The one where our lovable zombie girls finally get a good start on becoming idols, and also the one where they come up with the perfect group name, thanks to a sneezing friend.
It's the morning after the Saga Castle performance, and Kotaro begins his morning report as usual: by screaming "GOOD MORNING" once more, and harassing yet another poor zombie face-first. This time, it's Lily! Anyway, Kotaro begins to tell them the cold hard facts...the fact that their insane, out-of-control performance...was actually very successful, surprisingly. Because of the group's efforts to handling the situation perfectly well without letting the public know that the girls are zombies underneath make-up, Kotaro gives them all a round of applause for 'good zombie-ing'.
Kotaro then gives Sakura his highest regards for yesterday, for "good vibes" and "good rhymes". Sakura sheepishly accepts it, but not before she is rudely (and very loudly) reminded by Kotaro for her to not get full of herself, as he gives the group of decaying divas another mission lined up to do. He spells it out in plain English...only to mess up the second letter. After writing it in Japanese, it is then we know that their next mission is quite simple: do a guerilla performance.
Yugiri then asks Sakura to give her the info on what this sort of thing entails, and she informs her (and anyone at home who doesn't know what this thing is) that a guerilla performance is basically a number you do in the public out of nowhere. Yugiri then delightfully compares that with "testing a sword on a passerby". Oof.
In any case, the task is easier said than done: performing in the plaza nearby Karatsu Station with a brand new song and dance...but they only have one day to rehearse said song and dance. Technically, they also have an entire night to rehearse, too...but that doesn't justify any means. Ai and Junko are not pleased towards Kotaro about this sudden decision, as the former considers it humanly impossible (no pun intended), while the latter is entirely an outcast and has never performed with anyone else on stage back when she was alive. But Kotaro doesn't seem to care (much like most idol producers, anyway), as he leaves them to rehearse on their own for the rest of the day and night.
In the rehearsal room (located in a shed outside the mansion), we see that no-one has bothered to start rehearsing yet. Even worse, they don't even have a proper group name yet, nor a leader! Lily gets the girls to do something about it, and while Sakura suggests Ai as their leader (due to Ai's experience in the past), Ai immediately refuses due to complications with Kotaro's harsh planning towards the group as a whole. Luckily, there is someone willing to step in for the leader position.
As Saki takes the center, she starts yelling loudly about her proud achievements as the major captain for her old biker group, Dorami. Considering she's very capable at leadership and also getting the girls to get shit done, she volunteers herself for the captain position. But with no one objecting her (probably because of her tough demeanor), she gains the title of group captain- er, leader right then and there.
Saki's first order of business is to help the group of girly corpses settle on a name, due to how Kotaro is extremely awful at sticking with group names (e.g. "Death Musumenote " and "Green Face"). Lily goes in for her suggestion: "Lily With Cutie Lily Magic". But it's not a good enough suggestion due to the name having a lot of Lily in it.
Saki then suggests a more cooler, badass name for the group: "Wicked Rage Void Slackers" (which is pronounced as "Jeanne d'Arc", but it's written in kanji). Lily thinks its lame, given Saki's graffiti handwriting. Yugiri doesn't seem to mind though, but offers her own suggestion instead: "The Mibu Wolves". It's a very mysterious name, but it's cool enough for Saki's tastes (which nets Lily's disproval because of Saki). Yugiri then reminisces about her old days back when she was in Shimabara...but alas, nobody seems to care.
Tae then abruptly interrupts the girls by taking away their blackboard marker...and then she starts to chew on the tip. This creeps out the group, and Sakura rushes towards Tae to stop sucking, as doing such a thing can kill someone (not knowing that they are already undead). The marker then falls onto Junko's hands, and Tae begins chasing her back and forth for that sweet, sweet marker ink.
Back to the drawing board, and Sakura tries thinking of cute sounding names for the group, something that starts with the "Fra"/"Fre" sound. Then all of a sudden, we hear Tae sneeze, making a sound among the lines of "FRANSHUSHU!"
This gives Lily a very clear idea of what Tae was trying to do. Tae was sneezing a particular sound...and it managed to sound perfect for a name. Lily coins that sound into a name known as "Franchouchou", and as everyone repeats that word, they all begin to agree with Tae's ink-credible idea. Saki writes it down...but in kanji, which spells out "Rotten Chaos Stank Gang". She corrects that error, and with their group leader, name and logo all ready, Franchouchou shall now work together to get the new song and dance rehearsed before tomorrow!
