Admittedly, my friend and I only watched 6 episodes of the first season of Zombie Land Saga before the movie (and wiki'd the rest), but I think that it was the perfect amount of time to get to know the characters and see how each of them react. To be honest, I didn't have high expectations going into the movie because none of the jokes in the anime were hitting, and I wasn't entertained by the genre or plot much either. Boy, oh boy, was I wrong about that. This movie took an otherwise not very notable IP into an absolute howlfest of movie. Ihad so much fun seeing each of their personalities translate from forming a J-Pop girl group into literally killing aliens with lightsabers and ray guns. They threw away the J-Pop stuff pretty much instantly in favor of the aliens. When Saga was literally being bombed by the Aliens, the group's first reaction was, "Aw man! I guess the Expo's canceled," which was really funny. When at first I was extremely confused, the concept started to really grow on me as the movie went on, and I was fully on board by the time they hatch the elaborate scheme to enter the Alien mothership.

The plan to enter the mothership was well done. I won't say that this is peak cinema or anything, but it incorporated many of the Saga traditions that we saw in the anime in very interesting ways. The elaborate fireworks, using the mud to hide the heat signatures, the advertisements on the trucks, and rallying up all the Saga residents together. The girls all supporting Tae, despite being new to her new personality too was so nice to see.

The mothership was a whole different beast. This was by far the most entertaining part of the movie. The animation quality definitely went up, and when each girl got their weapons, it was an absolute riot. To see these idol girls wielding lightsabers, controlling robots, running over aliens with a cruiser, all to get Tae to the energy cores and then do a final bait and switch at the escape pod was so funny. Tae finally accepting Sakura was also a nice touch as well.

Dub was the only way to see this movie at my theater, but I'm so glad I watched it in dub. The English screenwriters really had so much fun putting meme references and quirky lines that made me literally burst out laughing at times. Some memorable lines were, "that's a tracksuit, you dipshit!", "you brainrotted bozo", "you ladies, alright?", "So the Earth really is round!", "If I can't drive or fly back to Saga, I'll walk over there until my legs give out [he proceeds to fall instantly]", and probably many more.