What did the Zom 100 Live Action change?

August 5, 2023 Crazy 0 Comments Zom 100 6 min read

Did you know that a live-action Zom 100 movie has been released? In case you didn’t, it’s available on Netflix, and the general opinions are that it’s not as good, especially considering that we currently have an ongoing anime. I was curious to find out what changes the movie producers made to the story.

The live-action film has a runtime of 2 hours, so naturally, many things were cut and altered to make the story work well for this type of media, a movie. Therefore, I will list the main changes to the Zom 100 story that the movie introduced.

What did the Zom 100 Live Action change?

Right from the beginning of the movie, we can notice the first major alteration compared to the anime. If you’ve watched the anime, you know that Akira worked… I’m sorry, he was exploited for 3 long years at the company he was a part of. In the live-action version, Akira suffered for 1 year:

Akira joins the company, and 1 year later, the zombie apocalypse begins. Another change we have right from the start is that while Akira played rugby in the anime, he played American football in the movie.

As a curious detail, this is Ohtori in the movie. While we have scenes at the company, it doesn’t show her and Akira’s boss “together,” but it’s implied.

Then the zombie apocalypse starts in the movie, and Akira realizes he no longer needs to go to work. Right after, we have the scene of him descending the neighboring building and meeting the couple we see in episode 2.

In the movie, the woman is pregnant (or has a bellyache), whereas in the anime, she is not. I believe they made her pregnant to add a touch of additional sadness, as you probably know what happens with them.

Oh yes, another thing, in this part of the anime, Akira goes down the building and meets this couple because he wants to go out to buy beer. In the movie, he was going to visit Ohtori, his co-worker.

When Akira arrives at Ohtori’s apartment, she is still in human form. Ohtori is the one who reveals the zombie boss, and Akira uses his American football moves to defeat their boss.

The boss, already a zombie, is knocked out by Akira (and he’s not thrown out the window like in the anime). Right after, Ohtori hits the zombie boss, saying that he had promised to leave his wife… WOW, and then she turns into a zombie herself.

Akira goes back home, sees that the couple is dead, and decides to make his list of 100 things. After that, we have a montage of several scenes of Akira doing things from his list, such as finding the motorcycle:

So, let’s move to the 5th day of the apocalypse. Akira is on the rooftop cooking a steak when he runs out of spices. He decides to go to a convenience store to buy spices when he is attacked by a helmet-wearing woman!

This helmet-wearing woman is Shizuka, who, unlike the anime, doesn’t observe Akira, doesn’t conclude that he’s a regular human, and simply attacks him, asking if he’s been bitten.

Here’s a picture of Shizuka:

If you’ve watched episode 2, you know that when Akira and Shizuka meet in this store, several zombies that followed Akira start entering the store, and Shizuka saves him after a truck crashes into the establishment and kills the zombies.

In the movie, a zombie enters the store because another person on the street was fleeing from them, and we have a sequence where Shizuka fights the zombie!

As we only have 4 episodes of the anime so far, I don’t know if she also fights zombies in the anime, but Shizuka in the movie does.

Now we move to Kencho’s part. He’s in the motel just like in the anime, but there are some differences (or should I say cuts?). The first is that Akira goes to save Kencho wearing an American football uniform and shoves the zombies:

We don’t have the scene of Kencho jumping off the building and getting naked. Kencho was significantly toned down in the movie compared to the anime, and right after, Akira decides he wants to become a superhero who saves everyone, and they decide to leave Tokyo.

In episode 4, Kencho and Akira go out to get a TV, but the TV is completely cut from the movie. They go out to find a way to leave Tokyo and encounter 3 women (one of them being Shizuka) and a driver fleeing from zombies, and then they end up inside a store, and the drinking scene occurs.

Two girls drinking (and yes, in the movie, both are flight attendants).

Kencho, Akira, and Shizuka together in what would be the situation from episode 4:

Kencho ends up leaving with the two flight attendants, leaving Akira alone with Shizuka. Thus, the movie establishes a relationship between them, which doesn’t happen with Shizuka in the anime.

The driver with them turns into a zombie and turns the two flight attendants into zombies as well. Kencho, Akira, and Shizuka escape from the 3 zombies and leave.

There’s no conversation about dreams with the flight attendants, no Akira drinking too much. We have Kencho enjoying himself with the two women, and at this point, we’re one hour into the movie.

For now, we’ll stop here, as in the next scene, we enter territory that the anime has not shown yet. However, you can get an idea of the changes to the original material’s story that the Zom 100 movie has made up to this point.

Mangas on Sale

Read More on Crazy for Anime Trivia