Tae Yamada

""Franchouchou’s Number 0, the oddest one amongst the members of Franchouchou. She doesn’t even sing, to begin with. She also doesn’t dance properly. Sometimes, she does the most outrageous and childish things. But, somehow, the other members consider it as a natural thing for her to be doing. Instead of being angry, they seem to love her. Her fans are also very fond of her unconcerned and unbounded mysterious behavior.""

Tae Yamada (山田 たえ Yamada Tae) is the mysterious seventh member of the zombie idol group Franchouchou, with her title simply referring to her as The Legendary Tae Yamada (伝説の山田たえ, Densetsu no Yamada Tae).

Human
Tae has long, straight dark plum hair with two parts that stand out slightly with her bangs, are straight with a piece that runs down her face, and is reddish-brown. Her usually baggy clothing hides a very well-endowed and curvy figure proportionally identical to Sakura's, with only slight differences by sheer numbers, primarily due to Tae being much taller. However, her idol outfits her impressive proportions are much more noticeable.

Zombie
From what you can see under her clothes, everything except her face and hands is covered in bandages.

Tae typically has bandages on her neck, chest, head, and upper leg with a loose black dress tied with a white rope. She also has gray over-the-knee socks with black shoes.

Idol
Her idol outfit changes throughout the series: On episodes 1-6, Tae wears a purple T-shirt with the word "Zero" written on it and a purple skirt with white ruffles. Using makeup, she and the other zombies make their skin look like an average human. She also wears contact lenses to achieve her red eyes that she had as a living person.

After Saga rock, her idol outfit changed to a red jacket with a plaid decoration, a purple skirt with cotton inside it, and knee-high boots.

Personality
Tae is the only one of the girls who hasn't fully regained consciousness, so she's still a mindless zombie. As such, Tae is unpredictable and driven by sheer instinct, doing things like biting the other members and throwing herself into the crowd. However, she seems to have some semblance of a conscience, like being at least able to understand the other members to some degree and be cooperative enough to participate in the practices and performances. She also seems smart enough to have a caring side for her fellow zombie idols.

As the only zombie that hasn't awakened, she makes little contribution to the team and often gets in the way when her head falls off or bites people. On the other hand, she can be surprisingly helpful in times of a pinch, such as when she bites into one of Maria Amabuki's buns when threatening Sakura Minamoto and Lily Hoshikawa and scares a large boar after it attacks the girls.

Tae's zombie antics and girlish demeanor are often sources of comedy. However, in Episode 12, when Sakura, blinded by depression, vehemently pushes her away too often, Tae reaches her breaking point of anger and shows that she can be, even if she is ultimately a harmless zombie, quite scary when she's outraged.

Tae has an extreme appetite. In the earlier episodes, she's often eating and craving dried squid, and in ep 5, her gluttonous side is put on full display. In episode 5, she went as far as to attack a guy in a chicken suit because she thinks he's a real chicken, swallow a whole plate of raw meat before this, and eat various foods during the Gatalympics. In episode 10, she even went as far as to attack a large boar.

She tends to bite and gnaw on anyone or anything she can get her hands on, including her hair. However, according to Kotaro Tatsumi, she is harmless.

Although she has not spoken, she has demonstrated the ability to communicate with others, usually through roars or moans. She's also shown to imitate the girls' movements and learn to do them herself, even trying to get Sakura to repeat them with her, demonstrating communication through body language.

When she sees a squid, she will jump on it even if it is not a squid itself and only has its shape; if it weren't for Sakura, she would have eaten a lot of things. She is pretty playful and builds a snow sculpture on her own with Romero. Lily usually treats her like her pet and plays with her.

Skill-sets

 * Dancing - Although Tae cannot sing, she can move her body to the beat of any song.
 * Snowman Building - In the tenth episode, Tae has built an accurate snowman of Romero that is thrice the size of the girls.
 * Hula Hooping - Tae and the rest of the girls can perform while twirling hoops made of electricity during their performance in "Episode 16".
 * Drumming - Tae is shown to stand her own when she is seen playing the drums during their performance in "Episode 16".

