the last episode of Zom 100 ended in a cliffhanger, teasing an evil version of the main cast, even with a similar "100 things to do before i die" notebook. after a very long break, it recently came to drop its 3-episode finale, and it comfirmed my fears about the cliffhanger:
they made bad guys irredeemable scumbags.all except for one
spoiler alert?: i will only talk about the villains themselves and not the plot. this is kinda a slice of life so there isn't a lot to spoil anyways.
my problem
when i saw them being teased I was a little excited for the concept. The main cast are flawless extroverts who can solve every problem in the world, and we've seen plenty of normal people too. it would have been interesting to see a people who are far below normal, a corrupted version of ourselves that are too far gone to be saved, because i see a part of myself and other people i know in these villains.
but what did we get? one-dimensional, pure evil people.
- the twintails guy is just a piece of shit.
- the neglectful/abusive husband just straight up hates his wife at this point.
- the strict woman just thinks everyone is wrong.
the anime constantly makes an effort to make them stay evil at all time. as soon as a shred of humanity escapes from them, the anime uses it to make you hate them more
for example, the neglectful husband mentioned that during his wife's childbirth, he was entertaining clients against his will. this sounds like the start of a tragic story, but, that didn't happen? he talks like he never loved his wife in the first place, nor did he feel guilty about anything, nor did he try to fix the relationship in the first place, if there's one to begin with.
this entire arc felt like a massive missed opportunity
- the neglectful husband is like, 70% there. he just needs to feel guilty in order to be believable.
- i really really like the concept of the twintails guy - he got blamed and punished for being an asshole, yet he thinks everyone just hates him and blames it on his luck. in the actual execution however, he's such a comical piece of shit that he doesn't even feel human.
ngl i really like how the neglectful husband is handled in that one-time joke from bocchi the rock. though it's a very different case cause he looks like an angel in comparisn to Zom 100's
the exception
actually, there was one villain who was treated differently - the main villain, aka the social outcast guy. he's a special one time antagonist for this arc, so of course he needs a character arc.
i really appreciate this guy. this is what i expected from the story. i wish they have this level of care for everyone else.
but don't get me wrong, i still have some complaints. a lot of my issues still plague him.
the exception is no exception
firstly, him hating on Akira isn't believable at all. sure, his situation is bad, and i can see him blaming the world, but the execution made it feel like he just started hating Akira specifically for no reason. the final flashback should be shown earlier from his perspective, so that he'd at least have a history with Akira.
speaking of which, i'm really disappointed with the last flashback showing Akira being kind to that guy. it feels like it's done to completely absolve Akira of all his sins, so that you can't even blame him for not trying to help. i wish they'll just show Akira being confused and move on.
and how about this: imagine if Akira made fun of him and caused him to hold a grudge for years. that would not only make him more believable, it will also finally give one imperfection to Akira. it also turns the final confrontation into a bittersweet apology. i wish the story went that route.
apart from that, i have a hard time believing his villain arc. i was really excited for it because i can somewhat relate to someone who has given up on everything to truly live however they want, without being tied down by anything in the universe - not even morals; because they have nothing left in this world; it's a form of suicide, but instead of wasting it on killing yourself, you use the one shot you have in life to experience everything you can before dying spectacularly...
the anime fumbled it completely. it felt like he just turned evil because he's jelly of everyone. instead of a downwards spiral, it feels like he just jumped down because he's stupid.
i really do appreciate how they handled him, so i feel like i'm being too nickpicky and asking for too much here
other related problems
obnoxious lecturing
as each of the main cast confront their counterparts, they start doing the anime talk no jutsu thing. due to how obviously vile these villains are, the heroes' points are mostly just common sense. like, kindergarteners can point out how evil they are. if any of them are swapped they'll all say the same thing, if i was swapped there i would use the same points too.
so they ended up sounding very self-righteous, and thus, obnoxious.
the worst one is the scene where Kenichiro lectures the abusive husband to love his wife.
- he somehow magically knows a lot about the husband's life, which is probably done so that he has more talking points. in the end he comes off as making a lot of assumptions about a stranger's life.
- "treat her like she was the queen of the universe". i'm sorry for saying this, but this sounds like it's written by a stereotypical redditor. who wrote this?
