putting up with each other simply because they have to), this series succumbs to the harem tropes it actively avoids and just becomes ultimately a very lazy series.

The initial concept for this show is actually ... pretty interesting, with Ayumu who has just recently become a zombie living with the necromancer who resurrected him because, well what else is he going to do realistically. After his transformation, they meet other mythological creatures and beings such as a magical school girl and a vampire ninja. They fight creatures called megalos which are evil spirits that actually have some really creative and inspired designs to them. In one episode, they fight a giant whale in a school uniform that would put Sin from Final Fantasy X to shame. In another, they fight a giant enemy crab and attack its weak point for massive damage. One of the big points of humor in these fights is how as a zombie Ayumu basically has no powers, so he has to use magical girl powers a la Sailor Moon, which include gratuitous transformation sequences (it’s actually pretty funny in practice.) In this regard, the first half of the series is the best because it focuses on the sheer lunacy of the entire situation and the creatures they have to fight.

But then something terrible happens, Zombie No Desu Ka starts to take itself seriously. This show, about a zombie living who uses magical girl powers and lives with a necromancer, another magical girl and a vampire ninja, starts to take itself incredibly seriously for some reason right around episode 4 or 5 and it absolutely kills the momentum. When the show isn’t having fun with its ridiculous premise, its bogged down by pointless drama about Ayumu’s killer or a story arc later in the series that is so ridiculous that I can’t believe they even animated it. On top of all this, after episode 6 the show just starts to become a victim of the same tired harem/ecchi anime tropes that we’ve seen a million times before. The jokes start to get really lazy, the girls start to get interested in Ayumu, a new tsundere vampire ninja is introduced, and the entire show just becomes a drag. It just drags itself through the motions up until the final episode, which is almost unwatchable. It’s a pool episode featuring some terrible J-Pop performances from the cast of girls that I’m convinced almost made my ears bleed. How in the hell did we get to this point?

This is what happens when you completely forget why your show works and just start pulling stuff out of thin air to kill time. This show could have been really cool by sticking to having fun with its absurd initial set up and following it through to the end. I was completely on board to enjoy this show thoroughly. Please don’t waste your time on this show. It’s a crime that a show like this ended up getting better ratings across Japan than a masterpiece like Fractale, despite this being a wasted opportunity. If you want a real comedy series, look elsewhere; this will just leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.

I've always suspected that sometimes people request anime reviews from me because they want to see how I'll react to a particular really bad anime. That suspicion has been confirmed. Today's review was requested specifically because "Ive seen Ktulu review some real crappy stuff (I think I saw Baka to Test somewhere), so I thought this would be 'right up his alley' reviewing-wise." Yes, that is an actual quote. Is it really that bad? Let's take a look and find out.

Kore wa zombie desu ka follows a magical girl zombie who lives with the necromancer who brought him back to life, a magical girl ... and a vampire ninja. It's every bit as stupid as it sounds. There is an over-arching story but it's really basic. An enemy shows up, the group has to fight him. You might think that, as stupid as the premise is, it has to get some good humour out of it. Nope. The humour is as weak and imbecilic as the story. Most of it is simply the same joke repeated. Ayumu is a zombie, watch as he gets abused. The series tries to mix comedy and seriousness but it fails at both and the mixing of the two just makes it more pronounced. The last episode is a pointless fan-service episode and the relationship developments are just grody.

The characters are the same one-dimensional cliches that pop up in every poorly written harem anime. The clingy jealous girl, the quiet but kind girl, the tsundere girl, and the girl who gets pulled into the situation through an absurd plot contrivance that makes her feel like she has no choice but to pursue the main character and, of course, the completely unremarkable and utterly boring protagonist who can't make up his bloody mind. It doesn't help that all of the characters are idiots. We're told that Haruna is a genius, but she acts like a complete and utter twit so it's as much of an informed characteristic as the marksmanship skills of Imperial Stormtroopers.

