Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Zombie Land Saga
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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People on Reddit have started to point out scenes from previous episodes where Lily is reading a magazine about the kind of heavy equipment her father uses at work. I love it when animators add little touches like that explicitly for the benefit of people who watch the show more than once.
Speaking of Reddit, this episode is currently rated over 9.5 / 10.0 on r/anime, and from what I understand, that's pretty good for that community? Based on the discussions I've been seeing on social media about this episode, I'm getting the feeling that there were a lot of tiny moments in this episode that, taken in aggregate, made it virtually impossible for Japanese audiences to not pick up on what was going on here. Unfortunately, relying on these little clues has its disadvantages when your show has an international audience who don't (for example) know that, being a biker chick, Saki has probably encountered more than her fair share of tough guys named Masao. Edit: I found a really interesting possible explanation for why Lily removes one of the four stars from her hair at the end of the episode: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZombielandSaga/comments/a03aq1/basically_every_lily_detail_that_you_might_have/ |
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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Anyway, the slapstick nature of her death did seem jarring to me, but the later flashback does suggest that puberty wasn't the only source of stress in Lily's life. There was apparently speculation prior to this episode that the reason for her death would have been some sort of congenital heart condition, which would have probably made for a good explanation of why exactly the puberty shock caused instant death.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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Back in 2016, StonewallJapan put out an excellent English-language guide that covered HRT in Japan: https://stonewalljapan.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/transguide2016.pdf |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15457 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Since I don't think it has been made clear enough, although it probably would anyway, I will put my hand in to bring it to those not aware why the word "trap" is not allowed here. "Trap" is an incredibly offensive term, that I think has become normalized by otaku culture without thinking what it may imply. The term makes it sound like the born male character with the feminine appearance, is trying to fool or trap straight men. It is a sick caricature that trans people have to face in their normal lives, like they are some preying thing, and it is unfortunate that trans people in real life have been killed by such transphobic people that see them as some monster.
In most cases, being trans is not some choice, it is a biological condition where the gender of their brain, does not match the sex of their body. There have been long discussions over whether the core of a person should be their body, or their mind and brain, and I am quite sure we are at a level of society, where the mind is more important for who you are. And people with gender dysphoria, or are trans, the two can be used interchangeably and not just in transitioning, should be treated with support being able to be comfortable with you they are. Anime has not always been totally correct, I would say often having the character dress as the other gender, and never saying if the character actually identifies as the gender, in often cases never even giving that character the choice. Blend S was one anime that really had me looking if it would let itself land on one side, and kind of felt like a continual piece of evidence that anime does not get it. Lily though, everything seemed to point that she identifies as female, and made specific effort to leave behind her masculine name and take on her feminine one. Why it works so well with her is that everything about her so far has been feminine, she is not pretending, and hiding some other really boyish side. Finding out what might be between her legs, doesn't change who she is, she is every part of the girls group as she was before, and that is cool. |
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steelmirror
 Posts: 342 |
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Yeah, it's made me more glad than ever that I come here to read these streaming reviews, and even check out the comments sections for the shows each season that I love the most (or sometimes, the shows that I most love to hate). As someone without many fellow otaku in my regular life with whom I can gush about my nerdy interests, it's really a lot of fun to come to ANN and bask in a little bit of shared enthusiasm about zombie girl singing cartoons (no seriously how did that happen??), and apparently even learn some great things I totally never would have picked up on otherwise! It's also occured to me that this is exactly the point at which most shows (and I assume this applies to many idol shows as well) would be putting out some disposable filler episodes, with characters faffing about in some low to no-stakes forgettable adventure that lets the show creators economize their animation budget as well as the shits they have to give for the show in general. And yet this ep was funny, touching, sincere, goofy, and even conversation-provoking, even though it focused on a character that I found completely disposable as recently as last week. They even actually animated the song! I agree with Steve that the song itself was pretty "meh", but the fact that they got rid of the janky CGI to show that they could was a sort of low key punchline in itself. |
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Oggers
 Posts: 359 Location: Ontario, Canada |
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This recent episode was a highlight in a lot of ways. It definitely helped to flesh Lily out more as a character, and it was a pleasant surprise to see how well it handled the fact that she's trans compared to most anime (emphasis on "compared to most anime", since I'm not trans myself so I don't feel I really have a say on how well it was handled overall). Plus, Lily's past with her father and her wanting to reach out to him again despite being unable to reveal who she really is made me tear up a little. Definitely didn't expect a zombie idol anime to get that reaction out of me.
I also agree that the song they performed was pretty rough, but then again, that could have been intentional. Idols don't usually write their own songs, after all. But what was important was the intention behind the song, and that certainly succeeded. |
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Joshua Zarate
Posts: 2061 |
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Very sweet and touching episode that tugged at my heart strings. Now that the next episode looks like it will focus on Saki, I’m hoping that we will also get something for Yugiri as she seems interesting to me. Same with the LEGENDARY YAMADA TAE.
