Sato Sakichi’s Tokyo Zombie, as the title signals, is a genre parody. The intent is laughs, not shocks, though some of the more bizarre gags are not for the delicate minded. Based on a Hanakuma Yusaku comic, it begins as a Dumb And Dumber clone, with Aikawa Sho and Asano Tadanobu as two workers in a fire extinguisher warehouse who kill time practicing jujitsu with each other. The bald-domed Fujio (Aikawa) is the steely-eyed sensei (teacher), the Afro-haired Mitsuo (Asano), his dimwitted deshi (student).
Nearby is “Black Fuji,” a mound of refuse where the citizens of Tokyo deposit everything from used computers to corpses. Revived by the toxic waste, the latter begin arising from their unquiet graves as zombies. After Fujio and Mitsuo find themselves under ravenous assault (the zombies, as it’s their wont, crave living flesh), they jump in their gaily painted van and hightail it out of Tokyo. Fujio’s goal is Russia, where he plans to train Mitsuo in the most manly of martial arts, but Mitsuo, the doofus, heads south toward Atami, a seaside resort. On the way they save a feisty punk girl, Yoko (Okuda Erika), from zombie hordes, but - let’s just say that Fujio goes missing.
Flash forward five years. Tokyo has been taken over by zombies, with the few remaining humans huddled in condo tower compounds and divided sharply between the rich and the poor. Among the latter are Mitsuo and Yoko, now a couple with a child. While Yoko cares for the little one, Mitsuo fights in gladiatorial battles with zombies, watched by bored rich women and presided over by a floridly homosexual manager/MC. Using the jujitsu techniques he learned from Fujio, Mitsuo quickly flattens his living-dead opponents. Too quickly for the fans, who want more blood, fake or otherwise - but Fujio refuses to compromise his art. Then he finally encounters a zombie opponent worthy of him - in a contest that will change his life and shake the corrupt social order to its foundations.
Asano and Aikawa makes a surprisingly good comic team - surprising mainly because Asano, the best serious actor of his generation, proves to be a natural as a natural-born fool. (Think Sean Penn reverting to his Jeff Spicoli character in Fast Times At Ridgemont High).
The film takes jabs at various easy targets (boorish wealthy women, needy gay men) but most of the laughs come from Fujio and Mitsuo’s odd-squad friendship. When they are not on screen together, the film sags, and when Mitsuo and Yoko fight lovelessly, while their little girl looks on mutely, it descends to bad home drama. But Asano and Aikawa are together enough and the action is amusingly inventive enough to keep the lapses from mattering too much. The title makes a certain promise and Sato and company deliver on it. You didn’t think this movie was Billy Wilder, did you?