Well...not really. After hours have arrived, and Franchouchou (or at least, everyone but the veteran idols) are still stumped and tired, and while Sakura is sadly pondering on the merry-go-around in the mansion's backyard, she's too lost in her thoughts to realize that Tae managed to spin that merry-go-round a little too fast, which causes her to fly into the air. This gives her a refresher of their metal performance, and how Sakura managed to pull it off with her own heart and soul. As she happily giggles mid-air...she immediately crashes down head-first onto the ground, hard.
But now that she has a plan on what to do for Franchouchou to succeed, Sakura tells the group that despite their shortcomings and low efforts at rehearsing, she knows that they can do things right. But those negativity parts of her speech are quite literally slapped away by the most positive thinking person in the group: Yugiri. As Sakura stumbles from that megaton bitch-slap to the face, Yugiri reminds the group that they have to do things right, no ifs and or buts. Sakura sadly goes with it, despite her speech literally being on the same level with Yugiri's (albeit with no negativity at all).
Back in the rehearsal room, and we see Ai and Junko together. Despite being veteran idols, they aren't looking forward to tomorrow. Ai does mention that the remaining members of Franchouchou might have a chance at succeeding with the guerilla performance, but only if they are good enough at said performance.
Either way, the rest of the group arrive back, just in time to practice. Ai and Junko pitch in to help the newbies, but even then, the newcomer idols seem to have a bit of trouble nailing it perfectly. Ai throws in the towel at that moment, with Junko following her from behind. While the rest of Franchouchou keep trying their best at practicing, Ai is being lectured by Kotaro outside of the room. With him stating that the newcomers are doing their best (despite the harsh limitations he gave them), they are doing far better than Ai and Junko when it comes to working together as a team. He then leaves the veterans with a harsh ultimatum: either join in with Franchouchou, or rot to the bone like the useless corpses they currently are.
The next day, we see Franchouchou arriving at the plaza they'll be performing at. With Kotaro giving them another rousing speech with his usual metaphors thrown in for good measure, he quietly gives the girls his order to go perform. Unfortunately, Ai and Junko do not plan to join the rest of Franchouchou after what Kotaro told them last night, which leaves the rest of the girls at a disadvantage.
As the five remaining zombie gals form into a line, Saki introduces the group to the random civilians walking down the plaza. And the music plays once more, as they begin their first rendition of "Mezame RETURNER". Some people start to notice, and are even amazed at Tae's 'performance skills', given that her mouth is stuffed with dried squid again. While Sakura sings the first verse, we see Ai and Junko mouth along to it as wellnote .
During the first pre-chorus section, we see Lily making the wrong move like she did during the rehearsals, which temporarily knocks her down. Sakura then does her best to help Lily get up ASAP, but we cut back to the veterans with Ai stating that Sakura should've kept performing instead of helping her out. With that blunder made, the civilians watching Franchouchou begin to leave immediately, as they have better things to do than watching them fail. The performance manages to get back on track...but only for a moment, as Sakura forgot the entire lyrics for the second verse. And given that some of the civilians are now scoffing and snickering behind Franchouchou's backs, it seems that all hope is now utterly lost.
But wait, is that Ai and Junko singing? Well, it turns out that the veteran idols have decided that enough, is enough. As the group begins to sing together for the very first time, we pause to see that Sakura was able to make Ai and Junko realize that this idol group means a lot to her. Altogether, the entirety of Franchouchou finish their performance, and while they failed at gaining traction, they still managed to impress one little girl who was so into their performance, that she even copies their dancing. At the end of the day, the whole mission wasn't a complete failure, after all.
What was a failure, however, is that Franchouchou didn't even have an official permit to perform on the streets, as the local Saga policeman (who still has no name) tells them to go away. Saki doesn't seem to like cops like him, though, as she attempts to start a fight. Luckily, she's restrained to do such a thing thanks to the others pushing her away from him. The policeman starts to examine at Sakura a little closer, and before he tries to jog his memory about this familiar girl, Kotaro intervenes the scene, with the idol producer yelling and screaming at them to get back in his van, as they head home for the rest of the day.
