Anime Column] 100 Anime to Watch by Keyword! 100 Anime to Watch: No.5 "Kabaneri of the Iron Castle" and more

Drinking parties among anime fans tend to be a game of association. Whenever someone says, "XXX has XXX scene," someone else replies, "Speaking of XXX scene, don't forget XXX. Anime and animation are connected by invisible threads like this. Let's follow the "anime to watch" using keywords as clues.

It seems that zombies are all the rage these days.

One can trace its origin back to the game " Resident Evil " (and its live-action movie). Furthermore, the appearance of zombies in American TV dramas a few years ago also seems to have had a significant impact. In any case, in the midst of this global trend, zombies (or something like them) have become a common sight in Japanese manga, novels, and anime.

Kabaneri of the Iron Castle," which is currently airing on TV, can also be classified as a "zombie" manga.

In the world of "Kabaneri of the Iron Castle," beings called "Kabaneri" have overwhelmed the human race. In the Far Eastern island nation of Hinomoto, people build forts and live in them to protect themselves from the Kabanes. The forts are connected to each other by an armored steam locomotive called a hayajiro, and the forts are called "stations.

The kabane is characterized by the fact that it infects the person it bites with a virus and multiplies. And they keep moving unless they are pierced through the heart.

This rule of "proliferation" and "damaging important parts of the body causes cessation of action" was set as a rule in George A. Romero's movie "Night of the Living Dead," and the zombie image that follows and arranges this rule is commonly called "Romero zombie "Romero Zombie". Kabane can be considered a variant of this Romero zombie.

The characteristic of "Kabaneri" is that it is based on the fact that these zombie stories are "survival stories" with the composition of humans versus zombies, but it shifts it a little. The key to this is the existence of "Kabaneri.

Kabaneri are beings that have been invaded by the kabane virus, but have not had their brains invaded. Therefore, the kabaneri has both the power of a kabane and the mind of a human being. The main character Ikoma, who has become a Kabaneri, rides to the Sun Castle "Kouetsu Castle" to fight off the pursuing Kabaneri.

The more the Kabaneri try to protect people, the more they are forced to use their own Kabaneri powers. This is where the conflict arises. How the conflict that Ikoma's very existence entails will unfold in the series is a point of interest in "Kabaneri.

Incidentally, "Kabaneri of the Iron Castle" director Tetsuro Araki is also responsible for the anime adaptation of the classic zombie manga "Gakuen Revelation: High School of the Dead. WIT STUDIO, the production company of "Kabaneri of the Iron Castle," has also animated "Empire of the Dead" (based on a novel by Keisuke Ito and Tou Enjou), which depicts a world where corpses are used as laborers, so it seems quite natural that the original project "Kabaneri" is an anime about zombies.

If we were to name another anime that has inherited Romero Zombie, "Gakkou Gurashi! cannot be overlooked.

This is the story of a group of high school girls who are forced to live in a siege at school when "they" suddenly appear one day. They" are also depicted according to the rules of Romero Zombie. While Romero chose a shopping mall as an important setting, this film is set in a school, which is a very skillful localization or otakization (otakization?). This is a very skillful localization or otakization (otakarization?) technique. The fact that the promotion of this work was deliberately pretending to be a "loose, everyday" type before it started airing also seems to be a product of otakarization.

On the other hand, "Space☆Dandy" episode 4, "Sometimes you can't die even if you die," is a parody of Romero Zombie. In this episode, the main character Dandy and his trio of BBPs (idiots, punks, and clankers) become infected for one reason or another and turn into zombies. Especially in part B, the zombie routine is quite funny. The fact that Romero's name is deliberately shown in the credits of the film shows the kind of respect that the staff put into the parody.

Then again, it is not as if the cartoon is all Romero zombies.

For example, in the anime adaptation of the light novel of the same title, "Is This a Zombie?" the main character, Ayumi Aikawa, is a zombie revived by the necromancer girl You. Although vulnerable to sunlight, they do not become infected or multiply. However, Ayumi is appointed as a magical girl by Haruna, who says she comes from the world of magic, so the story is more like a magical girl story than a zombie story.

In addition, "Sankarea," a manga about a boy who loves zombies and lives with a girl who has become a zombie, has also been adapted into an anime. This is also different from Romero Zombie, and is a zombie story in the Japanese style. This is also different from the Romero zombies, but is a Japanese version of the zombie story.

With the global boom on the side and the number of zombie anime as large as this, I think that in a few years it will become established as a genre like "robot anime" or "witch girl anime.

(Text by Ryota Fujitsu)