Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (2023)
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead arrives with a premise that feels tailor-made for the current cultural moment. Japan has long grappled, both in fiction and in daily life, with the phenomenon of karoshi, the concept of death by overwork, and the broader anxiety around salaryman culture, where loyalty to the company can swallow a person whole. That anxiety has fed some memorable Japanese storytelling over the years, and if you want a sense of how bleak the source material can be, Macca's review of Salaryman (2021) covers similar thematic ground from a documentary angle. The manga on which this film is based, written by Haro Aso and illustrated by Kotaro Takata, began serialisation in Shogakukan's Weekly Big Comic Spirits in 2018 and quickly built a following for its cheerfully anarchic spin on the workplace satire genre. Grafting a zombie apocalypse onto that setting is, on paper, a very tidy idea: the undead horde becomes a kind of grotesque liberation, freeing the protagonist Akira Tendo from a job that was, by any reasonable measure, already eating him alive.
The live-action adaptation was produced by Robot Communications and Plus One Entertainment, companies with solid backgrounds in Japanese genre cinema, and was directed by Yusuke Ishida, whose previous work had leaned into visually energetic, youth-oriented fare. The film carries a running time of 129 minutes, which is a fairly ambitious ask for a comedy-horror hybrid, and it is shot through with a saturated, comic-book colour palette that clearly sets out to translate the manga's pop-art sensibility directly onto the screen. For context on how well Japanese cinema was performing at the international level in 2023, it is worth noting that the same year also produced Godzilla Minus One, a film that demonstrated how much creative ambition was circulating in the Japanese genre space. The zombie comedy subgenre itself has its own well-worn traditions globally, from low-budget cult fare to the kind of sharp, character-driven work that Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) attempted more recently on the American side.
Leading the cast is Eiji Akaso as Akira, a young actor with experience across both television drama and theatrical releases, playing a character who is essentially required to bounce between exhausted despair and manic, bucket-list euphoria across the full runtime. Alongside him, Mai Shiraishi, a former member of the idol group Nogizaka46 who has built a credible acting career, takes the role of Shizuka, the pragmatic counterpoint to Akira's chaos. Shuntaro Yanagi plays the freewheeling best friend Kencho, Kazuki Kitamura brings a reliably watchable screen presence to the ensemble, and Yui Ichikawa rounds out the principal group. The cast is polished but their collective energy is very much calibrated to match the film's deliberately heightened, almost theatrical register. Whether that register pays off is, of course, the central question.
I’m not inherently opposed to a zombie comedy. When done right, blending the undead with sharp, dark humour can yield absolute classics, from Shaun of the Dead to the chaotic fun of the Return of the Living Dead series. However, there is something about Yusuke Ishida’s 2023 live-action adaptation of Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead that I found thoroughly, persistently annoying. Instead of a clever subversion of the genre, it feels like a hyperactive, neon-drenched exercise in style over substance.
The film’s central conceit is clear enough: it’s meant to be a sharp, satirical commentary on the soul-crushing monotony of modern work culture. Our protagonist, Akira, suddenly finds the zombie apocalypse to be a liberating break from his toxic corporate job. In theory, it’s a cracking premise. In practice, it just doesn't work for me as a zombie flick. The narrative leans so heavily into surreal, manic comedy that it completely loses the grounding required to make the horror elements land. The jokes frequently feel forced, and the pacing is a bit of a mess, whipping from one absurd set piece to another without letting any genuine tension or character development breathe.
I will concede that, purely on a visual level, the picture looks great. Ishida and his team have clearly poured effort into crafting a vibrant, comic-book-inspired aesthetic that pops off the screen. The colour palette is bold, and the practical makeup effects for the zombies are undeniably fun to look at. But flashy cinematography can only do so much heavy lifting when the script underneath it is this hollow. You’re left watching a film that mistakes sheer, unadulterated chaos for actual comedic brilliance.
This is a movie that will likely find a devoted audience among younger viewers who are entirely on board with its frantic, anime-adjacent energy and anti-corporate messaging. For me, however, it was a deeply frustrating watch that squanders a genuinely fun premise. It’s a visually striking, but ultimately hollow, zombie misfire.
Zom 100 sits in an interesting, if uncomfortable, position. It is the kind of film that clearly has genuine affection for its source material and a real visual imagination behind it, yet those qualities alone cannot compensate for structural problems that accumulate over two-plus hours. The anti-corporate satire at its core is a legitimate and well-worn vein of Japanese storytelling, one that can produce genuinely resonant work when handled with care. Here, though, the message gets buried under the noise it is trying to make. Fans of the manga and viewers already sympathetic to its frenetic, anime-adjacent register may find exactly what they are looking for. For everyone else, it risks being the kind of film that you admire briefly, at a distance, the way you might admire a very loud firework: impressive for a moment, gone before it means anything.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2026-07-29
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (2023) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
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