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Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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Watch | 8 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 | Ggultra2764 | [series:2417#1552] |
Last updated Friday, July 05 2013. Created Friday, July 05 2013. |
And to think I got suckered into watching this thanks to the zombie/ cross-dressing magical girl shtick applied with Ayumu. While the first episode seemed promising at first glance, Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka quickly devolved into yet another unwanted harem anime with Ayumu being resident punching bag/ doormat for two of the girls in his household and the girls having differing degrees of romantic interest in him and archetypal personalities despite their supernatural origins. The series does get some plot development with Eucliwood's character that is somewhat engaging in that the main baddie of this series has some past ties to her. But this focus is limited to several episodes as anything in-between features more additions to Ayumu's harem or the guy putting up with their antics. And while the series does feature a good amount of fan service with panty shots, skimpy attires, bath scenes and some suggestive moments, it is fortunately not of the gross-out variety. But beyond some comedic bits with Ayumu's "situation" being a zombie and magical girl and focus on Eucliwood, the series is mostly subpar thanks to trying to be yet another unwanted harem anime when not focusing on the mentioned elements. Unless you're a big fan of harem titles, you aren't missing out on much new here.
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Unevaluated | Stretch | [series:2417#628] | ||||||
Whenever you see that my rating of a show has been left as 'Unevaluated', that means one of two things: If it's a recent series I'm probably still watching it. If it's at least two seasons old, it almost certainly means that I abandoned the series partway through after concluding that it wasn't worth the time needed to watch it. Such was Kore wa Zombie. The funny thing is, the impression which episode one left with me was that This one looked like a winner! Not a brilliant, award-winning winner, but a winner nevertheless, in the sense of being fun to watch. The Winter series which I had watched up to this point had been pretty mediocre, but Zombie seemed to have both the usual sex and comic violence, plus a touch of genuine wit to go along. Going in, I had no idea whether this would be a serious horror show or a comedy; the early signs pointed in the former direction, but then it yanks the carpet out from under us and takes off the other way. The oddball harem Ayumu is accumulating reminds me of Kaibutsu Oujo, with a mix of supernatural specialists. Actually, none of the girls show any romantic interest in him at all (so far), which might be a good sign. I concluded that this would not be a brilliant show, but it should be a fun one. But just because a show starts out well is no guarantee that it will be able to maintain the quality. Episode four is alarming, in two ways. First of all, Eu showing some emotion was a good idea in principle, but it may just be being used to transform her into a more submissive harem member. She goes from totally dominating Aikawa to begging for his forgiveness in the blink of an eye. And secondly, I didn't like the serial murderer being revealed to be some sort of 'demon'--that seemed like a cop-out which swept away the intriguing element of mystery behind there being a presumably human murderer. Demons have no need for the slightest personality or motivation, after all, you can just write them off as 'evil'--which means a shallow storyline is likely. I kept watching, but this did not bode well for the future of this show. In episode five there is no sign of the change is Eu's personality, unless the fact that she didn't do Aikawa any physical harm counts. Everybody else beats the crap out of him, for comedy's sake, but I find that more disturbing than humorous. Vampire girl makes a habit of referring to him as 'a piece of shit'. It would be much easier to laugh if he had a bit more of a spine when it comes to dealing with the girls. The discovery of the serial killer's identity was semi-interesting, but this is basically a simple show with a good joke once in a while and OK fight scenes. All of a sudden, this show was looking pretty feeble, what with the stereotypical and unconvincing fight in episode six. New characters pop up and show off their 'awesome' powers, but they just bore and annoy me. This show works better as comedy than as serious action. During the fight the team members seemed to have developed a mutual respect and loyalty to one another, but afterwards everything is back to usual and Aikawa is a piece of shit again. The serial killer arc seems to be over, but it didn't end well and the signs are of more of the same ahead. Aikawa comments that "This world is full of secrets meant never to be disturbed". I wish the show had followed its own advice! And, before I know it, whatever appeal Kore wa Zombie once held for me has pretty much evaporated. Episode seven was more gross than funny. There was the usual inadvertant breast fondling scene--the same sorry 'gag' (I would use that word as a verb to describe my reaction) that every third-rate anime targetted at teenage boys uses. Why did this not surprise me? I feel no interest at all in the fourth harem member, 'Maelstrom', and come to think of it, haven't developed much in the others, either. I am apathetic about where the long-term plot might be going, too. Maybe I should abandon this series altogether; it has gotten to the point where watching episodes seems more like an unpleasant task which I would like to avoid than an enjoyable experience. After watching this episode, I said to myself 'Blah; that one pretty much killed it!' Last updated Friday, July 05 2013. Created Tuesday, January 11 2011. |
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