The Curse of SAGA

""With the beginning of the Reiwa era, Saga will face a cataclysmic threat. A cataclysm wherin no one will think of Saga anymore, and it will vanish from their memories.""

The Curse of the Saga Prefecture (佐賀の呪い Saga no noroi), also known as The Curse of Saga, is the primary antagonistic force which has plagued the Saga Prefecture since ancient times and continuing into the present day. Its opposite is Saga's blessing, which blesses Saga's future saviors with prosperity. The curse ensures that any person who may bring prosperity to Saga will be struck down before doing so, effectively dooming Saga to a path of ruin and destruction.

Origin
The curse of Saga (as it is known in the Zombie Land Saga universe) is inspired by the historical accounts of Xu Fu, an ancient Chinese alchemist who allegedly visited Saga in his search for the elixir of immortal life. The curse also seems directly linked to Jofuku, as he is shown to visibly suffer as a direct consequence of its power.

The curse takes different forms throughout time. For example, during the Meiji era, the curse manifested by misleading people into war and destruction. In the late eighties, when there was a period of relative normalcy, the curse was embodied by sagako, demons with physical forms who terrorized the residents of Saga. In modern day, the curse appears as natural disasters and/or freak accidents targeting Franchouchou's ascension.

Franchouchou itself was created by Kotaro Tatsumi as part of his Zombie Land Saga project, designed and ultimately purposed to defeat the curse and thereby save Saga. Because the curse promises to kill any individuals who may bring glory to Saga, the project is Kotaro's attempt at circumventing its power by producing an idol group composed entirely of undead zombies.

Skills

 * Ominous Presence - The curse manifests its power in response to a threat, the greater it is, the more effort it will make to stop it, which means that when Franchouchou's group were ready for their concert at the EFS and it itself would bring Saga recognition, Saga's curse would not hesitate to use all its available power to stop the girls or even destroy Saga days before they achieve their objective.
 * Accidents - The curse sees as a threat anyone who wants Saga to be more popular, so it will generate accidents or small or large inconveniences that will hinder Saga in his progress.
 * Misfortune - Franchouchou's girls were cursed by the curse with bad luck, but being dead and with Kotaro on top of them, this bad luck is not effective, in fact the curse tried to take them to the sea and try to expose the girls multiple times during the last episodes because the curse does not want the people of Saga to have something to remember.
 * Deaths - It is implicit in these season 2 episodes that memory is the factor that allows Saga to persist, not its official recognition as a prefecture, because committing an assassination against Saga's rebels effectively reduced the number of people who remember Saga in their hearts. The death of the girls is the last measure of the curse to end anyone who dares to interfere with Saga's popularity.
 * Natural Disasters - Shown in the latest Revenge episodes, Saga's curse is capable of causing natural disasters that are sure to have killed multiple people.
 * Supernatural Beings - TBA
 * Zombies - TBA
 * Demons - Spawn demons in Saga to destabilize the area and stop people from thinking about Saga Prefecture.
 * Aliens - Literally manifesting as an UFO after the Franchouchou benefit concert became popular in various countries.

Weaknesses

 * Onions - Onions are the method of sealing the Sagako demons, a physical manifestation of Saga's curse that tried to end the prefecture in 1989-1999.
 * Memory - Saga's collective memory is what allows Jofuku and possibly the girls to exist. This is Kotaro's plan and that is the way Kotaro plans to save Saga and why it has to be the way he is doing it, if all mankind remembers Saga, it is impossible to destroy it from people's hearts and since the curse only operates in Saga's area, it will be impossible for it to do anything.

Presence in the Series
The curse doesn't just need to kill, it just needs to negatively impact the area.

Season 1

 * Episode 1 - The truck driver that killed Sakura claims he was blinded by a sudden flash of light when he turned himself in for manslaughter, as revealed in the end credits scene of “Episode 17”.
 * Episode 2 - Ai and Junko didn’t listen to Sakura and the three almost got shot by Policeman A. Later on, their identities as zombies are revealed during their performance, though, they were able to cover it up just as quickly.
 * Episode 3 - Their guerrilla performance was a bust.
 * Episode 4 - They lost the sponsorship from the unnamed pharmaceutical company.
 * Episode 5 - Despite doing well with the commercial shoot for Drive-in Tori and having Tae win the Gatalympics, their efforts were at naught since they ended up giving Drive-in Tori the publicity they planned on advertising themselves with.
 * Episode 6 - Ai and Junko’s quarrel causes a rift between the girls’ relationship regarding their fans.
 * Episode 7 - The girls are struck by lightning only for them to find out they are immune to its effects and have instead been upgraded by its voltage.
 * Episode 10 - A wild boar disrupts their “training in the mountains” montage.
 * Episode 11 - The flashbacks portraying Sakura’s life before her death was filled with misfortune.
 * Episode 12 - The snowstorm caused the roof of the stadium to collapse on the girls during their performance.

