Maid of the Dead

Here’s a question that I don’t think gets asked enough... What’s the first thing you’d do if you became a zombie? When the bite that infected you begins to fester, and the craving for human flesh starts to develop in your brain, what do you think is the first thing you would do under these conditions? Yes, it’s true, you probably wouldn’t be in control of your body anymore by that point... You’ll lose all cognitive function and your body will carry on without a pilot as it satisfies the terrifying hunger that it can’t get rid of, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a little bit of you left in there. Even without direct control of your motor functions, there are stories out there that would argue that your body is still likely to follow some of your most ingrained habits from your previous life. Maybe you’d go to work, and give your boss a piece of your mind(in exchange for a slice of his)... Maybe you’d go to school, and spread the disease to your classmates. Or maybe... Just maybe... You’ll visit your favorite maid cafe.

Now I hear what you’re saying, if you’re going to find a zombie in a restaurant at 3AM, it’s probably going to be a Denny’s. But that’s not the case in the anime I’m reviewing tonight. In celebration of the spooky month of October, I’ve decided to do a short review of the gruesome three-minute anime short called Maid of the Dead, which was directed by a well respected Japanese youtube animator named Takena Nagao. If you haven’t heard of him, that’s kind of disappointing, since I’ve reviewed two of his projects before, those being Chainsaw Maid and it’s successor, Chainsaw Maid Episode Zero. I’d recommend reading the first one in particular, because I went into some background information about Nagao that I don’t particularly feel like rehashing in this third review.

To the uninitiated, I’ll give you the short version. Takena Nagao is a Japanese horror artist who creates incredibly gory short films using stop motion animation, or more specifically, claymation. Yeah, I very recently reviewed another claymation anime called Doggy Poo, but despite the obvious difference in production... That movie being presumably made by a major studio, while Maid is a decidedly more amateur work... I’ve gotta be honest, Maid of the Dead looks way better. Well, for the most part. It has more or less the same texture issues that Doggy Poo had... The skins of the models were inconsistently wrinkled from frame to frame... Maid of the Dead is quite a bit worse at this, as not only does the character molding look extremely rough at times, you might also notice the odd frame or two where the models actually look dirty, like there are smudges on them from other models.

But where Maid of the Dead excels over Doggy Poo is with the actual animation, because there is constant movement in this film, and it looks damn good. There’s a lot of detail to both the body language and the facial expressions of the characters herein, and it’s all very effective. The way a newly turned zombie sways when getting back to their feet feels chillingly real, as do the blank stares that they give while processing the idea that a human standing in front of them equals food. There is a very effective element of disturbing zombie horror in this film, showcased both by the implied threat of one zombie maid against her coworkers, and the actual gore effects that are highly detailed. But more importantly, this high quality animation also serves as the perfect distraction for all of the visual issues it also has.

I already mentioned the rough looking textures on the character models, but one thing I also noticed after several times through, there is almost no background behind the characters. There’s furniture and other characters, but beyond all of that is just a vast, expansive orange void. I realize Nagao was probably working with limited resources, but he HAS made films like this one that didn’t have this issue, at least as far as I can remember. I know he’s done films with a forest setting, and some that had detailed indoor settings, and even if he didn’t have the resources to create a fully detailed cafe interior, such a thing couldn’t have been impossible to fake. Hollywood uses fake backgrounds all the time. Still, the actual movement in the foreground is what your eyes are probably going to be focused on the most, so whatever.

There’s also an element of comedy in the story, and while I’m not going to spoil the jokes, I will say they have a really casually surreal feel to them, spots of levity in the middle of absolutely explicit scenes of carnage, involving characters who are not treating the horror show in front of them with the appropriate amount of fear. One mild spoiler, I will say, I never would have thought I’d see a Chekov’s Gun situation playing out with a pair of knitting needles. These added bits of humor go a long way in spicing up what is otherwise a pretty standard and played out cliche of the zombie genre; Some dickhead enters into a safe space full of people without admitting that he’d been bitten, and carnage ensues when he turns. I’m sorry, but didn’t Weird Al tell you how tacky that is? The dickhead turns, bites one maid’s face halfway off. There’s a ton of detail in the wound, where you can see the inside of her cheek with her skull and teeth on display.

This leads to what I think may actually be an original idea in this undead genre; The first girl projectile vomits all over another maid’s face, and that alone turns her into a zombie as well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. On the other hand, the idea of chaining up and enslaving zombies to do menial work is nothing new, it’s been a thing since at least as far back as Shaun of the Dead, but even that leads to a sort of amusing joke, so I’m not going to complain. One complaint I would like to make, however, and I already kinda hate myself for saying this, is that the short is... Too short. Yeah, I feel awful saying something like that in reference to a stop motion animation that probably took an insane amount of time and effort to put together already, but when I think of a zombie outbreak happening in a maid cafe, I think of a scenario where the maids and customers are fighting for their lives in a set piece that’s full of creative possibilities, and even if this film’s length was only doubled to six minutes, I could see a ton of kick-ass maid vs. zombie action happening... But, alas, that’s not what we got.

To be clear, though, what we got IS fun. It’s not the best piece that Takena Nagao has made, but it is one of the best looking, with smooth and gracious movements, highly detailed gore, and bright colors that pop out at you very energetically. It’s probably not the first project of his that I’d recommend watching, but I’d still recommend it. We live in a world where zombies aren’t just a fad, they’re a fad that faded a long time ago, to the point that you probably think you’ve already seen everything the genre has to offer. You’ve seen zombies in found footage movies, you’ve seen zombies trying to become pop stars, you’ve seen zombie deconstructions, you’ve seen zombies cynically parody all sides of American culture from McCarthyism to consumerism, you’ve seen a zombie try to pass as human by working at a morgue... But until you’ve binged the works of Takena Nagao, you’ve never seen what claymation zombie media is truly capable of.

I highly recommend binge watching Takena Nagao’s entire catalogue this October(except Shitcom), almost all of which can be found on youtube.

But as for this one in particular, I give Maid of the Dead a 7/10.