Franchouchou -- Adabana Necromancy（徒花ネクロマンシー）

Happy Halloween 2018! We're still a few hours away here in Toronto before the kids go out trick-or-treating but the furor and craziness of a Shibuya Halloween have largely passed by, although when I checked the live stream camera for the main intersection a few minutes ago, there were still some hardy costumed folks walking about in the wee morning hours of November 1st. Not sure if my good friends were in the middle of that party that walks like a traffic jam but I'm sure that I will find out after they return in a few days.

Back on Sunday, I wrote that there were a couple of anime this season that has been reflecting some of that Halloween spirit. One is "Tonari no Kyuuketsuki-san"（となりの吸血鬼さん）, about the world's most adorable vampire. The other is the subject for this article, "Zombie Land Saga"（ゾンビランドサガ）which apparently has grabbed a lot of folks already, although I can't say that I'm one of the converted...yet. One reason is that I got accustomed to the mile-a-minute gag-a-thon that was "Back Street Girls ~ Gokudols"（ゴクドルズ）, an anime that had transgendered chinpira becoming a successful aidoru group much to their chagrin. For that matter, I may have OD'ed on a whole lot of zany gag anime in the summer.

This time, it's zombie girls getting the aidoru treatment and unlike "Back Street Girls", I was a bit caught off-guard that "Zombie Land Saga" has been more along the lines of last year's "Cheer Fruits" with the slower building up of a local aidoru group. Even my anime buddy has conceded that a good balance hasn't quite been achieved yet although we're going to catch Episodes 4 and 5 this weekend.

The opening theme is pretty interesting. "Adabana Necromancy" (Fruitless Necromancy) by this motley zombie aidoru group Franchouchou（フランシュシュ）has got a fair dollop of pizzazz that seems to incorporate elements of Takarazuka Revue and old tokusatsu/cop show theme tunes. It zigs and zags all over the place like a terrified inhabitant of a haunted house trying to flee from its confines.

Written by Shin Furuya（古屋真）and composed by Yusuke Kato（加藤裕介）, "Adabana Necromancy" is sung by cast members Kaede Hondo（本渡楓）, who I last saw as the hapless bartending Hitomi in the hilarious "Hinamatsuri"（ヒナまつり）, Asami Tano（田野アサミ）, Risa Taneda（種田梨沙）, from "Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?"（ご注文はうさぎですか?） fame, Maki Kawase（河瀬茉希）, Rika Kinugawa（衣川里佳）and Minami Tanaka（田中美海）. I was kinda hoping that the Kotono Mitsuishi（三石琴乃...yep, Sailor Moon）was in the recording booth but her character still merely growls a lot and eats dried squid. "Adabana Necromancy" ended up peaking at No. 13 on Oricon.

And just so you know that Xmas is around the corner...