Tokyo Zombie is a 2005 Japanese zombie comedy, based on a manga of the same name and comparable to Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland.
Next Sunday A.D. in Tokyo a landfill has massively over-grown to become known by the populace as Black Mount Fuji, a place where anyone can go to dump anything they want and not be questioned about it or bother with pesky environmental safety laws. It is also a very popular place to dump bodies (living or dead). Eventually through radiation, the anger of the dead bodies, and mis-dumped recyclables in the landfill, the dead rise again as zombies. The main characters are Mitsuo and Fujio, a couple of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu enthusiasts who bumble their way through the zombie hordes. Half way through the movie there is a Time Skip of five years where all the rich people have made a safe zone in the remains of Tokyo and use the poor people they saved from the zombies as slaves. To entertain themselves they host zombie fights; pit matches between various fighters and zombies in which Fujio competes.
Has nothing to do with Tokyo Ghoul.
This film has the examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Mitsuo and Fujio's murder of their boss by hitting him on the head with a fire extinguisher. Also serves as a Sacrificial Lamb.
- After the End: "Tokyo died."
- Apocalypse How: Variable the movie never states how far the Zombie Apocalypse spreads. It could be limited to Tokyo alone or Japan, or perhaps it went further we never know so anywhere from a Class 0 to a localized Class 3a. Depending on how you want to view it.
- Art Shift: The Time Skip is accompanied by a brief animated sequence.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Fujio and Yoko, through the domestic disputes and swearing in front of their little daughter, really do get a cute moment in the end.
- Bait-and-Switch: The audience thinks that a bald head rising into view at a dramatic moment is Mitsuo, but it turns out to be some random guy we've never seen before who steals the duo's truck.
- Berserk Button: "He did it to you, didn't he?" - intentionally pressed.
- Boring, but Practical: Explicitly noted in Fujio's use of jiu-jitsu in the zombie fighting area; the crowd boos at how quickly he ends his fights. Most likely emphasized because of Brazilian jiu-jitsu's real life reputation for being highly effective, but boring to watch (at least for those who don't practice it themselves).
- Crapsack World: Even before the Zombie Apocalypse, every single person in the movie was either a pervert, a psychopath, or just ridiculously apathetic.
- Dramatic Slip: Yoko in her first scene, although it's somewhat undercut by the fact she's lugging a stolen cash register at the time.
- Gaia's Vengeance: Part of the implied cause behind the zombie apocalypse was that the citizens of the city pissed off the spirits of the land.
- Halfway Plot Switch: The first half of the movie centers on the main characters trying to escape the zombies on the streets of Tokyo. Five years later, and it's set in a bizarre society controlled by the rich, and Fujio is now a professional 'zombie-wrestler'.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Mitsuo gets bitten and throws himself from the duo's moving truck into a river. Except he wasn't infected, and he survives the plunge.
- Losing Your Head: A (non-zombified) woman gets her head knocked off and she/it screams as it goes sailing away.
- The Last Dance: Mitsuo took it upon himself to teach Fujio Jujitsu because he was dying of stomach cancer. Except he wasn't. He had a stress-induced gastrointestinal problem, and basically bullied his doctor into saying it was cancer in a hypochondriac fit. Becomes a Brick Joke in the second half of the movie. Mitsuo was bitten by a zombie before the Time Skip, but at the very end, it's revealed that the zombie in question had dentures, and his hypochondria made him believe he was a zombie despite all signs to the contrary.
- Narrator All Along: Fumiyo at the end. "Are you fucking retarded?" are her first official words, after copying her mother. And she's also the narrator for the time skip and at the very end of the film.
- No Sense of Direction: Fumiyo ends driving south for hours when he meant to be going north.
- The Oner: A very long conversation/Jujitsu match between the two leads is played out in this fashion.
- Rape as Backstory: Fujio has repeated flashbacks to being sexually abused by his teacher.
- Toilet Humor: "Is it number two... or number one?" "Correct, it's both."
- Zombie Gait: Played straight, although most of the zombies are even more stumbling and uncoordinated than usual.
