Reviews of yesteryear: Kore wa Zombie desu ka?

I’ve always suspected that sometimes people request anime reviews from me because they want to see how I’ll react to a particular really bad anime. That suspicion has been confirmed. Today’s review was requested specifically because “Ive seen Ktulu review some real crappy stuff (I think I saw Baka to Test somewhere), so I thought this would be ‘right up his alley’ reviewing-wise.” Yes, that is an actual quote right down to the lack of an apostrophe in “I’ve”. Is it really that bad? Let’s take a look and find out.

Kore wa zombie desu ka follows a magical girl zombie who lives with the necromancer who brought him back to life, a magical girl and a vampire ninja. It’s every bit as stupid as it sounds. There is an over-arching story but it’s really basic. An enemy shows up, the group has to fight him. You might think that, as stupid as the premise is, it has to get some good humour out of it. Nope. The humour is as weak and imbecilic as the story. Most of it is simply the same joke repeated. Ayumu is a zombie, watch as he gets abused. The series tries to mix comedy and seriousness but it fails at both and the mixing of the two just makes it more pronounced. The last episode is a pointless fan-service episode and the relationship developments are just grody.

The characters are the same one-dimensional cliches that pop up in pretty much every poorly written harem anime. The clingy jealous girl, the quiet but kind girl, the tsundere girl, and the girl who gets pulled into the situation through an absurd plot contrivance that makes her feel like she has no choice but to pursue the main character and, of course, the completely unremarkable and utterly boring protagonist who can’t make up his bloody mind. It doesn’t help that all of the characters are idiots. We’re told that Haruna is a genius, but she acts like a complete and utter twit so it’s as much of an informed characteristic as the great marksmanship skills of Imperial Stormtroopers.

The art is mediocre. It could be better if not for the strange art decisions at some points and the over-reliance on fan-service. Yeah, there’s a massive amount of fan-service. Since it’s a harem anime, this should come as no surprise.

The voice acting is pretty dull. The only actor who seems to be putting in any effort is Nomizu Iori, the rest of the main cast sound like they’re bored most of the time. And she exaggerates to an absurd degree. If I wasn’t familiar with the cast from other series I might suspect that they just made bad casting calls, but I’ve heard all of the main cast and most of the secondary cast in roles where they gave much better performances These aren’t incompetent actors, this is incompetent directing. The music is the best part of the series. It’s actually pretty good. It’s got a lot of energy and the performances are well done.

The yuri factor is a 3/10. Seraphim and Haruna have some moments, and there’s one moment with Haruna and Eu. But they never go anywhere and the series is quick to dismiss them.

My final rating for Kore wa zombie desu ka is a 1.5/10. It’s not one of the absolute worst anime I’ve seen, but it comes pretty close. The story and humour are rubbish and the characters are completely unsympathetic with no redeeming qualities. The only thing worthwhile is the music and you don’t have to watch the mind-numbingly stupid series to hear it.