In a recent manga review for the Daily Yomiuri, Stephen Taylor wrote, “According to Yusaku Hanakuma’s Tokyo Zombie, somewhere near Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward there is a mountain of garbage that hides a sinister secret.”
“In this single-volume black comedy manga, Hanakuma explains that the trash mountain, known to locals as Dark Fuji, is used not only for the illegal dumping of TVs, refrigerators and air conditioners, but also for burying dead people.”
“Afro-haired Fujio and bald Mitsuo, the protagonists of Tokyo Zombie, are keen judoka who know all about this, so when Fujio inadvertently kills their boss during a disagreement at work, they know just the place to get rid of his body.”
“When they get there, they find a middle school gym teacher disposing of his former students. The man is literally dismembered (with the emphasis on member) by a naked woman who rises from the dead. It seems the mixture of sewage, garbage and rotting corpses on Dark Fuji has unleashed a plague of zombies.”
“All of this within the first 13 pages of this good example of heta uma, or “bad, but good,” manga that, like the 2004 British zombie movie Shaun of the Dead, treats its gruesome subject with tongue firmly in cheek.”