Zombie-Loan

Information of Anime

Michiru Kita looks like an ordinary high school, but she possess shinigami eyes.  These eyes allows her to see a dark ring around a person's neck.  A gray ring indicates a person about to die, while black ring indicates a dead person.  She wears a pair of glasses to block this out even though she has perfect vision.  Chika Akatsuki & Shito Tachibana who are from Michiru's school have black rings around their necks.  However, they appear alive to her.  But they are kept alive due to a deal they made with a secret loan office called Zombie-Loan.  To pay off the loan, they need to hunt for zombies for the company.  Because of her ability to tell who's a zombie, Chika & Shito use her to help them with their debt.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

Michiru's forced involvement with Chika & Shito would create troubles for her as it would cost her life.  However, Chika & Shito have her fixed up by Zombie-Loan which creates a bigger debt for them & a debt to her.  She now works for Zombie-Loan to pay off that loan.  Because she lost her parents & living with her relatives, she decides to move out & give her inherence left by her parent to them.  She resides in an old broken down dorm with others that are working for Zombie-Loan.

As the story progresses, the viewers learn about how the loan works.  There is a time limit on it & it's possible to renew the time by paying a fee.  Failure to pay off the loan can result to death.  Extending the loan results in an eternal lifelike body.  Also, the viewers learn how Chika & Shito manage to draw weapons as they have to switch their right hands.  When they were put back together to life, their right hands aren't connected to the correct bodies.  Plus, they need to say close to each other at a certain range or else their bodies would rot.  Also, the viewers get a glimpse of how illegal zombies are made & a slight idea of who's behind it little by little.

The backgrounds of Chika & Shito is shown in the story.  The viewers are shown Chika's family & his greed for money & Shito being a human from 19th century China.  The show ends with a kidnapped Shito rescued as he, Chika, & Michiru going out to earn money.

Two extra episodes were released on DVD only.  These episodes are create a new arc & continuation of the TV show.  It introduces a new company called A-Loan which is created by Bekkou, a friend of x who operates Zombie-Loan.  Because the two can't exist, they are fighting in competition to see which one stays open while the other closes down by seeing which company can get 100,000 in a month the fastest.  But Bekkou is operating another organization that controls the wheel of fortune, an item that was stole from the ferryman organization.  The arc ends with a cliffhanger as Zombie Loan is pumped up with new spirits & determination in not giving up.

My Personal Review

Zombie-Loan was a bit iffy to me at first.  I didn't want to pick it up since the title wasn't attractive & I had very little idea what it's about.  When I researched it & discovered that it was created by PEACH-PIT, I decided to watch it since I like most of their works.  I made the right choice in watching it.  However, I was letdown by how it ended.

Animation

The character designs are kind of like past PEACH-PIT works.  In fact, a lot of the characters seem to resemble the DearS series in terms of their designs.  This applies to the girls though.  They look great as they are my kind of taste.  There are some inconsistencies on some of the faces at times; usually on the nose area.  There are mainly situations where the characters would got to stick character drawings or something that a little kid drew.  It's pretty funny even though it can go out of context of the show's feel.

The backgrounds aren't done at the very best..  They are pretty dull with some minor details.  They can be a bit blurry at times.

The colours are on the dull side with some brightness to them.  The dull colours give off that eerie theme for the show while the brightness gives off those humourous moments.

In terms of the animation movement, it's a mixture of realistic & silly stuff.  Most of the time it's silly stuff to show the show's comedy.  The flow of the animation isn't very smooth.  You can see some of the animations cycles going in circles with heavy kickbacks when the characters on screen are walking.

Sound

The sound effects are on the realistic & silly side.  They are pretty clear & nicely cued.

The seiyuus here are ok.  They play their roles pretty well as their personalities are shown.  Michiru's voice needed me to adjust a bit since seiyuu involved hasn't done a lot of roles involving innocent shy girls.  At least, the ones that I've seen from her.  Nevertheless, it's okay.  However, the voices seem to be on the mono side as you can hear some of the mic sounds.  It's like the sounds weren't filtered properly or the mics used weren't good.

The music is rock with some cute pop on the side.  They set the mood okay, but I'm not drawn much to it.

Story

Although it's about Chika, Shito, & Michiru working for Zombie-Loan to pay their debt, the story is actually an introduction the series.  As the story gets deeper, we see all the zombies they hunt from are illegal & come from the same organization.  Although a lot of stories are like this where two paths which were considered different are tied into one at the end, the show's approach was actually a teaser or a taste to the series.  It's mainly showing viewers the background of the zombie hunting trio.

The characters do add light to the show as the trio think about death.  Their thoughts on the situation does show different sides of their characters & giving some slight development on them.  PEACH-PIT's works have fairly good character development, so it's pretty much some good stuff here.  It's fairly deep for a short series as the show actually spends more time in this area than having a story.  This made the show end as incomplete as the main enemy isn't expose to the viewers & more new character begin to pop up near the end as they are shadowed with mystery.

Overall Conclusion

Zombie-Loan is nice interesting show that provides a good balance of action & humour.  It kept my interest high & made me think differently about the series.  If you like PEACH-PIT's works, you would want to watch this show.  However, there are times where there is yuri & yaoi in it.  You may want to steer clean from this if you are offend by these things.

Zombie-Loan gets a 7.5/10.  The show's plot is exciting as the elements of the loan rules create some suspense & humour to the characters.  The different styles of character designs is great & the characters are interesting to follow as well.  However, the show is incomplete as it was heavily focus on character development & background.  It will leave people wanting more as the story has actually only begun to scratch the surface.

Last updated on September 1, 2008