The art is mediocre. It could be better if not for the strange art decisions at some points and the over-reliance on fan-service. Yeah, there's a massive amount of fan-service. Since it's a harem anime, this should come as no surprise.

The voice acting is pretty dull. The only actor who seems to be putting in any effort is Nomizu Iori, the rest of the main cast sound like they're bored most of the time. And she exaggerates to an absurd degree. If I wasn't familiar with the cast from other series I might suspect that they just made bad casting calls, but I've heard all of the main cast and most of the secondary cast in roles where they gave much better performances These aren't incompetent actors, this is incompetent directing. The music is the best part of the series. It's actually pretty good. It's got a lot of energy and the performances are well done.

The yuri factor is a 3/10. Seraphim and Haruna have some moments, and there's one moment with Haruna and Eu. But they never go anywhere and the series is quick to dismiss them.

My final rating for Kore wa zombie desu ka is a 1.5/10. It's not one of the absolute worst anime I've seen, but it comes pretty close. The story and humour are rubbish and the characters are completely unsympathetic with no redeeming qualities. The only thing worthwhile is the music and you don't have to watch the mind-numbingly stupid series to hear it.

I went into this expecting a comedy, and it was pretty good to start. The guy becoming a magical girl was funny, and the excessive fanservice was even forgiveable. The characters were pretty stereotypical harem tropes, though, and it both devolved into a harem anime and dropped in overall quality about halfway through. Of course the plot was nonsense, but what really pissed me off is that even with all its ridiculousness, it tried to take itself seriously.

If you're going to make a series with a magical girl zombie boy and a vampire ninja as main characters, here's a tip: don't try to take yourself ... seriously. It makes it stop being funny, but it sure doesn't make it moving or cool. Some plot developments seriously come out of nowhere, are never explained, and are obviously meant to seem cool or moving, but really just come across as annoying and wannabe edgy.

Don't waste your time on this one.

I'm sorry to anyone who likes this show, this review of is this a Zombie? is certainly not directed to fans of the show, but Is this a Zombie might just be the worst anime I've ever watched in quite a while. But this is just my opinion, and I hope anyone who likes the show does not take my opinion on this anime too seriously.

First of all, I think this anime actually had a good premise at the beginning. I mean, after the silly first episode where we are given the background for our main hero, a zombie cross dressing magical boy, we are ... than introduced to a Ninja Vampire Girl, and this Ninja Vampire Girl wants to fight our Zombie Cross Dressing Magical Boy. And they do!
At first I thought this would kind of be like a Weird Super Human fighting tournament where these weird characters fight each other and something about that is actually really original and creative. We see this Zombie Magical Boy use his Zombie state to gain an advantage in the fight such as severing his arm and using it as a projectile. It's things like this that show the shows true potential and really makes me wish it was better than it actually was.
And after that fight the show completely drops it's initial concept for a murder mystery that is really weak and ends like it was some kind of bad memory and than the final episodes are really bad. It's some kind of concert and there are some bad singing. I think the voice actors had some fun but I really don't think there was a lot fun left for the viewers.
I think Is this a Zombie was just not sure what it wanted to be, so at the end it copped out and did whatever it wanted.
I'm not sure what a lot of people see in this anime but for me it was a good concept gone sour. If you like this anime, I'm sure it was probably a lot of fun for you, but for me I'm sorry but I didn't like this anime. I liked the first few episodes but after that it gone down, down, down till I gave it a thumbs down.

If you like fan service and basic surface level comedy this is the show for you. As far as everything else goes this show falls short. Music and art are average, story is poor and doesn't hold up to even basic levels of scrutiny, and there are two likable characters in the whole show. The rest of the main cast is very very very cliche and even their cliches are poorly executed. The supporting cast are even worse and more annoying. For example, and slight spoilers ahead if youre planning on watching the show, the MC beats a bad guy whos killed 11 people 1 ... guardian of the underworld the magical girl teacher comes to pick the baddie up. She then says good thing you didnt kill the baddie because then i would have killed you; THEN threatens him for saying she needs to try harder so her students dont go on serial killing sprees. As a punishment Mrs teacher wanted to give her extra lessons is all.... so the hero that almost died is threatened with death while the serial killer gets extra school work? Every single story thread goes along these lines, all nonsense just to make the MC suffer regardless of if it makes any sense.