Natural Abilities

 * Non-senescence - Due to being a zombie, Tae retains her age and physical appearance at the time of her death forever and is immune against death. As she, along with the other girls, can endure circumstances that human bodies normally cannot handle, like the lightning bolt in the seventh episode, and instead of suffering a third-degree burn, the girls end up becoming luminous and self-possessed - tuned voices.
 * Detachable Limbs - As a zombie, Tae can detach and reattach parts of her body from their sockets with little to no effort, either intentionally or accidentally. She is the zombie whose limbs fall the most, which is a potential danger if she performs a sudden act of force in public as she can expose the secret.
 * Phosphorescent Vision - Like the rest of the girls, Tae's undead eyes are shown to be able to glow in the dark.
 * Element Absorption - Their zombie bodies can speed up the process of absorbing chemicals like those seen in Episode 4, where they instantly absorb the medicinal patches, causing their muscles to relax and not be as stiff. In addition to their subsequent concerts and practices, they continue to use the patches. In Episode 7, their bodies demonstrate a battery-like characteristic by receiving an electrical discharge from lightning, glowing a pale blue, and releasing laser beams with their fingers.

Unique Abilities

 * Monstrous Form - After having had enough of Sakura Minamoto's self-deprecation and sulking, Tae briefly morphs into a terrifying form of herself with a larger and pointer set of teeth, and her glowing eyes are more prominent. This form also makes her more agile.
 * Superhuman Strength - As shown in the eleventh episode, Tae can drag Sakura out of the room Sakura locked herself in and into another area in the mansion just by hanging onto the collar of her pajamas with her mouth.
 * Cross-species Communication - Tae can communicate with Romero using canine language and often howls with him at the moon.
 * Demon-slaying - TBA

Etymology

 * The name Tae is written in hiragana (たえ), which has no special meaning. However, when written in kanji (多恵), it could mean "many" (多) (ta) and "favor, benefit" (恵) (e).
 * Tae's surname Yamada means "mountain, hill" (山) (yama) and "field, rice paddy" (田) (ta/da).

Trivia



 * The staff has said they wanted Tae's image to be "sexy onee-san who comes for your blood;" they wanted to give her the impression of a beautiful long-haired Japanese horror character. They thought it would be cute if the hair moved like dogs' ears and could move independently. They also enjoyed designing the clothes, choosing prisoner-style shirts and pajamas that they really liked.
 * Tae's past may be hinted at by her name. The name "Yamada Taro" is often used for corpses if the police cannot identify them, similar to John Doe. It is safe to assume that "Yamada Tae" is the Japanese variation of Jane Doe, the female equivalent of John Doe.
 * Tae's Seiyu, Kotono Mitsuishi, said that the first emotion born in Tae's heart was familial love for Sakura and that she also found her conscience in episode 11, when Sakura suffered amnesia, all this in an interview with Kotono Mitsuishi.
 * Up to the third episode, Tae's voice actress was credited as "???".
 * This was to excite the fact that she shares the same Japanese voice actor as Sailor Moon.
 * In "Episode 9", Tae chews on Maria's odango-like hair.
 * The primary role of voice actress Kotono Mitsuishi was Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon, who wore buns in her civilian and sailor costume.
 * It is later confirmed that she bites them because they look like onions, the fact that she takes more relevance in Gaiden.
 * Tae is the only member of Franchouchou who does not have any lead songs as she cannot speak properly.
 * Tae's hair resembles the head of her favorite food, squid.
 * Tae is the only other zombie whose cause of death hasn't been revealed yet.
 * By actual age at death, Tae is the oldest of the girls as she died at the age of 29.
 * Tae's outfit closely resembles that of Buddhist Motsuke Koromo style robes.
 * Tae is one of four with the most curvaceous figures in the group. Sharing same cup size and body type with Sakura Minamoto and beaten only by Yugiri and Maimai Yuzuriha.
 * As of "Episode 13", she "works" part-time alongside Sakura for a local pasture farm.
 * She currently has one episode centered around her, that being "Episode 18".
 * The episode also revealed that her family's gravestones are positioned right next to the Minamoto family gravestones.
 * Similar to Kotaro in "Episode 13", Tae is also hinted to be the only one of the girls to harbor good luck instead of terrible luck throughout the episode.