Yumeminga Paradise, which screened in American theaters on January 19th, is a direct sequel to Zombie Land Saga Revenge. Though it does provide a brief summary of past events from both TV seasons at its beginning, this is not an entry point for the franchise, as full familiarity with all previously-established characters is assumed.
Thee final scene of Revenge featured one of the biggest jaw-dropping twists in anime history: an apparent Independence Day-style alien attack. The early stages of this movie reveal that this didn’t happen right away after the climactic concert performance at the end of revenge, however. Instead, four years have elapsed (curiously, the same amount of time that passed since Revenge aired on TV. . .) and Franchouchou has gradually established themselves as a mainstay for representing Saga prefecture. They’re even going to be headliners at a world expo which has been moved to Saga from its originally-planned location for vague reasons. Naturally, that isn’t going to happen without complications, and in this case it’s an alien attack. Oddly, the attack halts right as it seems to be ramping up to global destruction of humanity (Tae having been sucked up by the aliens a few hours beforehand couldn’t possibly have anything to do with that, right?), giving the zombie girls of Franchouchou a few days to find some way to thwart the alien invasion. Because naturally, zombie idols are the perfect group to combat aliens who primarily depend on heat-sensing vision!
If you’re looking askance at the set-up, well, that’s pretty much the whole movie for you. This is absolutely a turn-your-brain-off viewing experience, because think even a little bit about how this plays out and the plot holes start gaping. Tight plotting has never been the style of this franchise, though, and chief director Konosuke Uda (who did storyboarding and episode directing for the first two installments and has since directed the Ranma ½ reboot) wisely doesn’t try. The movie completely rolls with how ridiculous everything about this situation is, down to it blatantly ripping off Independence Day but adding a savage twist. Need a particularly stupid way a devastating alien attack gets abated? Check. Want to see the zombie girls get random power-ups and even see one fight in what’s basically a mecha? Check. The zombie dog gets super-sized for no apparent reason? check. Zombie girls having body parts become detached and use them for very creative purposes? Check. The bicycle-riding cop finally gets to do something useful? Double-check. Oh, and we can’t forget to have a concert with two full performance numbers, either!
The big, long-awaited event here – which has been hinted at enough in advertisements that I feel it can be brought up without major spoilers – is that Tae finally gets her mind back for most of the movie, and she turns out to be quite the bad-ass when cognizant of what she’s doing. This includes revealing why Kotaro insists on referring to her as “Legendary” (but without a qualifier on what kind of legendary) – sort of; much about the exact specifics of what Tae was doing in her previous life is left rather vague, though the connection she has to Kotaro and one of the other Franchouchou members are among the movie’s most interesting revelations. Maybe most unexpected here is the reveal about her age. Another brief scene elaborates a little more on the vaguely-suggested connection between Kotaro and Sakura, further cementing the previous implication that Sakura is here because of Kotaro’s personal preference rather than because she was “legendary.”
The movie even spends just a little bit of time being serious, primarily in the truth of the Franchouchou members’ zombie status being revealed to a few additional characters. Some of them don’t initially take it well, and the strained relationships that creates accounts for the movie’s one bit of true depth. Otherwise the movie is primarily an action romp once the alien attack commences, with time set aside at the end for the big concert. Fortunately, MAPPA proves well up to the task of delivering a number of elaborate action pieces; this may not be quite on the level of the Chainsaw Man movie, but the scenes hold their own and provide plenty enough spectacle to justify seeing the movie in a theater setting if you can.
Maybe the weakest part of the movie (relatively speaking) is the big performance numbers at the end. They slide between CG and regular animation in passable but not flawless fashion and are pretty traditional idol performance numbers rather than some of the boldly-stylish performances sometimes seen during the TV series. They’re still good songs, and there’s even a bit of emotion in the second song because of something happening during the performance, but they don’t stand out anywhere near as much as everything else going on here.
Overall, the movie is a must-see continuation of the franchise for any established franchise fan. It maybe runs just a little longer than it needs to (it clocks in at just over two hours), but it’s still a satisfying viewing experience.
Overall Rating: B+
USA Anime 