Conclusion: Kore wa Zombie desu ka? Of the Dead

Hiatus breaker!

PETA would like to have a talk with you.

So after the glorious silliness of Kore wa Zombie desu ka?, where we had fantasies with Eu, killed demonic animals with kicks and ramen, and turned evil villains into penguins after a Harrison Ford-style fistfight, of course people would want a second season. And well, we got it.

A second season, that is.

This fan gets more screen time than Orito and Tomonori combined, I swear.

Kore wa Zombie 2 is a mixed bag. What purpose does Zombie ultimately serve? The answer to that, despite all of the fun settings we've had so far (all of them which sound like the writer played a few too many games of Munchkin), is fanservice.

It's a harem/rom-com series, guys. The fantasy edge mainly gives the writer a looser rein on character personalities and interactions under the clever excuse of, "vampire ninjas are just like that". I'm sure I didn't have to say what I just said, but c'mon, cut me some slack here - I need the emphasis.

But why am I doing this? Because it's becoming increasingly harder to rate something on the "creative" scale any more, especially in the slice-of-life genres (or anything that's not horror/fantasy/action-adventure). And the problem isn't just with the fact that the older series cover everything - there's a problem with studios and TV stations too. It's an "inside-the-box" mindset that must be removed.

Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's evaluate the shit out of this series.

Kore wa Zombie 2: where anime and Korean dramas cross over

The soundtrack isn't anything special. Somebody could have told me that the OP (***Passionato by Iori Nomizu) was an extended remix of the OP for the first season and it coulda fooled me. The ED (I'm a Beginner at Love (T_T) by Rie Yamaguchi) is nice, but again, nothing special. I could be biased of course, because the fanservice that they've integrated into the ED is pretty nice. Hurrdurr giving in to temptation

Tell me to my face that you did not go through two seasons just to see Sera like this.

Graphics are nice - they're actually a bit shinier/glossier than before, but just like the first season, I like how the adaptation turned out in this department. I've always had a thing for the gradient-shaded eyes in Zombie and the second season did not disappoint. Other than that, not much else to say.

Plot-wise...

Let's just say that the fanservice/harem/rom-com/slice-of-life series that are coming out now are just that - fanservice. However, one cannot say that it is a bad series absolutely. Fortunately or unfortunately, Zombie 2 is a very good series - for doing what it's supposed to do very, very well. Actually, let me save that talk for later.

Taking a leaf from just about every sequel of rom-com/harems ever, the second season focuses more heavily on developing the supporting cast to seemingly give them an "equal" chance at the table...And by table I mean Ayumu's sexy zombie body. Again, the graphics help with this, but the nice spread of personalities was agood factor in making the harem pleasant for me to watch. The fantasy genre "inclusion" helped with a few cast development devices (e.g.: demonic wedding ring of demons), but it mainly helped to numb the suspension of disbelief when crazy-ass personality interactions happened (a certain butt-loving comes to mind...) Bringing back in characters (such as that crazy girl that Ayumu chainsaw'd Heavy Rain-style) also helped widen the platter.

However, the episodic nature of Zombie season 2 proves to be its downfall. Unlike the focused "take down the King of the Night" ending that was seen in Zombie 1, much of Zombie 2 is simply rom-com. And if it stayed like that I would have been fine. I enjoyed the fleshing out of Tomonori/Sarasvati/Kyoko a lot, and the heavier inclusion of "normal girl" Taeko wasn't too bad either. So what's the issue?

Nono, that's not the issue I was talking about...I think

It's just that Zombie wants an arc. It wants for plot, so so badly. Zombie cannot go for the whole "main protagonist aiming for the girl, everything else is side story" path just like Baka to Test has done, since Ayumu's love and desire to strike up a relationship for the main heroine (Eu) has not been overtly declared. So what's next? A harem in the midst of adventure (it is fantasy, after all). What's the driving point of this fantasy series? Eu and her "fall" to Earth instead of ruler of the Underworld. Except...we don't know anything about her except what's already been used. We know she's a baller magician. We know she created two servants in her entire life. What else is there? Nothing.

Obviously, the author/studio became aptly aware of this and pulled out from their asses a quick solution - the most powerful fighters/rivals in Heaven Virie and Hell the Underworld. Great! That'll open up a plot, since these rivals will provide tension. 

Too bad all they did was provide us with information on the two fighters instead of their interactions with Eu and her world. Now we've got two more characters that are in the fray, but we still haven't come really any fucking closer to opening up the main plot - that of Eu's backstory. Yay for expanding harems! Er, casts. After this, the studio had 1 or 2 episodes left and nothing to really do to hint at a major plot. Knowing this, the last episode of Zombie 2 ended up being a quick cop-out and the standard "shake the trust between the main hero/heroine" into fight and conciliation finish. Thanks for the fanservice, Zombie, but let's just...keep it that way.

Derp for the derp queen
Herp for the herp throne

One last thing I'd like to add is that I heavily disapproved of the "cutting it after 10 episodes to ready the next season/movie/etc." 12-episode seasons are already short enough, and the ending to Zombie 2 probably wasn't going to be as climactic as the first season of Zombie was due to its more episodic nature, but this sudden trend of having 11/10 episode endings to end quickly to prep for the next season is very disappointing. A studio should not have to have a week hiatus which cuts off plot time for a series just to work on another series. That hurts the series, the reputation of the studio, and really - how much "improvement" can you put in a series within a week? If it's an adaptation, the only thing you can do is shift around plot points in the season a bit more. If it's an original and you need that week to prepare additional stuff besides production values, it's probably a shittily-done job that I would not appreciate watching. 

Again, if the series that gave up early was something dumb like Kuromajou-san ga Touru! or Shirokuma Cafe (or Upotte!, the series that actually did stop after 10 eps - that horrendous botched fail of an ending will be discussed later), I would not be complaining so hard. But for a definitely popular, "headline" series to send a message to other studio projects about how it's ok for studios to cut corners on series and instead feed people bite-sized chunks of anime/manga/etc. ....It's highly worrying and I cannot stand to watch this inevitable stagnation and backlash happen. I will definitely, definitely discuss this more later (and the parallels between this and DLCs).

Recommendation: Watch this series if you were a fan of the first season. It's better than the second season. If you come to me bitching and saying how I lied because its plot was so much worse than the first season and how the second season is just a compilation of fanservice episodes, you have completely missed my point and furthermore the point of this series. Sorry.

This just in: Kore wa Zombie 2 seems to have a lack of plot