Scans_Daily

I read the novel version and was sadly disappointed.

Same criticism I have of Austen's work normally: needs more zombies.

More seriously, I was disappointed at the "we've also all been trained in martial arts and swordsmanship" crutch, which turned the story very much into "Pride and Prejudice, except every so often a zombie attack strikes out of nowhere and they kick ass and go right back to the story."

To use a comics reference, I would have far, far preferred a "What If" approach as opposed to an Elseworlds. In Elseworlds (generally speaking, there are exceptions for both types), they make some change to the setting, but generally the same set ups and stories get told. Batman in the 1900s is still Batman, has a Catwoman, etc. In "What If", they take some specific change and then everything develops from that point.

So what PaPaZ was the Elseworlds approach. You could google the plot of the original PaPaZ and you'd know pretty well exactly how the story would go, with the only surprises being how they insert the zombies and ninja fights. But what I wanted from PaPaZ was for the zombie apocalypse to start during the plot, maybe even derail the plot completely, have the characters not know how to cope right off the bat, and certain aspects of the original story coming back (maybe compressed in time, instead of taking place over months or years they take place over a single night where the zombies are out in force, maybe since they're being forced to hole up together and so they can't avoid each other) but with nothing being guaranteed. I guess most of all I wanted the zombies to have a POINT to the story, not just being a gimmicky afterthought.

I imagine the graphic novel adaptation would be somewhat more tolerable but I can't see myself picking it up.