This is the second worst anime I have seen to this day.

What do I say about this? None of the characters have any personality and all of the writing relies on slapstick humor. The animation is under-par, so none of the comedic slapstick gets across the way that it should. Our main character is supposed to be a zombie, however does not resemble one, with the exception has limps are detachable and re-attachable.

I have to admit that I watch the dub of this anime, mostly because I was looking for something I could watch sideways in bed without having to read subtitles. The english ... voice acting was so bad. This is the worst voice acting I have ever heard. The actors sound like they were hired at random off the street without ever having seen an animation.

The only reason this gets an overall score of 3 rather than 2 or even a 1 is because of the genuine creativity derived from the source material. It seems like a pretty interesting attempt at lampooning other anime. This is an obvious spoof, and some of the content here would have been interesting with better execution.

THIS IS A SPOOF ANIME THAT ACTUALLY MANAGES TO BE WORSE THAN ANY OF THE CONCEPTS IT TRIES TO DECONSTRUCT! THE ONLY JOKE HERE IS THE FACT THIS SHOW WAS ALLOWED TO AIR!

Well this is tagged with comedy i suppose somebody must enjoy it given the rating, but it wasn't for me.

"You're a cross dressing filthy maggot rotting in a pile of garbage
---Seraphim"

Cue the laugh track

"Ayuma don't get any cuter than that"
--Haruna

... Cue the laugh track

It's the kind of thing that's funny the first few times but gets wearing really quickly. The same With Ayuma wearing the dress. It's funny the first time (well not really seeing as a blind man could tell it was going to happen from a mile away) maybe, but like any joke you can't run it into the ground and still have it be funny. Or to borrow from Seraphim

"Each time I see you like that a little part of my soul dies"

By the time I hit the fifth episode, I was seriously wondering why I was watching and trying to see if maybe I could stream the Milton Berle show. If I was going to watch a show with a guy in a dress at least Uncle Milty knew how to get a laugh out of it.

"Usually when I see someone getting beat up, I think it's funny"
---Haruna

When the three stooges pull it off it's comedy gold, when it's Toby Hooper, its something else entirely, give you a guess where this one comes off.

"That's it I have to go before I lose any more brain cells"
--- Seraphim

That's how I feel about the rest of the anime. The straight story/ action story just feels like it comes from depressed chunnibyos who have seen a bit too much Toradora. Think the battle parody's from date a live , but even less funny.

So, do yourself and take Seraphim's advice "Leave before you lose any more brain cells"

If you’re masochist who fantasizes about an underage harem of supernatural girls abusing you, then this anime will appeal to you. That’s not a judgement against people who enjoy that stuff, I just want potential viewers to know what they’re getting when they watch this.

I found the show a lot less interesting than its synopsis made it sound, and dropped it after 5 episodes. Lots of voyeuristic camera shots of the female characters, whether they are are actually doing something sexy like bathing or just starting a convo with the male lead, you will probably see a close up pan of their bodies starting ... with the breasts. Much of the show focuses on the fantasy of domestic life with these girls, who are either indifferent to the main character or actively abusive.

The upshot is the show contains some reasonably interesting and well-animated fight scenes with monsters. Occasionally the jokes would have me smiling, particularly the male lead who I appreciate taking everything in stride when his world constantly gets wrecked by the girls of his supernatural harem. This makes him a surprisingly likable male lead for a harem show where the main character is usually a bland stand-in for who creators imagine is their target audience. Lastly, the design for Haruna is cute, though not particularly original, (basically Card Captor Sakura with a chainsaw.) The mystery of the murderer kept me through 5 episodes, but there are way better shows out there that I could be watching.

Kore wa purottodesu ka?