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steelmirror
Posts: 342 |
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Romero's focus episode will have to be a BD release OVA. Kotaro doesn't need any special time in the spotlight because he's already stolen it in literally every scene he's ever appeared in. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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My current wild speculation is that Kotoro knew Tae back when she was alive - she's Patient Zero / "Zombie 0" after all, which might imply that she was the first person Kotoro brought back, or maybe even the motivation behind him bringing all of them back - and that Romero was Tae's dog or something. |
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steelmirror
Posts: 342 |
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Whatever happens, it's already hilarious that I've given the zombie idol show this much thought. |
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Wyvern
 Posts: 1555 |
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It's really simple: The term being debated here is one that implies that trans people are trying to trick cis men by "pretending" to be a certain gender, which is an attitude which has gotten actual human beings murdered in the all-too-common scenario where a cis person discovers someone is trans, feel they were "tricked," and becomes violent.
So yes, fighting against that dangerous attitude is more important than someone getting to say a particular word on an anime forum. Sorry. |
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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Rachel Thorn, a professional manga translator, tried to find one and couldn't. If you're thinking of 男の娘, that term has no implications of entrapment or deception in the original, and English-speaking fans translating it as "trap" are adding offensive implications that were never there.
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Merida
 Posts: 1945 |
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Anyhow, great episode! I loved how, after the initial surprise, nobody in the show questioned Lilys gender (or felt the need to put a label on it), especially Kotaro's reaction was pretty awesome and hilarious. And as funny as that death scene was, i think it was highly implied that she either had a pre-existing condition and/or was seriously over-worked.
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1545 |
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I'm usually not very perceptive when it comes to subtle hints but in the case of Lily tgey were just half a step away from being explicit.
-Leg and facial hair are kind of weird point's for a girl's puberty to start showing. It will eventually happen but yeah. I hadn't caught on yet. -Then comes the full name with Saki laughing at how manly it is. -And then it was directly compared with her dad's also very manly name to further drive the point home. -After that comes the "junk down there" which was pretty darn explicit in English and elicited an embarrassed reactiom from the demure Junko. -That being part of a minispeech by Saki about who and what Lily REALLY is, which would be unnecesary if there was nothing beyond Lily disliking her old name. Bonus: Yugiri being shocked at the truth, right after a commentary about how cute Lily is. You don't need muck knowledge of Japanese since all the relevant information was there in the English text (and Junko's blush).
In a prior scene you could she her wake up on the sofa with extreme eyebags.[/i] |
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Mad_Scientist
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 3011 |
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It's Thanksgiving weekend, I suspect a lot of the mods/staff are busy doing stuff with family/etc. I think (or at least hope) that this thread will have a cleanup before too long, to at least remove the slurs. Like yeah, that would be nice. Now, changing topic slightly, several people have mentioned in this thread that they didn't realize Lily was trans initially after watching the episode. And admittedly I am myself a trans woman, so perhaps I'm just more in tune with some things, but I find this a bit surprising. Yuvelir already mentioned a lot of what I would say. I get that many of the elements would, if completely isolated, not necessarily mean someone is trans, but all of them together is pretty telling. Like just consider the hair thing. It wasn't just that Lily grew facial hair, it was that she was growing both facial hair and heavy leg hair, was horrified by this, didn't want to grow up because of this which meant there seemed to be an assumption that her growing super hairy was gonna automatically happen as she grew up (which would be an odd assumption if she was cis), talked about how she didn't want to grow to look like her father (again, a bit of an odd thing if she was cis because while plenty of cis women do resemble their father in some ways, Lily did NOT), and literally died because growing facial hair disturbed her so much. Like, that's a lot. Just by itself, to me at least, that's basically screaming "she's trans." And so then to ADD to that the fact that she had an old name that was a guys name... And that Sakura when saying that Lily used to be Masao used "Masao-kun", when kun is not generally a honorific used for girls... And that Saki commented that it didn't matter what sort of "junk" Lily had... Well, I guess it goes to show how different people's understanding of stuff can be, and how if you're unfamiliar with a topic you can miss super obvious clues. I'd like to think this whole thing would just be a good learning experience for folks to come to a greater understanding of trans folk and the issues we face, but uh, the content of this thread is not exactly making me optimistic about that. On a more positive note, I really, really liked this episode. There were some issues (if/when the thread is cleaned I may decide to elaborate further) about the way Lily being trans was handled, but it was overall pretty darn good. And I'm not used to that. Trans people aren't depicted all that well all that often in most media, anime or otherwise. At the start of this season, if you were to ask me which anime I thought would have an overall sensitive and well done depiction of a trans girl, I probably would not have guessed that it would be the zombie idol comedy. It goes to show how even 8 episodes in, Zombie Land Saga continues to pleasantly surprise me. And that's partly why it's my anime of the season for me so far. |
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