Undead Fish Float

It feels like it's been longer than 11 months since I reviewed volume 1 of Zom 100, but that's just how time works these days.

Volume 2 starts with Akira and his friend Kencho "camping" on the roof of his apartment building. Kencho's inspired by Akira's bucket list to pursue his true dream: becoming a stand-up comic. Akira, meanwhile, just wants a bigger flat-screen TV to play video games on. The trip to the commercial district ends with them trapped in an underground department store, but the presence of other people offers Akira the chance to cross another item off his list: wine and dine a flight attendant.

He's pretty bad at it, and I guess his lousy attempts at chit-chat or to liven up the party by snorting a bottle of tequila are meant to be funny. The rivers of tears and the mortified expressions Kotaro Takata gives him selling how aware he is of how badly this is going. I just felt bad for him, as one socially awkward person to another.

It's moot since everyone but he and Kencho end up dying. Akira does have a quiet talk with one of the girls about whether she'd made a mistake becoming a flight attendant, which turns into another discussion about childhood dreams. It's a good move by writer Haro Aso, at it makes Akira a bit more likeable, as he stops trying to make time with Yukari, or bitching about his own boss, and actually listens and tries to offer help in looking at the problem. Akira's easier to like when he's not written as so desperately horny.

The incident prompts Akira to recall his childhood dream, and that's the second half of the volume. Akira and Kencho visit an aquarium so he can borrow a shark suit to become a superhero (because the zombies won't be able to bite through something designed to protect against even large sharks.) This brings him in contact with Shizuka (the methodical, risk-conscious young woman from volume 1) again. Her cynicism temporarily deflates Akira (and Kencho's collateral damage), but Akira ultimately concludes that it shouldn't matter why he wants to save people. Shizuka remains convinced these guys are too careless to be good traveling companions, but she does exchange contact information with Akira, so that's a win.

As far as zombies at an aquarium go, this story can't compare to Garth Ennis and John McCrea's "Zombie Night at the Gotham Aquarium" from Hitman, but it does give us a zombie great white shark propelled across land by the it apparently ate whole, who were then zombified as a result. That's pretty cool, I guess.