Posted By John Sears on December 28, 2010

‘Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?’ is, as previously mentioned, a new anime series debuting in Japan in a few weeks featuring a Zombie protagonist. A fairly lengthy promotional video is now online, and…

Yeah. This looks like one strange show. Part harem-comedy, part horror series, part Magical Girl thing (think Sailor Moon if you’re not an anime fan). It’s novel, at least. Zombies plus Magical Girls? Hmm.

Anime News Network has a bit more of a fleshed out description:

In Shinichi Kimura’s original light novel series, a lazy high school boy named Ayumu Aikawa gets killed during a spate of mysterious serial killings. However, Ayumu is resurrected as a zombie by a necromancer girl named “Yū” (Eucliwood Hellscythe), who Ayumu had just met before dying. Ayumu reawakens in a world surrounded by “masō shōjo” (magically equipped girls) and vampire ninja. Ayumu is assigned the duties of a masō shōjo by a magical warrior girl named Haruna.

So Zombie of Magical Girl Related justice? Fighting vampire ninja maybe?

Well, if that’s the case, you know who we’ll be rooting for here at the ZRC. I’ve embedded the very, very odd video below.

 
 
 
 

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Tags: Anime or Manga

Posted By John Sears on December 27, 2010

Google pointed me to this interview in the Fall River, MA Herald News with author and zombie film critic (as opposed to Zombie film critic, a Zombie who reviews movies) Tony Schaab:

What do a devout family man, Humane Society volunteer, DJ, actor, comedian, troupe manager of the comedy improvisational troupe IndyProv, college enrollment coordinator, movie critic and zombie aficionado have in common?

They’re all author Tony Schaab, of course.

The interview eventually gets around to giving some detail on the G.O.R.E. score system he uses to appraise zombie movies:

Q. The G.O.R.E. Score is actually an exceptional system you created for reviewing books and movies. What’s the impetus behind it?

A. When I decided to write reviews, I wanted to avoid being just another guy throwing his opinions around. So I thought to myself, “Self, why not create an objective system to rate the reviewed items in categories fans would actually want to know about?” Through good karma and a bit of luck, the areas of focus resolved themselves into a nice little acronym, G.O.R.E.: “G”eneral entertainment, “O”riginal content, “R”ealism, and “E”ffects and editing. I still have some of my own subjective rhetoric mixed into each review, of course, but on the whole I think the rating system really helps my reviews stand apart as a great source of insight and information.

The acronym alone should raise alarm bells, but reading that description, it’s fairly obvious what’s missing from this system to review zombie movies:

Any concern whatsoever for the Zombies themselves.

Worried, I went to Mr. Schaab’s website to see for myself whether it was true, and the application of this heartless, clockwork system for appraising zombie movies as ‘entertainment’ truly gave no weight to the feelings and depictions of the Differently Animated (as opposed to our own, Zombie-Conscious evaluation scheme).

Tragically, it does not.

In order to confirm my suspicions, I decided to find a couple of reviews on the site and compare them to my own thoughts and impressions on films/books/other media that I have seen for the ZRC. Unfortunately, this proved somewhat more difficult than I had originally thought, because many of the reviews are present online only as synopses, with the full versions to be found only in the print edition. I can understand this motivation; Mr. Schaab is trying to make a living off of his reviews, after all, whereas the ZRC presents all its work to the public free of charge and under a Creative Commons license, because we’re an advocacy group. It’s a necessarily different focus.

That being said, it makes it harder to do a direct comparison.

Fortunately, I was able to find at least one full review online of something I’d seen that had made a deep enough impression: Resident Evil: Afterlife.

Urgh. Think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

What did Mr. Schaab have to say about that…. movie?

G: General Entertainment – As mentioned above, each of the four big-budget “Resident Evil” films have been a rockin’ good time, as long as you’re willing to shut off certain “rational” parts of your brain. “RE:A” follows this formula, the plot revolving around Jovovich’s Alice having the T-Virus in her body negated, returning her to “normal human” status, and then trying to reconnect with her friends from the previous films as they all try to survive in a world made increasingly crazier by the multiplying legions of undead.

I can certainly verify that the movie requires you to shut down the rational centers of your brain, and failure to do so is rewarded with an agonizing hour and a half waiting for either the end credits to roll or sweet Death to take you away. From my own review:

From the outset this movie is an affront to decency and logic. First, the movie fakes out the audience by, gasp, having a zombie outbreak occur in Tokyo, breaking the long-running Resident Evil formula of making the Undead somebody else’s problem, something that happens to Westerners with corrupt governments and cops on the take. However, this quickly degenerates into a silly, poorly directed, stodgy, slow, CG-filled spectacular of unconvincing explosions and improbable gunplay between the world’s worst commandos and an army of Milla Jovoviches, none of whom can manage an expression other than smirking.