Season 2

 * Episode 14 - Frustrating White Ryu's radio by causing his station to lose popularity.
 * Episode 15 - Kotaro tries to separate Ai from the girls so they could stop depending on her too much. This catches the attention of Shiori Baba who tries to (re-)invite Ai to join Iron Frill.
 * Episode 16 - Their identities as zombies are nearly exposed again.
 * Episode 17 - Kotaro sabotages the Japanse got Talent twice to avoid drawing the attention of the curse, first with his interpretation of the mud fish making the prefecture look bad and second by sabotaging Lily's song by giving Light the song she was playing to sing, when Light won the curse did not focus on the girls this time. Besides that Light emphasizes that nobody in Saga triumphs.
 * Episode 18 - Having Tae do the errands of the week alone causes Ookoba’s suspicions to get the better of him, revealing the girls’ true identities to him after he tails Yamada all day.
 * Episode 19 - After accidentally knocking out Maimai Yuzuriha, Tatsumi brings her unconscious body over to the mansion, thinking she’s dead and makes her a temporary member of the group. Although her skills were below subpar, forcing her to leave on her own accord.
 * Episode 20 - Kiichi Momzaki’s incompetence at his leadership skills accidentally causes a war within the prefecture.
 * Episode 21 - In an attempt to stop the feud, Ito tries to get rid of Kiichi, and in extension, Yugiri, altogether only to be stopped by the latter.
 * Episode 22 - The natural disasters are growing more prevalent as it has shown to have tried to off Kotaro twice in the present.
 * Episode 23 - The curse has tried to drown and kill Kotaro in several different means but to no avail.
 * Episode 24 - The curse tries to drown Kotaro once more, but again, to no avail. And despite surviving thus far, Kotaro’s immune system is revealed to be gradually failing him as shown near the end of the episode.

Franchouchou

 * In Saki's death, she is the leader of a cycling gang that wants to take over the island of Kyushu and then her country. Due to her influence and the gang's growth, the curse tried to stop Saki and as a last resort left her to die in a motorcycle accident that she initially survived, but by leaving her alive for her gang to see what happened, with the traumatized gang they stop the project of taking over Kyushu
 * At Lily's death, she was a popular actress in Saga. She makes Saga popular and known to her goes against the intentions of her curse, which is why she killed her by growing her hair at an early age and triggering a cardiac arrest from stress.
 * In Ai's death, Iron Frill is a very popular group and Ai is its center, a living legend. Their concert at EFS will be one of the largest in the area. The curse killed her before the concert became a success. The curse killed her in a way that will leave a negative impact on the place so no one wanted to remember the place. Even newspaper articles highlight the bizarreness of the incident.
 * With Junko's death, she already became popular and well-known, a living legend similar to Ai. Her when she went to Kyushu near Saga to bring popularity to the place. The curse stopped her immediately upon crashing the plane and she had no restrictions on collateral damage, as Junko was in a plane crash with hundreds of other passengers.
 * In Tae's case, the curse is already stopping her to "save Saga" by spawning demons to stop her group, we still don't know anything about Tae but most likely she has been brutally killed by a very powerful demon.
 * Yugiri was the victim of the curse or, more accurately, of an exchange. Kiichi was a nameless boy who wanted to get Saga back, but who became a potential victim of the curse (and politics) in the process. Meanwhile, Yugiri had friends in high places and her death was almost covered up and wiped off the map. If her death had been made public in some way and it had been made public that by helping a child to recover Saga, it was accidentally started caused a riot/attempted revolution. Saga would have gotten a lot of attention from that kind of news, like news worthy of a history book. The curse would have had a harder time keeping Saga "forgettable", preferably non-existent."
 * This also implies that the wars that destroyed Saga after its prosperity were the fault of the curse itself in the area.
 * In the case of Kotaro, the curse has been trying to kill him many times trying to drown him in the sea and in the bar where he is, as well as trying to crush him with a figure from Tosu's stadium.
 * Now it makes perfect sense why Sakura was the reason for Sakura's bad luck. It wasn't because SHE was unlucky herself, the curse of the Saga prevented her from succeeding and pursuing her dreams, since then she would have saved the entire Saga, and the universe set out to make sure that didn't happen. And after trying and failing several times to demotivate Sakura, only for her to still not give up, he finally decided that the only way to stop her would be to kill her and according to Arata's files, the truck driver was skewed by a mysterious light and that his truck was pulled by this light towards Sakura. And when Sakura proved physically impossible to kill due to her being a zombie, the curse tried to kill her in an emotional sense by recreating the incident that killed her and gave her amnesia, leading to her losing memories of her time in Franchouchou get depressed again and not wanting to continue. Although thanks to the efforts of her friends, Sakura was able to move on and finally regain her passion for being an idol as well as her memories.

Others

 * Mr. Hibiya, who bought Yugiri and brought her to Saga was the victim of the curse as he was someone very powerful and who could bring prosperity to Saga, he was killed from a "sudden illness".
 * Tae's parents were killed by the physical manifestation of the curse when they planned to bring prosperity to Saga Prefecture. It is unknown how both died.
 * Kiichi's father, who were in the Saga revolt and were killed by the enemy.

Relationship with the Bagua
The curse generates bad luck to those who curse, therefore they even Franchouchou's bad luck coughs were generated by the intentional curse or as a result of their deaths, this is because all the girls died or Butsumetsu on a bad day and therefore the by-product is that in post-life they have bad luck. But the eight girls had extreme bad luck, in Bagua philosophy, going too far to one extreme will take you to the other extreme, so the extreme bad luck of the girls really gives the group great luck to counter the effects of the curse of Saga.

The only people with good luck in the series are Kotaro and Tae, with Kotaro explaining his name change based on the Bagua system which gave him the good luck necessary to prevent Saga's curse from reaching him easily as it did with the girls. Tae for her part is shown in episode 16 that she has good luck to a surprising level since in one day she earned 20 million yen to pay the debt of the girls and Kotaro, so even with that excessive amount of good luck Curse found a way to kill her, surely in a brutal way.

TBA

Trivia

 * Eikichi was also affected by Saga's curse, causing the accident that left him with no chance of being a baseball player.