- the husband being 😲 shocked after being confronted increased the cringe by tenfold. i take everything i said about nuance back, i would rather let this guy stay 100% evil all the way through now.
body shaming
this is a separate issue, but it's related to how the story dehumanizes people.
the anime often uses body shaming by making bad people ugly, fat, grotesque, and disgusting. in contrast, the good people are always beautiful, handsome, charming and funny. obvious observation: none of these traits make you a good or bad person. to be fair, that level of body shaming isn't used on all villains - 3 out of 4 villains here are only conventionally unattractive. though keep in mind that unattractive people are rare, so they all stick out like a sore thumb.
i don't expect most anime to have woke body positivity, i understand characters needs to be slim and pretty for a media to sell well. but most of them don't intentionally shit on ugly people. Zom 100 is, in essence, going out of its way to be worse than the status quo by associating bad people with ugly people.
i'm pretty sure the creepy guy with twintails isn't meant to be a transphobic joke, but it still irks me. tho i don't wanna give it too much flak since it's prolly a cultural thing.
everything related to the twintails guy's sexual assault
just yikes. what a way to joke about a sensitive topic. the author has crossed the line for this one.
i'm not comftable talking about a subject as sensitive as this so i'll ignore it here, but i do think this is a serious problem.
that kid is annoying
i understand why i love Anya so much now.
this is not related to anything. at all. i just wanted to put it out there.
the core problem
at some point i realized the core problem: the author is afraid to write nuance, for whatever reason.
- maybe it's afraid that the villain would have a point?
- maybe it's afraid that the viewer wouldn't hate the villains if they were redeemable (and also conventionally attractive)?
- maybe the villains has to be evil enough so the viewer doesn't feel bad about hating them, killing them, or punished in funny ways?
the things is, i have seen plenty of stories that had their cake and ate it too - characters that are undeniably AND believably AND sympathetically a piece of shitand hot. in the end, Zom 100 only managed to accomplish the "undeniably" part.
i do understand power fantasies, with fantasy villains that are there just to be hated. this story is a power fantasy about living your dreams, after all. but this is also a story about real life. they're writing comically evil people that resembles real flawed people, all while self-righteous main characters lecture them with common sense, then punish them in goofy ways for comedy. it just rubs me the wrong way.
why you might not think it's a problem
this is probably a case of "the authors' vision doesn't match what i expected".
because i am not the target audience for this anime. i am not a overworked japanese 9-to-5 salaryman. i don't understand japanese comedy acts. a lot of my personal issues are just subjective - the naked jokes, poop jokes, etc. if any of my problems were "fixed", the author's vision would be altered somewhat, and this is no exception.
after all, the story is meant to be a simple slice of life, with simple villains of society. the social outcast is just an exception since he's the arc's main villain. since characters can cause problems if not handled well, and not every scrub needs to be complex, it's just easier to make them pure evil people.
Though, unlike most of my complains, i do think this is a more substantial criticism than most. i mean, most of my complains are just "i don't find naked men funny", while i believe fixing this will substantially improve the story. the story is already willing to have a tragic character, so isn't it better to do that for everyone, despite the risks? and speaking of risks, why not just take them? Zom 100 feels wayy too safe right now, it needs something to spice it up - actual danger, grief, regret, pain, anything.
the part where i highlight media that i think did it better (even though i don't consume a lot of media)
as i was writing this, i kept being reminded of how Project Sekai handles 'bad people' in real life, especially transphobia.
none of Mizuki's classmates are bad people; everyone likes Mizuki enough to want to be friends with them. some are secretly a little judgmental, some just treat them differently from others, some did nothing wrong yet but Mizuki's rejecting them out of fear. in fact, i'm even willing to bet that a lot of players agreed with the classmates at first.
but the game immediately shows you Mizuki being hurt by their words.
this is what i want to see. You criticize people without villainizing them. You let them know their actions can hurt people, even if it's subtle, even if they might not mean harm.
it's also funny how jjk and frieren, while both established that curse spirits and demons are inherently evil, gave them more humanity and empathy than zom100 ever gave to living, breathing people
i did noticed it from the very beginning
the first episode still impresses me. i was promised so much from the story. but the issues were there from the very beginning.
the abusive boss and the kind lady weren't actual characters. practically nothing is explored about them - how does the kind lady actually feel about Akira? how does she feel being treated as a sex object? why is the boss so blind to what he's doing?
to be fair, i still think there's nothing wrong with that. the episode isn't long enough for it, and Akira isn't in a state to care about other people. but as the episodes go on, especially with the return of the abusive boss, it becomes increasingly clear that it's a recurring pattern.
conclusion
i'm sure some people would disagree that it's a problem, and some would like it more than i do, etc. but i think we can all agree that Zom 100 is not an "S tier anime", especially when compared to all the great anime that came out this year. it's baffling to me that this anime is making into people's top 5, let alone being anime of the year for two youtubers that i deeply respect.
its premise is really really great, which led to its popularity - i thoroughly enjoyed it too. but it is too afraid to try to do more.
the author should have listened to Sukuna's advice and burned everything into a cinder until they reach Saturu Gojo. smh.
