Zom 100 vol 1 by Haro Aso

Illustrated by Kotaro Takata
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Akira spent three years of his life post college working for a company that, on the surface, professed to caring about their employees, but the long hours, multiple-day marathon work sessions, and the attitudes of the bosses say otherwise.  The only thing making it slightly bearable is the crush he has on a lady in accounting.  One day, Akira wakes up and finds tons of people have been turned into zombies! Rather than be stressed about a zombie apocalypse, Akira is just relieved he doesn't have to go back to his horrible job.  What's more is his crush was also turned into a zombie, so there's really no reason to go back! Akira decides to make a list of all the things he wants to accomplish in his limitless spare time before becoming a zombie.  On a beer run to a neighborhood market, he runs into another non-zombie - a pretty beautiful girl with great survival instincts.  She waves off Akira's offer to team up, and we see a glimpse of her life, where she has made a list of 100 ways to avoid becoming a zombie.

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This is a really funny approach to the Zombie Apocalypse.  Akira is somehow gifted at avoiding the zombies on his bike/scooter, because he played rugby in college, but it's still going to be difficult to do some of the things on his bucket list with all of these flesh-eaters around.  Several of his goals involve finding someone to help him, or at least figuring out how he can set it up himself (like zip-lining, for instance).  I'm sure our two survivors will intersect more, so it'll be interesting to see how her survival list matches up with his thrill-seeker list.

While VIZ rates this as Teen Plus, this might be one to avoid for the school library.  There are several instances of naked people, one of which could be chalked up to zombies not really caring about their clothes, but not the other.  Akira goes to find his friend, who has spent the night with a lady in a hotel room that would make Christian Grey happy.  This ends up helping the friend since he has plenty of ways to tie up his lady-friend-turned zombie, so he's able to survive for a little while until Akira finds him.  Akira, and later, his friend, also have lots of beer as they celebrate their freedom (one of Akira's 100 things is to do nothing but drink beer all day). 

It is an entertaining story, but the content might be a bit too adult to swing it in a school.

Sara's Rating: 7/10
Suitability Level: Adult

This review was made possible with a digital reader copy from the publisher through Net Galley. 

Publisher: VIZ Media
Publication Date: February 16, 2021
ISBN: 9781974720569 (Paperback)

Tags: Rating: 7/10, Suitability: Adult, Manga, Survival, Humor, Horror, VIZ Media