That night, Sakura thanks Ai and Junko for helping her and the rest of Franchouchou pull through at the very end. While she's still a tad bit uncertain about the newcomers, Sakura still wants to do her best with them, so she can get Franchouchou to succeed at every corner. In fact, Saki, Yugiri, Lily and even Tae wants the group to succeed as well. The only people who haven't understood this yet, is Ai and Junko. However, Junko begins to agree with Sakura, as she feels that performing together is a very good thing, after all. Junko then leaves Ai to think to herself for the rest of the night...
...and we see Ai remembering one of her performances in her past life. And, it's the same performance that Sakura envisioned. Ai then decides that its time to start all over from scratch, as she now joins Franchouchou for the unforeseeable future.
Tropes:
- Achievements in Ignorance: Tae coins the name "Franchouchou" by sneezing. Several of the others compliment her on the suggestion despite it being completely coincidental.
- Alternate Character Reading: Saki prefers to write in showy kanji, though when she writes the girls' suggestions for the group's name, she gets the meanings a bit wrong. She writes "Jeanne d'Arc" as "Wicked Rage Void Slackers" (邪怒無怠佝) and "Franchouchou" as "Rotten Chaos Stank Gang" (腐乱臭衆), at which point the girls just ask her to stop using kanji.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Kotaro gives one to Ai and Junko by pointing out the irony that both of them are professional idols who won't even make an effort to practice for their guerrilla performance, unlike the rest of the girls who are trying their best even though they weren't idols in the first place. He later ends his statement with this:"A zombie that doesn't dance is just a regular zombie. Those girls are trying to live. Are you just going to carry on rotting?"
- Big Damn Heroes: Ai and Junko, finally snapping out of their funk, come in at the last minute to save Franchouchou's performance after an almost-disastrous slip up.
- Bittersweet Ending: The girl's first performance as Franchouchou is a flop save for one enthusiastic young girl who Saki promises a better show for. Ai and Junko though both decide to stick with the others and see where the Zombie Land Saga project goes.
- Call-Back:
- Zombie Land Saga E01
- Saki uses the megaphone she found in at Geil's to address the audience.
- Zombie Land Saga E01
- Darkest Hour: Not long after Lily trips during the performance, Sakura blanks during her singing and forgets her lines, completely freezing up. Thankfully Ai and Junko jump in to save the others.
- Freudian Slip: Ai indicates early that she perhaps hasn't totally given up on becoming an idol like she claims.
- Gilligan Cut: Inverted.Saki: All right Franchouchou, let's go and practice until our butts fall off!"Everyone else: "YEEEAAAAHH!"Fade Cut to the girls tiredly sitting around a playgroundLily: (Sadly)"I don't think we can do this."Saki: "It's way too hard."
- It's All About Me: Downplayed, but Lily's initial suggestion for a group name borders on her being the center. She's also complains when none of the others' name ideas sound cute enough to her.
- Little Miss Snarker: Lily can be quite dry, getting several sarcastic remarks in throughout the episode.
- Misspelling Out Loud: Kotaro can't spell the word "guerilla" in English. He has to resort to the katakana spelling.
- Oh, Crap!: Sakura completely blanks on her lyrics midway through the song, causing her and the others to all stagger in their performance. Thankfully Ai and Junko jump in to save it.
- Rebuilt Pedestal: Ai finally steps up and returns to her idol roots, regaining Sakura's trust after spending the last episode at odds with her.
- She's Back: Ai and Junko finally snap out of their funk and pick up Franchouchou's performance at the last minute.
- So Proud of You: To his credit, Kotaro compliments the girls, especially Sakura, on their successful last performance. Though he quickly switches back to his childish, belligerent attitude.
- Suddenly Shouting: Saki as she nominates herself to be the group leader.Saki: (Deep breath) "I'M THE FIRST CAPTAIN OF DORAMI, THE LEGENDARY ALL-FEMALE BIKER GANG FROM SAGA PREFECTURE! THE NAME IS SAKI NIKAIDO!! I DID A DAMN GOOD JOB BOSSING ALL THOSE BIKER CHICKS AROUND! SO WRANGLING A BUNCH OF BABYDOLLS LIKE YOU WILL BE A WALK IN THE PARK! I! PICK! ME!!!"
Lily: "Jeez, we heard you."
