YMMV / Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Ohtori a willing participant in the affair with the chairman, or was she coerced? She never openly admits that she's being forced to take part, but not only is the boss coercing her not beyond the realm of possibility given the nature of the company, but when her boss has sex with her in his office, he appears to ignore her protests of "not in here," implying she can't say no to him. Interestingly, the live-action movie leans towards her being a willing participant as before she dies from her zombie wounds, she kills the zombie chairman while angrily stating he promised to leave his wife, and Akira sees a picture of the two seemingly happy.
• Applicability: The manga got its official English release at the beginning of 2021, near the tailend of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States and Europe. After the exhausting year that was 2020, some readers appreciated Akira's ability to see the bright spots in the Zombie Apocalypse and compared his struggles to suffering through a global pandemic in real life.
• Awesome Music: "Song of the Dead" by KANA-BOON is so catchy and upbeat that it makes you enjoy whatever you're doing during a zombie apocalypse.
• Bizarro Episode: In chapter 30 in the manga, Akira encounters a large horde and sees zombie versions of Blaise Pascal and Martin Heidegger, and they both (somehow) give him some philosophies about boredom, and not only what it means to be bored, but what it means to be free. Akira, after being bored during the chapter, took their words to heart, and scratches off the boredom from his bucket list.
• Catharsis Factor: Akira handing in his resignation by rugby tackling the chairman of his Soul-Crushing Desk Job is something everyone with an awful job wishes they could do. Then, after shaking off Kosugi's More than Mind Control with Shizuka's help, Akira severs ties with the black company once and for all, catching Kosugi's hand to stop him from tearing Akira's bucket list in half and then proving how miserable of a leader Kosugi is, leaving his old boss without anyone to torment or rely on.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Akira seeing all of his neighbors turned into zombies and rush at him to eat his brains? Horrifying. Him worrying about being late for work before cheering about how he'll never have to go back to work again? Outrageously funny.
  • Seeing Ohtori, the girl Akira had a crush on, zombified is awful. Akira making a Love Confession to her before fleeing for his life with a huge smile on his face? Hilarious. In the anime adaptation however, this moment is treated as a Tear Jerker.
  • Akira and Kencho watching in horror as the flight attendants they befriended get killed and become zombies? Heart-wrenching. Seeing the duo sneak off with a widescreen TV (with the Flintstones twinkle toes sound effect in play) and escaping? Lolz ahoy.
  • The zombie shark at the aquarium is pure Nightmare Fuel between its dead eyes, rotting flesh, and razor-sharp teeth as the mutilated bodies of divers float in the tank around it. Seeing the legs of the eaten divers push their way out of the shark's stomach, allowing it to essentially run at the survivors? It's so stupidly funny that even the characters in the story are questioning the logic behind it.
  • The fact that Akira's father is suffering through a major illness that causes him to have the Incurable Cough of Death in the middle of a zombie apocalypse is very sad and tragic. The fact that he's suffering from hemorrhoids makes it hilarious!
• Escapist Character: Akira thriving and living his best life in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse after enduring a crappy Soul-Crushing Desk Job for years is a welcome release for many trapped by the stress of school and work.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Akira's childhood dream was to be a superhero. When the live-action adaptation happened, Eiji Akaso was cast as him, and Akaso is a noted fan of Kamen Rider (from childhood), with his Star-Making Role being Ryuga Banjo/Kamen Rider Cross-Z from Kamen Rider Build. Looks like Akira will live out that dream in one way.
• Ho Yay: At the end of episode 4, after Kencho strips off all of his clothes when jumping from one skyscraper to the other, Akira decides to join him by stripping naked and spending, from sunset to sunrise, around a campfire just talking and laughing before falling asleep while still naked.
• Moral Event Horizon: Shizuka's father crosses it in just a flashback where he sends his daughter's beloved puppy to the pound to be euthanized.
• Nightmare Fuel: As a standard Zombie Apocalypse Survival Horror story (in Lighter and Softer terms), things can get nightmarish when things goes to shit quickly.
  • Humans aren't the only things that can be infected. Sharks and bears can be infected too. Yes, zombie sharks and bears.
  • During the cruise chapters, there's a sign the ship captain didn't see that says there's zombies inside the boat their using. Sure enough, a horde is inside the ship, and start attacking everyone there.
  • Imagine being a doctor in the early stages in the Zombie Apocalypse, then see your own wife and child get killed by zombies on the news. That's Yudai Tsurumi's backstory.
  • Chapter 64. It turns out the zombie infection and the ensuing apocalypse wasn't as recent as anyone thought. The surface lost communications to space station ISS for a year. As a result, the ISS station is infected.
• Realism-Induced Horror: In a world beset by a Zombie Apocalypse, one of the most horrific aspects of it is simply Akira's old job in a black company. Every day he was subjected to mentally and physically-exhausting labour while constantly being browbeaten, whether he did a good job or not. Whenever he does get to go home, he simply doesn't have the energy to do anything, not even clean it for three years. A situation that's tragically true in real life, particularly in Japan. It really says a lot that the world going down the pan the way it does is considered an improvement in Akira's life.
• Tear Jerker: Here.
• The Woobie: There are particular people Akira and his friends meet that fits this. A particular one is Yudai Tsurumi, a biological scientist who lost his wife and daughter to zombies. After spending months making a vaccine and meeting Izzy, his lab was destroyed, his assistants turned, and his months of research gone. He then spent several months trying to get to the Umbriel corporation in hopes to use their lab to create a cure, only to get surrounded by zombies. He was close to despair until the timely arrival of Akira and his friends using a steam train rescues him.
• Woolseyism: In some of the early fan translations, Shizuka's backstory has her remembering how she "should" listen to her father. The fact she heard it all her life makes her think she thought her name was "Should." The official anime subtitles and Viz manga translation replaces her father telling her she "should" follow his demands to "need to". As such, the line where she laments at one point she thought her name was "Should" was changed to "Anita", based on the "need to" phrase which flows better.

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