I wasn’t honestly sure who the bad guys were supposed to be here. Umbrella created the T-virus, in the movies, but it was Alice who allowed it to escape the mansion by forcing her way out of a biohazard zone. She admits as much in this movie, that it’s all her fault. So here she is, in Tokyo, killing hundreds of inept security guards with her superpowers, to get revenge on them for something she did. Honestly, I haven’t seen an American kill this many innocent Japanese guys on-screen since Grave of the Fireflies.

Already you can see how we differed in our assessments; Mr. Schaab is willing to tolerate this film as a sort of stupid fun, whereas the ZRC perspective is that its incoherence and hyperviolence cannot be justified in any way by its vicious, Anti-Zombie mishmash of a ‘plot’.

By the end of our respective reviews, the separation is more or less complete. Schaab gives it a middle of the road rating:

TOTAL SCORE: 6.75/10
VERDICT: A’IGHT

The ZRC verdict?

Avoid it because you value your sanity, or want to retain your hope in humanity, or faith in a kind and loving God. Just plain avoid it, please.

This review came before our new Rating System was unveiled, so let’s just make that official: Resident Evil: Afterlife receives the lowest possible rating from The Zombie Rights Campaign, that of Living Supremacist.

What does this whole comparison mean? I think it gets to the very heart of what we do here, at the ZRC. It is simply impossible to provide meaningful critical analysis of films depicting the Differently Animated without any concern for the Undead as individuals, as people. If your heart has grown so callous that you cannot empathize, even sympathize with Zombies, then how can you be expected to see them as anything but victims for your entertainment, and how can society hope to advance? Indeed, grotesquerie appears as comedy to such a person, and unforgivable and insane hatred seems amusing.

It’s a tragedy, but one we see all too often. Thus the ZRC seeks to provide you with an alternative, to help you keep your grip on Zombie Friendly behaviors and seek out entertainment that, at a minimum, doesn’t do harm to others simply because they lack a pulse or an elevated core body temperature. We see movies, watch shows, listen to music, attend conventions and concerts, all on your behalf, and agitate for change.

We do it in the hope that one day, perhaps everyone will take these considerations to heart, and we won’t see a movie as odious as RE: Afterlife reviewed without a thought being given to its many Zombie victims.

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Tags: Journamalism, Movies

Posted By John Sears on December 27, 2010

Just a couple quick items here in their growing list (rapidly growing, always growing) of offenses against good taste and the Differently Animated:

1) This week Resident Evil: Afterlife comes out on DVD. You can see our review for the movie here, or just simulate the experience of watching the flick by shoving your face into one of those stick blenders (for that extra 3D element).

2) The latest Dead Rising 2 DLC, ‘Case West’, is out now for the Xbox 360. Apparently it’s something of a buddy picture concept as Frank West and what’s his face from Dead Rising 2, the world’s worst dad, team up to clear their names. Not clear their names of killing Zombies, of course, because apparently that’s ok.

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Tags: Movies, Videogames

Posted By John Sears on December 27, 2010

I’m not going to get all high and mighty defending the Michael Jackson video for Thriller, even though it did playfully poke fun at the rampant stereotyping of the Differently Animated, and showcased, for example, some high points in Zombie choreography. It’s funny and unconventional, deserving of some praise to be sure, but it unfortunately did not succeed in battling back the rising tide of Anti-Zombie violence on screen, and didn’t so much strive to humanize the Differently Animated as humor-ize them, if that makes sense.

But I guess the mere existence of a Zombie media product of considerable staying power that doesn’t involve bullets flying and bodies dropping offended someone across the Pacific a bit too much, and so we got this:

At the recent Hot Toys ten year anniversary exhibition in Tokyo, a what-if style diorama was on display that combined Michael Jackson Thriller with a two-story Resident Evil, or Biohazard in Japan, playset and figures.

On the second floor, Resident Evil’s Jill shoots zombie Jacko’s head plum off, while on the ground floor, a horde of Michael Jackson zombies takes great interest in a ravaged Sheva.

I ask again, in all sincerity, ‘What’s up with Japan?’ From pushing Anti-Zombie ‘heroes’ into games featuring iconic Western comic book characters to churning out an endless series of radically violent Living Supremacist games (even shovelware like bad ports to the iPhone or gambling games where the payoff is violence against the Undead) to inspiring a series of American movies that degrade the audience and, really, the entire medium of film, all we see coming out of Japan recently is hatred for the Differently Animated.

