Trivia / Zombie Land Saga

• Actor Allusion: In a roundabout way. Tae's legendary "just because" in-universe, yet she's voiced by a legendary actress - for the dub, meanwhile, Dawn M. Bennett voices Tae instead, as she's previously voiced a character who bears a legendary power.
• All-Star Cast:
  • Some very big names from the Japanese voice-acting industry are involved in this series, like Mamoru Miyano as Kotaro and Kotono Mitsuishi (the one and only) voicing Tae.
  • The English dub is no slouch either: Brina Palencia, Caitlin Glass, Bryn Apprill, Amanda Lee, Sarah Wiedenheft, Dawn M. Bennett, Stephanie Young, Austin Tindle, and Ricco Fajardo. And we even get the (legendary) Christopher Sabat as Lily's father, Takeo Go, Kent Williams as Shinta Okoba, the reporter who notices Franchouchou after they appear in a commercial, and (legendary) Colleen Clinkenbeard as Reiko Amabuki, the former boss of Dorami and Saki's friend when she was still alive.
• Anime First: The anime has an official manga adaptation published by Cygames, which began release four days after the anime began airing.
• Backed by the Pentagon: The Saga Prefectural Government in real life was involved with the production of the show, and saw the benefits of anime tourism as a result.
• Defictionalization:
  • After the airing of the final episode of Season 1, the real Arpino crew wrote an actual apology for structural damage after the major snowstorm^note Just for the reader's sake, they were referring to the anime version, not the actual real life stage.
  • Franchouchou has become an actual real-life idol group formed from 6 out of its original 7 Japanese voice actresses^note minus Kotono Mitsuishi that has gone on to perform live concerts well after season one ended, recreating iconic moments of the show such as the arguement between Sakura and Saki that led them to perform Dead or Rap. Their concert in the actual Arpino hall even recreated the destruction of the stage while performing Yomigaere, though this was entirely staged with no actual damage or harm done.
• Follow the Leader: The Spear Counterpart franchise HANDEAD ANTHEM, surrounding male idol zombies, launched shortly after ZLS took off. That series is more EDM and action focused than a wacky idol story.
• God Never Said That: After The Reveal that Lily is a trans girl, offended viewers began claiming this was a deliberate mistranslation on Crunchyroll's part to "push the trans agenda". In actuality, this reveal was not only present in the original Japanese, it was even less ambiguous.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: In an interview with the head of CygamesPictures in the February 2019 issue of Megami Magazine, he said they'd been overwhelmingly pessimistic about the show's prospects before it aired, and weren't expecting it to become as popular as it did.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The Season 2 trailer had few scenes that were left unaired for the remainder of 2nd season such as Sakura falling into oblivion and Franchouchou members heading for a concert.
• Non-Singing Voice: Zig-Zagged. Due to time constraints, Funimation's simuldub leaves all the singing from the Japanese version undubbed. The DVD/Blu-Ray release of the dub, aka the "uncut dub", has all of Franchouchou's performances completely dubbed, among some other songs as well.
• Playing Against Type: In the dub, Bryn Apprill voices Ai Mizuno using the lower registers of her voice. She normally plays Token Mini-Moe-type characters with higher pitched voices.
• The Red Stapler:
  • Episode 5 did this for Drive-in Tori, a real-life chicken restaurant with a real jingle that the girls perform. After the preview dropped, swaths of commenters came to the company's videos to point it out.
  • Franchouchou's mansion is actually based on a preserved building in Saga. When it was opened for the public on November 25, the management didn't expect to have 1000 visitors in just one day.
  • Season 2's first episode starts off with Ai working for a real life company in Saga known as Kojima, which is known for manufacturing dried squid products. When said episode first aired, the dried squid products that the company provides all managed to sell out in mere hours.
• Referenced by...:
  • Once upon a time, to promote the anime's OP/ED album, Masami Obari was called to create a promotional image out of the show. He ended up making a hypothetical Show Within a Show of the anime, where the girls played some sort of parody of Super Sentai, complete with their own Humongous Mecha, "Saga the Great". This resulted in Zombie Land Saga being included as one-time event content for Super Robot Wars X-Ω.^note Neither Saga the Great nor the aforementioned Show Within a Show appeared in the anime proper.
  • The Franchouchou zombie girls have cameo appearances within the zombie horde in Episode 6 of Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead. Both shows' official Twitter accounts also hinted it prior to the airing of that episode.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • The title is almost identical to that of the 2009 film Zombieland, another zombie-centric Horror Comedy. Apart from that, the two couldn't be more different: the movie is a gritty gore-fest focusing on a group of indulgent survivors in a Zombie Apocalypse, while the show is a mostly lighthearted Deconstructive Parody of Idol Singer shows where the protagonists are the zombies. Their approaches on zombies are also worlds apart: whereas the movie uses the mindless Technically-Living Zombie variety caused by a worldwide virus, this series features a small group of the standard reanimated dead who retain their human thought under the right stimulation. This caused a Hilarious in Hindsight incident in July 2019 wherein this anime announced its second season days after the live-action film announced its sequel, both within the same month.
  • Excel♡Saga not only has a similar name, but starts in the same way: The lead character (Excel), who lives in Kyushu^note Fukuoka prefecture, in this case, steps out into the road without looking and gets hit by a truck. Excel's voice actress? The same as The Legendary Yamada Tae.
  • Vinland Saga also is a case of this, though due to confusion of tags in Japanese Twitter circles. Eventually a crossover promotional poster with both series was produced. The author of the Vinland Saga manga being a huge fan and supporter of this show also helped.
• Sleeper Hit: The show came out of nowhere, with very little done in the way of advertising to paint it as anything different from other "cute girls meet zombies" shows like Highschool of the Dead and School-Live!. Upon its release, it became one of the most popular anime of Fall 2018, with Rolling Stone Japan calling it the season's "anime dark horse", and later even the top show of the entire year according to the Anime General Election 2018. The success took the anime staff by surprise as well, since they weren't sure if it was going to be successful at all.
• Tourist Bump: The story takes place in Saga Prefecture, and it's frequently lampshaded how obscure the setting is. However, the series has successfully boosted tourism sales in Saga, particularly for Drive-in Tori, which is a real restaurant that the characters help advertise for in the series. Since the Saga prefecture government was part of the production committee, this may actually have been invoked.
• Trolling Creator:
  • After the airing of the first episode, the producers of the anime, Cygames and Avex Pictures, have gotten this reputation, presenting the anime's premise like a typical Zombie Apocalypse when it's actually a parody of the Idol Singer genre with a mix of Horror Comedy, with all of the footage suggesting a violent and gritty series coming from a five-second video Kotaro shows the girls about what would happen if they're caught. Suffice to say, it's actually worked.
  • Since Tae only growled during the early episodes, not saying a word, her voice actress remained a mystery during pre-air promotions, interviews, and even when the anime started airing. In the credits of the first two episodes, her actress is only credited as "????" and it wasn't until Episode 3 aired that it was finally revealed to be Kotono Mitsuishi.
    • When Mamoru Miyano introduces the voice actresses of the main cast in-character as Kotaro, there is a seventh slot marked only with question marks in place of Tae's voice actress. He does attempt to speak the name, but it comes off as a random mumble instead.
    • A group picture of the voice actresses and some staff members was posted to Twitter on October 4, 2018, but Mitsuishi's face was covered with an icon of her character's face.

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