Two months have passed since the world was overrun by zombies, and high schooler and aspiring idol Maiko Inui finds refuge in Fujimi All Girls' High School, where the surviving students reside. When hordes of shambling corpses mercilessly attack the girls, how will Maiko and her friends fight back?! Horror meets harmony in this world where heroes don't come in capes― they wear sailor school uniforms!

Sailor Zombie has a story by Isshin Inudo and art by Jiji & Pinch. English translation is done by Minna Lin and lettering by Katie Blakeslee. Published by Yen Press (May 19, 2026). Rated OT.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

Zombie stories fascinate me in a mythographical way. They are as much about how society scapegoats and others people as they are action stories with a plucky band of survivors. And they are about systemic failures of policy as much as they are about personal politics and who separates us and who unites us.

In Sailor Zombie, we get all these features, along with a very personal tale of communication and perseverance, manipulation and human weakness. And of course, a very lot of killing zombies.

I'm not a zombie story fan, as such, so the killing zombies part of any zombie story is only technically of interest to me. Here Jiji & Pinch have created zombies that fill a number of roles – walking contagion, the embodiment of our fears and a counterpoint to real-world horrors of life without agency and, of course, death.

Everything here revolves around Maiko Inui and it's no surprise that she is at the center of everything. Whether the why holds up, will be up to you. I found it acceptable, not groundbreaking. The other thing that cemented this at 4 stars for me was the different, but equally weak resolution of two key plot points. They were all right, but opportunities were missed that could have made at least one, fantastic. I also found the relationship between one of the students and a teacher that they kept confined in the school to be weird and fetishy. It wasn't out of the scope of the rest of the story, but the reason for keeping him around felt forced and just generally “ugh.”

It really comes down to whether you are reading a zombie story for the story or for the killing zombies. If the latter, this book will definitely scratch that itch and has some interesting, if not entirely realized, ideas.