English Dub Review: Zombie Land Saga Revenge “All It Takes Is for You to Be There SAGA”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The storm has struck and Saga is not doing super splendidly. Flooding is taking the area by force and everyone is evacuating to safety. When the girls of Franchouchou learn that their home has been swamped, they retreat to the nearest shelter, where they’re taken in and given a place to stay during the perilous times.

Things are going well, with the girls helping out around the house and entertaining the evacuees — until the girls are forced to perform without makeup due to Kotaro’s absence. They wind up revealing their true selves to the small crowd of onlookers, but thankfully this crowd is on their side and they end up putting on a great show despite that mishap.

Our Take:

I feels like Zombie Land Saga is finally coming to a head, with many of the events and plot lines laid out earlier in the season starting to come to fruition now. I mean, it is the penultimate episode, so it makes sense, but I was still a little surprised at the way All It Takes Is for You to Be There SAGA somehow manages to feel like a neat little finale in a way after starting out rather badly.

In the beginning of this week’s episode, the girls arrive home to find it flooded. It’s a major event, both for the audience and for the girls of Franchouchou, but it feels very rushed. That’s a theme throughout most of this episode. Everything seems like it should be a huge deal: the house destroyed, Kotaro missing, and potentially all of Saga ending. And yet it just feels like another episode for the most part, with the girls acting like their usual cheery selves and helping out around the shelter. I guess that could be a testament to how comfortable they feel in their new lives, but I wanted to feel a little more distress in order to buy into the real stakes of the situation.

By the end of the episode, I was starting to feel the proper emotional drama, mostly thanks to the girls’ performance for the group of kids and adults at the shelter. Something that they do nearly everyday in normal conditions takes on a newfound importance when disaster has struck, and it is neat to see their mini concert allowing the kids to take their minds off their troubles, if only for a little while.

The conflict comes to a head when the girls masks fall apart and their true faces are revealed to the crowd. I don’t think this is the first time that one or another of the girls have been seen without makeup, but this is definitely the first time that all of them have been unveiled together, and in front of such a large number of people’s eyes. It’s a potentially huge moment for the show, that viewers have been anticipating in one way or another ever since season one. And I think the way the series handled it was actually really sweet. Rather than running in fear or gawking in amazement, the kids just say that since zombies are scary, and Franchouchou is not scary, they can’t be zombies. It’s a sweetly innocent way of looking at things, and it’s exactly what the girls needed to hear at this point in time when so many things are at stake.

The one guy who does know what’s at stake is stuck in the flooding, along with Okoba the reporter. Last week’s episode saw Okoba confronting Kotaro about the undeadness of Franchouchou in a surprising way. Rather than attack in a fear-mongering sort of way, he brought up the point that it was rather immoral of Kotaro to bring these girls back from the dead and force them into an idol group with nary a thought. When put like that, it is a little alarming, and I was looking forward to seeing how Kotaro justified his actions.

Unfortunately, this is all kind of swept to the side when he returns and Sakura gets a moment alone with him. Rather than apologizing or explaining himself, Kotaro just reaffirms his commitment to the group and Sakura thanks him for giving her the chance to become a part of something so cool. I didn’t really expect this show to go into something deep like this, but it would’ve been cool to touch on it at least a little more.

As it is, the girls are stronger than ever in their resolve and Kotaro is back in full force. There are only 16 days until their big show, and everyone is determined to put on their best performance ever — even in the midst of such weird conditions. (Are we going to explore more about the weird curse behind this? With only one episode left, it doesn’t really seem like it.) Singing might not sound super important on its own, but in this situation, a Franchouchou concert may be the only thing that can save Saga and set things right.