Zombie Land Saga is an anime television series produced by MAPPA, Avex Pictures and Cygames. The series aired in Japan between October and December 2018. A second season titled Zombie Land Saga Revenge has been announced. A manga adaptation began serialization on Cygames' Cycomi website in October 2018.
Plot
In the year 2008, high school student Sakura Minamoto is abruptly killed by a truck on the morning she plans to submit an idol application. Ten years later, Sakura, along with six "legendary" girls from various eras of Japan's history, are brought back as zombies by a man named Kotaro Tatsumi, who seeks to revitalize Saga Prefecture by putting together an all-zombie idol group known as Franchouchou.
announced the series, in collaboration with Avex Pictures, on July 5, 2018. The series is directed by Munehisa Sakai and written by Shigeru Murakoshi, with animation by studio MAPPA. The series' character designs are provided by Kasumi Fukagawa, Kazuo Ogura is the art director, Takashi Yanagida is serving as director of photography, Azusa Sasaki is the color designer, and Masahiro Goto is editing the series. Yasuharu Takanashi is composing the series' music, which is produced by Avex Pictures, while dugout is producing the sound. The opening and ending theme songs respectively are "Adabana Necromancy" and "Hikari e", both performed by Franchouchou. The 12-episode series aired between October 4 and December 20, 2018, and was broadcast on AT-X, Tokyo MX, Sun TV, BS11, Saga TV, and TVQ. The series was simulcast with Japanese audio and English subtitles by Crunchyroll and with English audio by Funimation. On July 27, 2019, it was announced that the series is getting renewed for a second season, titled Zombie Land Saga Revenge. The opening and ending themes were both released as singles paired with "FANTASTIC LOVERS" and "Jellyfish" on November 28, 2018, and they charted at #13 and #19 in the Oricon Singles Chart on December 10, while the opening theme single topped the Billboard Japan Download Songs chart on the same day.
Episodes
Reception
Steve Jones of Anime News Network described the revelation of Lily's gender identity as "the episode's biggest talking point", and described her death as "he most bizarre detail of past" and "com across like slapstick". Kate O'Neil of The Fandom Post gave the episode "Go Go Neverland SAGA" an A, stating "It’s so incredibly rare to see a transgender character in anime that isn’t being a stereotype or played to some horrible trope that I missed it. Even rarer to show a supportive, loving parent of a transgender child." The Daily Dot described Lily as "trans Twitter’s latest role model". During a May 2019 session of the UK Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights where executives from Facebook and Twitter faced accusations over the way they handled abuse and harassment of parliamentarians on social media, Scottish National PartyMember of ParliamentJoanna Cherry cited, among several abusive tweets that were not removed swiftly by Twitter, one involving Lily Hoshikawa. Zombie Land Saga won the 2019 Tokyo Anime Awards Festival award for Animation of the Year. On August 12, 2019, the special Natsu no Saga, a documentary on the anime, featured governor of Saga Yoshinori Yamaguchi cosplaying as major character Kotaro Tatsumi. Gadget Tsūshin listed "nice bird" and "Masao" in their 2019 anime buzzwords list.
Other media
A manga adaptation by Megumu Soramichi began serialization on Cygames' Cycomi website on October 8, 2018. A stage play based on the anime, Zombie Land Saga Stage de Do-n!, was set to be performed March 11 to 14, 2020, but was canceled due to the worsening COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.
