“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet
This line from Shakespeare echoes with unexpected precision in Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead. At first glance, the anime appears to be a colorful zombie comedy, loud with splashes of blood and brighter splashes of paint. But read closely—truly closely—and Zom 100 reveals itself as a modern existential text, one that interrogates work culture, freedom, fear, and the meaning of being alive with the same seriousness found in classical literature. Beneath its playful surface lies a deeply literary meditation on survival, identity, and liberation.
Life Before Death: Plot as Existential Allegory
The most radical move Zom 100 makes is this: the apocalypse is not the tragedy—corporate life is.
Akira Tendō’s life before the zombie outbreak is a quiet horror story. Trapped in an exploitative company, stripped of time, dignity, and selfhood, Akira exists in what Hannah Arendt might call a state of living death. When zombies finally flood the streets of Tokyo, Akira does not scream—he smiles. For the first time, he is free.
This inversion of expectations transforms the plot into an existential allegory. Like Meursault in Camus’ The Stranger or Winston Smith in Orwell’s 1984, Akira lives under a system that crushes individuality. The zombies merely externalize what society had already done to him: turned humans into mindless bodies driven by routine.
His “bucket list” is not childish escapism; it is a manifesto. Each item is an assertion of agency, a declaration that life must be lived consciously, even—especially—when death is everywhere.
Akira Tendō: The Anti-Hero of Modern Literature
Akira is not a traditional heroic figure. He is exhausted, traumatized, and emotionally hollow at the beginning—closer to Kafka’s Gregor Samsa than to a conventional shōnen protagonist. His transformation is not about gaining power, but recovering humanity.
Where classical tragic heroes fall because of ambition (Macbeth) or pride (Faustus), Akira’s suffering is born from obedience. His journey suggests a devastating truth:
In the modern world, conformity can be more destructive than rebellion.
His joy is radical. His laughter is resistance.
Zombies as Symbol: Capitalism, Dehumanization, and the Crowd
Like George Romero’s zombie films or T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Zom 100 uses the undead as a metaphor for spiritual emptiness. These zombies are not just monsters—they are reflections of society itself: bodies moving without thought, purpose, or memory.
This question places Zom 100 firmly within the tradition of social critique literature, alongside Orwell, Dickens, and even Marxist readings of industrial society.
Companionship, Ethics, and the Human Core
Characters like Shizuka Mikazuki introduce moral and philosophical counterweights. Logical, cautious, and rational, she represents the Enlightenment mindset—reason over impulse. Yet even she must confront the limits of pure rationality in a broken world.
Together, the characters enact a debate central to literature itself:
This question echoes Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, where the problem is not whether one can live—but whether one can live rightly.
Why Zom 100 Is Literature
If literature is defined by:
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The exploration of human psychology
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Moral and ethical inquiry
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Symbolism and metaphor
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Reflection of social realities
Then Zom 100 qualifies without hesitation.
Like modern dystopian fiction, it critiques systems of power. Like existential novels, it centers freedom and choice. Like satire, it uses humor to expose painful truths. The medium may be animated, but the intellectual labour it demands is unmistakably literary.
To exclude anime from literary studies is not a scholarly decision—it is a generational blind spot.
A Mirror to the Contemporary World
In an age of burnout culture, mental health crises, and performative productivity, Zom 100 speaks directly to the present moment. The anime resonates because many viewers recognize themselves—not in the zombies, but in Akira’s former life.
Conclusion: Storytelling Beyond Medium
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead proves that storytelling transcends form. Like Shakespeare’s tragedies or Orwell’s dystopias, it forces us to ask uncomfortable questions about how we live, what we value, and whether survival without joy is life at all.
Anime, when crafted with such narrative depth and philosophical clarity, does not merely entertain—it interrogates existence.
And in doing so, Zom 100 earns its place not just on screens, but on bookshelves of thought—standing proudly beside literature that has always sought to answer the same enduring question:
What does it mean to be truly alive ?
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