Interesting premise, poor execution. And by "poor execution," I mean that they attempted to lop its head off with a very dull axe, and had to take multiple agonizing swings in order to finish the job. Then, being a zombie, the plot got up and continued wandering aimlessly anyways.

The BBEG has a tragic back story filled with betrayal and disillusionment... But we have to infer this from circumstances, because the show doesn't bring it up in spite of this being the keystone of the entire plot. We don't explain what happened to bring him to such a ... point of desperation, or what kind of time frame this took. We don't divulge the origin of his extraordinary powers which are unrelated to what little we know of his background. We don't get into the rationale for persistently denying his ethically reasonable request, even when the lives of friends and, indeed, an entire city (which may or may not have a population of over twelve people) are at stake. We do, however, specify that he likes penguins, because that's very relevant. Because it explains why he looks at penguins. *sigh*

The trite yet severely overstated running gags are irritatingly tired before they even become running gags. About half of the characters are genius imbeciles of implausible power, and pretty much all of the characters are self-caricatures. Dialogue is mostly pretty predictable, except for when a character goes off the rails for the purpose of ham-fisted exposition. The plot needlessly writes itself into a corner multiple times, then escapes either by ignoring the situation, throwing continuity out the window, and/or the liberal application of Deus Ex-Sensei. There appear to actually be multiple plot lines (and pointless red herrings), but they're all wadded messily together into a lumpy screenplay play-doh snake because 'all weird things are directly connected, and writing is hard'. I don't believe that the writer(s) had any real understanding of plot structure, or at the very least they lacked the competence to meaningfully fill that structure.

I think I can summarize the nature of this whole mess with one teensy-weensy spoiler: vampire ninja maid string ensemble ghost busters. If that sounds like word salad to you, then imagine it as an actual scene—a scene included exclusively to wedge a central character into the plot climax without actually involving them in it. In fact, that's basically a synopsis of the entire plot right there, and the list of characters it applies to includes the protagonist. All of the frenetic conflict is just filler surrounding a single dramatic-ish character interaction—there is little actual material in this season which could not have been more effectively covered in one non-violent OVA.

...Speaking of which, I'll murder the OVA in my next review.

There was one moment of genuine dark drama. I don't mean "manically grinning vampire anti-hero" edgelord darkness—I mean a gruelling scene which demonstrates a character's extraordinary burden of power and associated self-loathing. Sadly, the writer(s) thought that the dramatically necessary end of that scene should be sacrificed in order to set a logically inconsistent (and immediately dropped) limitation on that power, and in order to make the utterly nonsensical introduction of the BBEG. I guess the tragic tone would have put a bit of a damper on all the tedious running gags.

Did I enjoy it? Well... sort of? At this point I feel like the show somehow hacked my brain. It's objectively mediocre to sub-mediocre, and what stands out about it is all of the flinching and cringing it inspired... but I watched it, and I was entertained, and I don't understand why. I guess that's the bottom line. It's watchable, but it isn't good.

I will be completely honest, I have no idea why I finished watching this garbage.

Whatever plot that exists is extremely forgettable, the characters are extraordinarily one-dimensional and stereotypical, the humor is exaggerated and consists primarily of bad sex jokes, there are an innumerable amount of plot holes, and many of the episodes are just "there;" they don't contribute at all to the main story. Even the art is poo poo butt mouth trash garbage; it is overly simplistic in a bad way and the characters have no distinguishable features about them. If you changed their hair styles and clothes you wouldn't be able to tell ... the difference between them

However, all of this is overshadowed by the overarching bad concept behind the anime. Even the name is bad. "Is this a zombie?" No. It is not. You are just jumping on the early 2010s zombie trend to sell your butt dookie foot fungus anime (excuse the language).

Some would argue that at least the anime is funny and wacky and that is its redeeming trait. Well, I said earlier that the jokes were 90% sex jokes, right? The humor is the most immature baby humor I have ever seen, and not in a good way. The whole show is absolute insufferable.

Thank you. Do not watch this sh*t.