Zombieland Saga

  Not really into idol shows going into this, and I still don't really think I am after. It's interesting finding out the weird trope of like, everyone going on stage to do a performance and fix everything in like, Angel Beats for example, is apparently an idol thing.
  One of my big problems with idols is how like, the idol industry fucking sucks, and how loudly these kinds of shows just ignore it. Like, just like in the show, a lot of the time the people in these idol training programs are abused, are barely there on their own will if at all, participate knowingly in an extremely toxic + exploitative relationship with their fans, etc. The show contains all these aspects of idol culture, but just signs right passed them. Like 99% of Shades's relationship with them is emotional abuse cut and dry. The whole arc of the episode w Lily's dad was him abandoning his relationship with his daughter IRL for his daughter the idol, giving up on idols to the point of destroying his TV in reaction, but then, through a moving idol performance, going back on it all and becoming invested in the parasocial idol relationship all over again.
  That being said, the show is hilarious. Shades being an abusive, insane, larger-than-life anime capitalist is played to absolute levels of absurdity that's often genuinely clever and almost always just really fun. Half-zombie Tae-chan is perfect. Very funny show. 8/10 there.
  The more genuine parts of the show are usually built around this idol dynamic, so getting too invested in them doesn't really work for me, but plenty is just drama for the actual characters, and most of that is ok / not bad. I really liked the one girl's mom digging up her old streetbike to go girlboss her daughter's head straight. More often than not they fall flat though, like Sakura not wanting to be an idol cause she wanted to be an idol before she died, or the one girl not wanting to be an idol because she was an 80s idol.
  The show is insanely not problematic otherwise though. The characters aren't unduly sexualized. Really high bars we're clearing here but it's anime. Absolutely insanely, one of the characters is assigned male at birth, but goes on to be a child-star idol girl. She even talks about having always felt like more of a girl. The way she ends up dying before becoming a zombie is noticing a facial hair, realizing she's starting puberty, and then just straight up dying from the shock rather than going through boy-puberty. And then, as a zombie, she repeatedly brings up how happy she is to be a permanently 12(?)-yr-old zombie who never has to go through boy-puberty. AND THEN, when she brings it up to her idol group, not only is it not played for some kind of absurd happening, both the characters and text itself engages with it entirely seriously. One character, who's character is already overconfident and bombastic, teases her about it at first in a friendly way, but when the tone is more serious, is just as accepting as everyone else. absolutely wild.
  Overall: idol show bad; Zombieland Saga hilarious and somehow insanely progressive for anime.