But is it really necessary to be so petty as to go after Thriller? To, in essence, plant the flag of Resident Evil’s violent hegemony on pop music videos from the 80s?

I’m appalled. Shocked and appalled. Where does it end, Japan?

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Tags: What's Up with Japan?

Posted By John Sears on December 26, 2010

I don’t have a huge amount to add to this review Locus posted of ‘Feed’, the first in a planned trilogy of pseudo-political dramas set in a Zombie post-Apocalypse, but there are a couple points that seem striking:

1) The Political/Media Culture in 2039 is Basically the Same as Today

I mean, seriously? The ‘traditional’ media scorns bloggers? What traditional media? In the last decade newspapers have crumbled, and most of the big national news mags are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. The Washington Post is only profitable as a company because of its Kaplan test-prep/degree mill subsidiary, for crying out loud. Other than TV news, what ‘traditional’ media will there be in 2039? Is radio news supposed to make a big comeback?

2) The Zombie Virus is a Manmade Accident

In the Feed-o-verse, the Zombie, err, condition, is apparently the result of two manmade viruses merging and mutating together to form a single superstrain.

Which isn’t likely, to say the least:

Different forms, or strains, of the same virus can swap pieces of genetic code through processes called reassortment or recombination, said Elankumaran Subbiah, a virologist at Virginia Tech who was not involved in the documentary.

But unrelated viruses simply do not hybridize in nature, Subbiah told National Geographic News.

Likewise, it’s scientifically unheard of for two radically different viruses such as rabies and influenza to borrow traits, he said.

“They’re too different. They cannot share genetic information. Viruses assemble only parts that belong to them, and they don’t mix and match from different families.”

Of course, these are ‘manmade’ viruses, so that might be a big enough loophole. And hey, at least it isn’t stem cells.

From a Zombie Rights perspective, it looks like the books use the Differently Animated as a device to threaten the important, aka, Living characters and provide suspense. I don’t suppose the issue of Zombie Suffrage even comes up, like in Bailey’s ‘Death and Suffrage’ or the wonderful ‘Dead Eyes Open’.

Probably not. I mean, just look at how the DA in these books are described by Locus:

Victims lose their personhood and become mindless disease vectors, existing only to spread the virus, which is best done via bodily fluids – so these zombies enjoy biting, spitting, and spewing infected blood. The resulting pandemic leads to the expected zombie apocalypse… but it’s not like everyone dies. Even when the world ends, life goes on for the survivors.

See, Zombies aren’t ‘survivors’. Life goes on, but not for them. The presence of ‘disease vectors’ like the Differently Animated means the end of the world, not a chance to expand the voting franchise.

What a sadly typical and myopic view of the Undead in politics, and what a lost opportunity to give the world a newer and fresher take on the politics of the Zombie Community.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Social Justice, Zombie Fiction

Posted By John Sears on December 26, 2010

I really don’t know why so many people are framing the recent popularity of Zombies at Christmastime in this ‘us vs. them’ mentality:

It used to be that zombies were strictly limited to Halloween. Not anymore. Everyone’s favorite flesh-eating ghouls are making a move to take over Christmas, and they’ve got Santa and his reindeer worried.

Really, we’re trotting out the ‘flesh-eating ghouls’ thing? For shame, spreading hate and fear during the holiday season. Why should Santa be afraid of Zombies, anyway?

Oh, right, that flesh-eating stereotype. This is a new wrinkle though, as presumably Zombies will settle down, get a house with a mortgage and a white picket fence, dutifully maintain it all year, make the payments, mow the lawn, replace the window that the kid next door knocks out with a baseball, all so at the end of the year they can… lure Santa Claus into the living room to eat him?

It’s Machiavellian genius!

At any rate, the rest of the article lists some Zombie-related products and events, both from this year and years past. Of particular note was an improv show last year that mixed Zombies and the holidays called ‘Hark the Herald Zombies Sign’.

Sadly, it appears to have been fairly Anti-Zombie, though this all-too-true bit about family acceptance of Zombies was amusing:.

One sketch featured a daughter coming out of the closet to her overly-supportive mother. But when her brother claimed that his new girlfriend was a zombie, he was met with his mother’s scorn, “Don’t be ridiculous Jeffrey. You can’t love a zombie. Just because some girl follows you around and wants to eat your brain doesn’t mean she loves you. It means she thinks you’re dinner!” This amusing twist on a classic uncomfortable family moment became the theme of the show.

Also mentioned were a book of Zombie-themed Christmas Carols (another entry in the seemingly endless ‘Insert Zombies Into Public Domain Works’ series) and a graphic novel featuring Santa in the Zombie Apocalypse called ‘The Last Christmas’.

