Zombie Land Saga: Yumeginga Paradise Film Review

The strongest quality of Zombie Land Saga's first two seasons that this movie mostly lacks is the power of surprise. The TV series excelled at taking huge swerves, dishing out the most absurd comedic situations interspersed with unexpected heartwarming moments. The movie's “zombies vs. aliens” premise is still a big swerve from what the series has done before, but we already knew this swerve was coming thanks to the Season two's finale's post-credits scene. Unlike, say, the premiere of New Panty and Stocking (the current high standard for legit sequels to trolling post-credits gags), it's not offering much more beyond the most obvious take on the new set-up.

The freshest plot twist (which the trailers already spoiled, but I'll offer a mild spoiler warning anyway) is the awakening of Tae Yamada's original personality. Tae's canon backstory has been out there for a while in the form of the Zombie Land Saga Gaiden: The First Zombie manga, but if you prefer her as an enigma, the movie splits the difference: we get a clear sense from her personality of why Kotaro chose to revive her without going into the specifics of her previous legendary exploits. Awakened Tae is all serious business, but without the memories of her time as an unawakened zombie idol, she's not really a team player.

Awakening makes Tae unrecognizable from the version of herself we already know and love. Following some classic Tae chaos in the first act, this sudden change becomes a reminder of why we loved her in the first place. It takes a while to get there — the film's middle section drags out too long — but inevitably, Tae is going to reconcile these different parts of herself and learn to work with her friends again. The way this arc plays in her interactions with Sakura in particular is adorable. I'd focused so much on Ai and Junko as Franchouchou's most obvious ship that the potential for Sakura and Tae hadn't even occurred to me until this movie.

The anime's take on aliens isn't nearly as unique as its take on zombies. The invasion story's just Independence Day over Saga, while the creature designs heavily resemble those in A Quiet Place (these aliens are also sensitive to sound, which surprisingly doesn't come up much for a music-based anime). They are well animated, though, and the zombie girls find entertaining ways to fight them. It's not Reze Arc-level work, but MAPPA makes the action scenes worth seeing on the big screen.

Yumeginga Paradise feels like it's been designed as a finale for the Zombie Land Saga franchise. Much time is spent looking back down memory lane, with scenes from old episodes are displayed in photographs and on the planetarium at the Saga Prefecture Space and Science Museum (the movie's requisite local tourism promotion). Pretty much every character from the series makes a cameo. If the film's closing concert scene was the last we saw of Franchouchou, it would make a satisfying parting shot, though there are still loose ends from the series that could be explored if they decide to make more (I imagine any season three would have to have a lot more about Kotaro, who's absent for large chunks of the movie).

For some reason, almost all of Zombie Land Saga's US theatrical screenings were dub-only (though I've heard reports of at least one subbed showing at an Alamo Drafthouse location; Drafthouse, like Crunchyroll, is owned by Sony). Having watched the show in subbed, I slightly prefer the Japanese cast but the American voice actors all do a good job, especially Dawn M. Bennett as Tae. The songs, curiously, have not been dubbed, but watching the movie, it makes some degree of sense in as much as it's nice to have subtitled lyrics on screen while everyone is talking over them. Aside from the opening song and the closing concert, the music has been relegated to the background in comparison to the TV series.

I had fun with Yumeginga Paradise, even if it wasn't as fun as the two seasons of television that preceded it. Where the show knew how to balance its constant silly humor with effective dramatic beats, the movie sometimes finds itself in a more awkward tonal zone of being less funny while still too nonsensical to fully buy into the story. But then it will recover from its relative slump with a great joke or some well-observed character development, and you remember why you liked the show to begin with. And Lily gets to pilot a mech, so consider it a victory for trans rights!