“Zom 100 Bucket List of the Dead” Volume 1 – Manga Recommendation

Have you ever wanted to endure a long workday? If you haven’t, you certainly know someone who has. Corporate burnout makes the news all the time. Stories of people quitting their boring job and pursuing their dream pop up on social media all the time. Zom 100 falls in that space, but with a very interesting twist about living life.

From author Haro Aso and illustrator Kotaro Takata, Zom 100 doesn’t start off with a long workday. The story starts with protagonist Akira Tendou as a bright-eyed, straight-out-of-college type guy ready to pursue his work with a passion only outmatched by his naivete. That naivete gets brutally quashed early in the story. Zom 100 is what happens after reality tries to keep you small. Do you fold and stay small? Cast aside your dreams to endure a job you hate? Or do you put on a mask to become what others want you to be?

Zom 100‘s answer is to focus on you and getting to reconnect with yourself, family, friends, and your pursuits. It does this marvelously – as a series overall. But I would do a disservice if I did not mention the exception.

Now Zom 100 started as a manga back in 2018. The anime brought the series to life in 2023. The anime contains one of the best art directions ever. But there was a cost. The anime had a brutal production schedule. BUG Films suffered production issues in 2023. The compressed schedule caused multi-week delays, which led to one of the greatest instances of irony in anime history. Zom 100‘s core theme was opposition to corporate overwork and, well, Zom 100‘s anime production schedule was plagued by overwork. The series satirizing poor working conditions ended up having a production team in poor working conditions.

Fortunately, all this meta-ness is not evident in the manga or anime itself.

Zom 100 is a tale of dichotomies and tension: burnout vs. passion, human vs. zombie, acting vs. waiting, analysis vs. creativity, and freedom vs. prison. Our protagonist makes a list of 100 things he wants to do before becoming a zombie. Someone I knew once opined: the people in the low-income area we were driving through were zombies – drifting aimlessly and pointlessly through life, no passion, just a permanent abstract hopelessness.

Zom 100 turns the mirror on people with similar opinions. Maybe they may not be so different than the so-called walking dead they criticize. After all, if you endure the drudgery of daily modern life like “zombies”, maybe you are a zombie too. For too many, life can seem an endurance test conducted under dark clouds. The escape from that test is a colorful, bright, wide expanse – according to Zom 100. The anime depicts this contrast better than the manga. The gray world turns into a burst of color – a masterstroke in storytelling and evocation of emotion.

That contrast is the true main character here. Our protagonist is the vehicle pursuing his passion at the end of the world.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead Volume 1 (originally published on February 16, 2021 by VIZ Media LLC) is a story everyone should read. The message is too relevant for this day and age. Those who embrace change and bet on themselves reap rewards. Those who don’t end up devoured by the zombies of the world. They themselves become the undead. You know, like Mr. and Mrs. Kosaka.

Ultimately, Zom 100‘s central message is that dancing in the middle of a zombie apocalypse is better than going into a dreadful office.

Pursuing your desires is a marvelous way to live.

Author: Rakim Reid

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