The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

#I'm Looking For a Zombie

Set in a world where 90 percent of humans on Earth have contracted and died from a deadly, virulent disease, only to then rise again as zombies who attack people. 13 years after that "Red Day" of societal and civilizational collapse, the surviving humans live outside the big cities, still hoping to retake them someday. An entirely new generation of people who know nothing of the pre-Red Day world is now coming into its own. The story begins when Aki and her close friends, Haru and Natsuki, set out to find Aki's missing father.

#I’m Looking For a Zombie is based on the manga series by Katsuwo. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

There's always some discrepancy between sub and dub tracks due to basic differences between languages. But then there are moments where it feels like someone made a deliberate choice for their own reasons, and that's the case with Yu's pronouns in this show. The subtitles for the Japanese track use “she/her” for Yu, while the English dub uses “they/them.” To be clear, I don't personally care which, and I actually think “they/them” works well for the character. But I'm not sure why the choice was made in the first place, and that there is a discrepancy makes me wonder.

That aside, both dub and sub voices are perfectly fine to the point where I don't have a preference. But I can see why this was one of the simuldub shows – zombie stories do tend to have a more universal appeal, and this one is the right blend of silly and serious. On the latter end of things, we have Aki, who is out in the world looking for her dad, whom she assumes has been zombified at some point since he left their village. She promised to be the one to kill him… so every zombie she destroys, she looks at it and says, “Oh, that's not Dad,” leading us into the sillier part of the story.

The silliness is definitely the stronger portion. The story takes place in a world where, after a terrible illness turned many people into zombies, the rest of humanity took refuge in small towns and did its best to get by. Things like stores, canned food, and learning to read kanji fell by the wayside, although motor vehicles and gasoline are still well known. Aki and her pals Natsuki and Haru have ventured out of their village in search of adventure (and Aki's dad), and they meet Sakura and Yu when they rescue them from a zombie horde. They come from a more academically inclined village, so the group of five is clearly the right blend of brains and brawn. If you've ever wanted to see anime characters explode a group of zombies with a fertilizer bomb, this is your moment.

While I don't love the camera's insistence on filming Aki from below, I am impressed by how weird and gross the zombies look. They're desiccated, mummy-like monsters, and you can absolutely tell how long someone's been dead by how dried out they are…and how much clothing they're still wearing. There's a shot toward the end where you can see a woman with hair and a full set of clothing among the naked, hairless zombies, and about half of them have pants in general. Also, they all have terrible, angular asses. Someone really had fun modeling those.

I don't always love zombie shows, but I enjoyed this one. It's like Those Who Hunt Elves but with the undead instead of pointy-eared people – all they need is a tank…and I'm pretty sure Yu could build one.

I have to admit, I can't think of many better ways to introduce the chipper heroine of your candy-colored zombie sitcom than by having her gleefully precede her corpse-bludgeoning with the announcement, “I made a promise to my dad: Nobody gets to kill him but me!” My first question going into #I’m Looking For a Zombie was whether it could meaningfully differentiate itself from similarly lackadaisical undead road trips such as Zom100. I'd say this premiere makes a good case for sticking with our motley crew of zombie manglers, even if you feel like you've already seen this show.

I still can't decide if the show is being too cute by half when our heroine, Aki, doesn't even know the word for “building” as her friends make their way down the dilapidated highways of post-apocalyptic Japan. On the one hand, this smacks of writing that is trying too hard to get across the details of its setting without thinking about the finer points of its character writing, such as the fact that it would be borderline impossible for anyone living just a dozen years after the fall of civilization to have not regularly encountered buildings, especially on a tiny island like Japan. That said, I appreciate that this show is going for the full-on post-apocalypse treatment, instead of just riffing on the societal breakdown already covered by the likes of Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, and the aforementioned Zom100. It helps explain how the series can have its characters act like such goofy little Disney Channel Original Movie protagonists in the face of endless, bloody horrors. This life is the new normal. For these kids, going off on a quest to pulverize the skull of your presumably zombified father is basically like a day trip to the bougie parts of the city where all the good stores have cropped up.

The English dub really sells the camaraderie and chemistry of our crew, which is crucial given the hangout vibes #I’m Looking For a Zombie is trying to cultivate. I especially appreciate how Arianna Contado channels her character's SoCal voice and traits without falling back on the full-on Valley Girl stereotype we're all so used to hearing. Anairis Quiñones also does a good job of channeling Sakura's gremlin energy and charm without making the character seem too immature or obnoxious for the setting. If you're looking for an entertaining comedy to pass the time this fall, then I think #I’m Looking For a Zombie Ep 1 could be just the ticket.

For me, it veers a little too far into the “comedy” half of the “horror-comedy” spectrum, and I like my horror-comedies to strike a proper balance between chuckles and screams. This is especially true in zom-coms, since the zombie sub-genre of horror relies so much on mood and atmosphere to be effective, because zombies themselves aren't particularly interesting or memorable monsters on their own. That is why the best thing about Shaun of the Dead is how it makes the drama and horror of the zombie apocalypse work in its final act, despite all the yuks along the way. In #I’m Looking For a Zombie, the zombie animation is a little too crude, and the horror beats are a little too lackluster, which makes me check out. Maybe the show will pick up in the next episode, but for now I suspect I will need some zombie media with more bite to satisfy the cravings the autumn season always brings.

Is it just me, or does #I’m Looking For a Zombie feel like it's showing up to this genre party a couple years too late? Not to suggest that there isn't any material left to mine from the zombie sub-genre of horror fiction, but the peak for this kind of storytelling was ten-plus years ago at this point, and this work immediately feels a little perfunctory after Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead made such a big splash three years ago. Still, I might be opening this review with trend analysis and genre comparisons because #I’m Looking For a Zombie is a tonally strange and narratively challenging work.

Taking place thirteen years after the zombie apocalypse, #I’m Looking For a Zombie first focuses on the trio of Aki, Natsuki, and Haru. These three young adults all come from the same small, rural village and are traveling through Japan to “kill” Aki's zombified father and source the resources needed for their survival. While out and about, they save the adoptive siblings Sakura and Yū (who has they/them pronouns in the English dub, which is always nice to see!) from a horde and take refuge in a shopping mall. Here, the group bonds and commits to traveling together, as Yū's schemes and Aki's bravery let them escape the surrounding building.

The writing in #I’m Looking For a Zombie is so weird that I can't suspend my disbelief or engage with it. While this cast's limited knowledge of cityscapes and pre-apocalypse society is understandable and an attempt at interesting, informed character writing, it's expressed in the oddest ways. Early in the episode, the three main characters turn to each other and ask, “Is that a building?” while driving past an apartment complex, which is something that they would know even after living in the boonies for a decade and change!

The dub, while filled with people who I know are good actors like Anairis Quiñones as Sakura, also feels fairly stilted, as the performers were clearly given very little to work with in this script. Despite the violence and bleakness built into the premise of zombie media, I think #I’m Looking For a Zombie is trying to cater to a younger audience, which explains why its version of zombies looks vaguely humanoid. Now that this clicked into place for me, maybe I'll be able to get more out of the second episode with these modified expectations, but this is maybe the least I've enjoyed any full-length premiere so far this season.