After seeing all this I just have to say, Zombies need their own holiday special, *badly*, just to counter all the negative attention. Marvel’s putting out a Zombie version of A Christmas Carol this spring, we have all this stuff out this winter, and who knows what’s next?

We need to get out in front of this before next Christmas or else Zombies will be made the new Grinches for certain. Fortunately I do know some very talented individuals in various creative fields, so maybe they can lend a hand. Clearly, it will fall to the ZRC to save Christmas 2011 — for the Zombies.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Journamalism, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on December 26, 2010

I’ve often gently teased some of my Christian friends and acquaintances with a question along those lines, pointing out that, in general, if a person dies, is buried, and subsequently rises from the dead with lethal wounds that seem to cause no pain and no longer bleed, we might well call that person a Zombie, here in modern times. Thus, I asked them, in a slightly sly manner, ‘Was Jesus a Zombie?’

It appears that this holiday season I’m not the only one with those thoughts, as this much more serious-minded blog post by Rick Siefert attests:

It was only on this morning of Christmas Day that I began to connect the frivolity and seeming meaninglessness of the night before with Jesus and his teachings. Zombies and vampire are about transformation, even resurrection, gone horribly wrong. The world of these creatures is one without hope. Are the myths, which are so much in vogue, a warning? Are they a wake-up call, just as the message of Jesus was? Can we be led to love by zombies, vampires as well as by Jesus’ teachings?

Are these stories, whether horrible or hopeful, ways of making us aware before it is too late?

The Christian mythology, fabricated years after Jesus’ death, also sought to direct and, yes, strike fear in our hearts. Vampires and zombies emerged from societies aware of, even steeped in what Jesus taught and what others mythologized about his life.

It seems odd yet worthwhile to ask: Was Jesus a kind of zombie with a difference when he reappeared after death?

The ZRC of course takes issue with the idea that Zombie resurrection has necessarily, or even generally, ‘gone wrong’, but it’s nice to see Zombies get some thoughtful consideration from a religious perspective, at least, as something other than ‘abominations’.

Can we be led to love by Zombies? Can we be led to love OF Zombies? I certainly hope so, but what will it take?

I wonder.

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Tags: Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on December 26, 2010

We’ve got a quick news update here, suitable for the holiday weekend: Joe R. Lansdale is making a Zombie movie.

A Zombie Christmas movie, actually:

Author Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho Tep) is about to bring his zombies to the big screen.

Lansdale’s latest short story, to be released in early 2011, is ready to be made into a movie: “Christmas with the Dead.”

…

As for the film’s synopsis, Landsdale breaks it down like this: It was a foolish thing to do, and Calvin had not bothered with it the past two years, not since the death of his wife and child. But this year he decided quite suddenly, that tomorrow was Christmas Eve. And zombies be damned, the lights and decorations are going up…

Obviously we haven’t read the story yet (since we lack a time machine), but from the description this doesn’t sound promising. Why, exactly, must the Zombies ‘be damned’, and why would the presence of Zombies mean no lights and decorations, anyway?

I’m assuming this is some kind of humorous take on the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ scenario; who knows, maybe it will be the Home Alone of Anti-Zombie filmmaking (as opposed to that Home Alone/I Am Legend mashup video we discussed recently).

Obviously, that might not be the case, and it might turn out that the story is one of those touching holiday sentimental pieces about learning to understand one another after initial misunderstandings and distrust. Which normally, I’ve seen enough of the genre for a lifetime, but if there were Zombies involved that would at least be a very novel twist.

The Undead really do need a good, solid Christmas movie to call their own. Maybe this could be the one?

We’re skeptical, but holding out hope here at the ZRC. Once the story is available we’ll have a better idea, obviously.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Movies

Posted By John Sears on December 25, 2010

We decided to keep cracking away at those Masters of Horror episodes up on Hulu, so naturally ZRC-related curiosity led to the third episode from the first season, Dance of the Dead.

Dance of the Dead concerns a young woman named Peggy working in a diner sometime in the near future. The United States has been devastated by bioterrorism… somehow or other.. and much of it is ruin. Still, things go on, and people need food, so, diners. Peggy’s overbearing and thoroughly unpleasant mother is the center of her world; the rest of their family died in one of these bioterror attacks, which rained from the sky like acid rain and burned people to death, or else left them grotesquely mutilated.

