If your first thought at the outbreak of a real zombie apocalypse would be to grab a camera because the resulting footage will look great in your zombie movie, you’re probably a character in the newest Neptunia title.
The Neptunia series was created around a fun concept: What if game consoles—i.e., the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii—were cute girls? From there it expanded into a story about these cute girl goddesses trying to make their game-themed worlds as popular as possible while battling against the anthropomorphic personification of piracy. Then came the sequels, adding personification of the PSP, DS, and PC. The series’ recent spinoffs have expanded to include characters that represent everything from famous game franchises to Japanese gaming magazines.
So with that concept pretty well mined out, where does the series go now? To zombies, of course.
Uberdimension Blanc + Neptune Faction Vs. The Zombie Army once again follows our goddess heroes—only this time they are “studying abroad” at a human school so they can learn to understand the common people they are supposed to protect.
Neptune quickly co-opts the school’s film club to make a zombie movie. However, she has no idea how to write or direct so she offers those jobs to Blanc. While somewhat reluctant at first, Blanc soon joins the project.
And as luck would have it, the moment they start filming marks the start of a true zombie outbreak. So what do our goddess heroes do? Contain the zombies and hunt for a cure? Nope. They grab the camera and keep rolling—using their battles with real zombie hordes (made up of their fellow students) as the action scenes for their film.
What makes this even more hilarious is that despite there being real zombies on hand, the group continues to make the film as if it were the lowest of low-budget movies. When a shot seems too complicated, Blanc simply has two characters give exposition about what they are “seeing” happen off camera. Or if she needs something like a zombie dog to do something specific, she simply makes another of the human or goddess characters pretend to be a zombie dog.
When it all comes down to it Uberdimension Blanc + Neptune Faction Vs. The Zombie Army is a loving parody of zombie movies in general—from the ways they act out each scene to Blanc’s insistence that their zombie film will transcend the genre (even as she pulls out every cliché in the book).
And I’ve certainly been getting more than a few laughs out of it so far.
Uberdimension Blanc + Neptune Faction Vs. The Zombie Army (Geki Jigen Tag Blanc + Neptune VS Zombie Gundan) was released in Japan for the PlayStation Vita on October 15, 2015. There is currently no word on a Western release.
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