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6 May 2016: We can't stop here, this is kabane country

Mumei
Go on, Mumei. Curse the bitch out.

The best anime this season is a steampunk show about cowardly idiots and assholes on a train getting killed by zombies. This is not to say that Koutetsujou no Kabaneri (Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress) doesn't have problems, 'cause it's got a mess o' problems, but they're the sort of thing I'm happy to overlook as long as all the right people keep getting fucked up. (See also the second half of Shiki, another noitaminA show, in fact.)

Mumei and Ikoma
Ikoma looks sort of cadaverous, even for a dead guy.

The problem with zombie survival stories is that, realistically, a zombie outbreak could be contained in a similar fashion as an infectious disease epidemic and repelled the same way as hostile invading infantry—at least as long as we're talking about killable bitey zombies and not intelligent zombies that keep reanimating. Of course, the whole point of zombie apocalypse stories is that everyone keeps doing everything wrong and making the situation worse. The protagonists inevitably play for a team of craven morons plus maybe a handful of token decent folks who are mostly there to be tragically killed while saving some unworthy person's dumb ass.

Mumei and Ikoma
What? It's good training.

With qualifications like that in mind, Kabaneri is great fun with a train-full of losers making terrible decisions and being a bunch of ingrates all around. Comparisons with Attack on Titan are natural, but Kabaneri is far-and-away the better show—at least as long as Kabaneri doesn't suddenly decide to devote three episodes to having Ikoma move a rock, then recap.

School-Live! manga
Obviously, Kurumi is the Best Girl.

In other news totally not related to zombies at all, I also picked up a couple volumes of the School-Live! (Gakkou Gurashi!) manga. It appears Yen Press is a couple years behind the Japanese releases, so this will make for an aggravating wait. The ongoing manga is currently at a pretty dramatic part, so I hope the English release schedule ramps up a bit.

Hellsing DVDs
"We Are Mission From God."

I also finally bought the Hellsing DVDs. This is significant because I rather disliked Hellsing 14 years ago. Still, the DVDs were inexpensive, and I'm curious how they compare to the unintentionally hilarious fansubs of yore. I'm mentioning this here because the Hellsing anime sort of has zombies—shitty ones, but still. Also both shows involve drinking blood. P.S. Spoilers.


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