Peggy is about to have a run-in with some punks who literally shake down old people for their blood, though why they do so isn’t immediately clear. They hail from the neighboring town of Muskeet, which Peggy’s mother hates (not without reason, I mean, it’s home to blood pirates). These two come into Peggy’s diner with a couple of skanks, and the quiet, brooding young man of the pair strikes up a romance with her, and convinces her to go on a trip to see the world, sort of.

The world here being, well, Muskeet, and in particular a club called The Doom Room where they have a very unique live performance act.. involving the Undead.

Yeah. Not to mince words here, but what they do is shoot up corpses with a mixture of blood and some biowarfare chemical, making them into spasming Zombies, then parade them on stage and hit them with cattle prods to make them ‘dance’.

I’m seriously not joking.

There’s some stuff in there about Peggy and her mom and dark secrets from their past, blah blah blah. Who cares, honestly? Robert Englund is here as the MC of the Doom Room, and he does a pretty good job holding down the smarmy villainy angle, but…

Cattle prods. Yeah.

This is one of the absolute most offensive and despicable things I’ve ever seen on my screen. I think even George Romero has more sympathy for Zombies than to electro-torture them, even fictionally, and call it ‘entertainment’. This crosses about six different lines and all for no good reason.

I highly recommend avoiding it. Just.. go read a book. Plant some flowers. Give a small child some ice cream, perhaps a Zombie child if one’s handy.

Just avoid ‘Dance of the Dead’. Seriously.

Dance of the Dead qualifies for a Living Supremacist ranking so easily it’s stunning.

Dance of the Dead is available for free on Hulu, if for some reason you choose to ignore our warnings and see it for yourself.

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Tags: Television, ZRC Reviews

Posted By John Sears on December 25, 2010

Now this I have to admit is a wrinkle I wasn’t expecting:

‘Infectonator: Christmas Edition’ pares the original ‘Infectonator’ down to its bare, horrific essentials. Like the original, your goal is to spread a zombie-causing virus amongst an expecting populace. This is done by merely clicking on a screen full of innocent bystanders, spreading infection and zombie carnage. In between Christmas-themed stages, you can spend money acquired from the dead to improve a variety of statistics, from the speed that your virus spreads to how much damage your zombies can take.

Ahh. Here’s what an actual product of that Zombies-Post Cold War Bioterror Nexus that Mr. Mantz was talking about might look like.

In essence what you have here is a bioterrorism simulator, with Zombies being the ‘disease’ deployed on a largely civilian population. I guess it’s a sign that we as a nation are finally starting to recover from the World Trade Center attacks that a game simulating mass terrorism can now be considered a light diversion from doing paperwork at the office.

Unfortunately we once again have Zombies cast in the role of slayers of civilization. Why is it that this game with an already highly inflammatory premise had to be used to cast yet more doubt and fear about the Differently Animated? Oh, if you see a Zombie while out on your shopping errands, it must be the result of some sleeper terror cell deploying their carefully crafted bioweapon!

Yikes.

I sat down and played through an entire campaign of the free flash game (available at this address after watching a short ad) to see what it was like to be a simulated bioterrorist.

The results? Heinous and yet iteresting, with very disturbing implications for Zombie Rights. The gameplay’s a little rough around the edges. You basically have one button to press each round to deploy your Z-virus, and you need to hit a tiny little figure scurrying around. It can be hard to tell precisely where your cursor, even though it is marked, is aimed, and very easy to miss your mark.

The strategy seems fairly simple: hit a person in the middle of as big a crowd as you can to maximize the initial number of Faux Undead footsoldiers. Everything proceeds rapidly from there, with the exception of grenades, which you can purchase to toss into the melee. Warning: be fast if you want to use them; the round will close itself out quickly once your last Fake Zombie is down, whether or not you still have ammunition (a minor but annoying quirk I’d change if it was up to me).

After a few virtual weeks of massacring little human figures who scream about Zombies and beg God to save them, I was done, with what I suppose was an OK score, though I didn’t hit all the achievements. Replay value is.. limited. But the game is/was free and fairly diverting, which is mostly what you’d hope for in a free flash game.

Now, the Zombies unfortunately are treated very poorly here. They exist only to spread mayhem and carnage, perish one way or the other after mere seconds, and are clearly tools for destruction and evil. One can’t help but feel a bit of proprietary pride in them, since you upgrade their stats and abilities yourself; the feeling is similar to admiring your handiwork in Sim City, perhaps. Nevertheless it’s impossible to really connect with them on a human level; once again, Zombies here aren’t even presented as characters, let alone people.

Infectonator: Christmas Edition gets our second-lowest score, that of Anti-Zombie, because while it treats Zombies with contempt, it pretty clearly places the principal blame for the overall destruction on the terrorist, which is to say, the player.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Videogames, ZRC Reviews