Gonzou Kosugi

Gonzou Kosugi (小杉 権蔵) is a character in Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead. He was Akira Tendou's former team leader.

Appearance
Gonzou is a fat middle aged man with an almost pompadour haircut.

When working at the company, he used to wear a purple shirt, green tie and blue jeans.

After the outbreak, he donned a new jacket to advertise his new company.

Before the Outbreak
Gonzou is a selfish, brutish and ruthless man who is also the person responsible for making Akira's workplace a toxic environment where exploitation and dehumanization became commonplace. A deeply abusive person, he uses psychological and emotional abuse to belittle people, in order to make them obedient and reliant on him. He would constantly yell and complain to them, about nearly everything they did on a daily basis, even contradicting himself in doing so such as insulting people for asking input about everything yet also complain about how they took initiative without his consultation. When people had enough and quit their jobs, Gonzou would only insult them behind their back by mocking their "lack" of fortitude.

During the Outbreak
Even the zombie apocalypse did nothing to change Gonzou and it worsened him instead, becoming a petty authoritarian who would lay traps in purpose to sabotage vehicles in order to drag the affected people into his new self made workplace where he would dominate them with an iron grip, berating them and manipulating them into doing all the chores. Classic of abusers, he would often mix insults and belittlement with honey laced lies, often excusing his mistreatment as being a form of tough love, in which he's trying to "save" those working under him from having to think, organize or decide by themselves, and instead let him to make the decisions for them.

Gonzou is both lecherous and a misogynist, believing women are useless for working and best used as tools for pleasure, making perverted advances at Shizuka Mikazuki while demeaning an older women for serving him drinks, stating that they should be served by young women.

Ultimately, his lack of any redeeming qualities, utterly remorseless nature and complete detached lack of care for anybody but himself would prove to be his undoing. When his workers accidentally let zombies infiltrate their compound and chaos ensued, Gonzou could do nothing but try to run for his life and would have lost it, if were not for Akira's compassion as he was severely out of shape. When Akira demonstrated a caring and effective leadership that saved everyone, it ended up exposing Gonzou for who he truly is; a deeply insecure and cowardly man with no faith in himself who has to resort to abusive tactics to have others do the work for him in order to elevate himself and feel superior, but without any drive or skill or any competence of his own to do any work.

After Gonzou's true nature was exposed and evident to everyone, he was left completely alone in the middle of nowhere with no resources or transportation while he was left sobbing and begging for others to not leave him, which fell on complete deaf ears as everyone was unilaterally sick of his methods and his self-serving cowardice.

Live Action
In the Live Action adaptation, Gonzou's cowardice had a new low as he pushed his two best men to an invading horde in order to save his neck.

Story
Gonzou was the team leader of a black company before the outbreak. He was friendly to Akira at first, as he wanted to make Akira trust him, but once that happened he showed his true colors. He would work his crew to death, until the zombies attacked.

Gonzou survived and then formed a group who he used to set traps to cause other survivors to crash. He would then offer them safe haven and medical attention in exchange for their labor. He did this to Akira's group and this caused Kenichirou to get a severe injury, as he was on a motorcycle with no helmet.

Akira didn't want to work for him but Kencho needed help. So he agreed, but then Gonzou got back into Akira's head and made him think that he cannot live without his support. He turned Akira back into a zombie (not undead) and made him work to the bone. Even after Kencho was healed, he refused to let Akira go, though Akira had paid him back for his help. Akira said that he would stay but Shizuka told him about his Bucket List and she had added "Tell off my jerk of a boss" which made Akira think that he wrote that.. Gonzou then hit Shizuka and was going to destroy his Bucket List, but Akira came to his senses and stopped him. He then said that he would rather die in the zombie world than stay with him a second longer. Just then, a supply truck arrived but the drivers got attacked by some zombies that had snuck into the trailer. Akira saw the chaos and Gonzou trying to outrun them, but he couldn't as he was too fat and out of shape to outrun them. Akira saved him and the combined efforts of Gonzou's group except Gonzou and Akira's group then boxed the zombie horde and blew them up. After the chaos, Akira and Gonzou's team all said goodbye to Gonzou and abandoned the pathetic man all alone.

Abilities
Gonzou was the boss of the department in which Akira worked, which gave him authority over his workers. Gonzou used psychological and emotional abuse to routinely destroy his workers' self-esteem in order to make them servile and dependant on him. He did this through a mix of insults, disparagement, and leveraging the position of the company on the industry, while guilt-tripping people into staying so as to not burden the rest of the workers with the extra labour that would be caused by their desertion. This ultimately created a toxic environment in which people were aware that they were destroying themselves, but with little tools to fight back, escape or otherwise try to find another job, due to the difficulty of such task, while feeling duty-bound to not trouble their fellow coworkers.

He employed the same tactics during the zombie apocalypse, becoming the boss of a group of survivors which he mistreated just as much. However, that's where his talents end. It is revealed that Gonzou, has very little abilities to speak for himself, being unable and unwilling to put on any work, no matter how mundane, abusing his workers into doing any and all tasks on his stead. When zombies accidentally infiltrated the compound, he could do nothing, but pitifully run for his life and had to be saved by Akira for he was severely out of shape due to his fat physique.

With no real leadership skills, or any sense of empathy towards anybody for himself, ended up causing every person working under him to desert him without any regrets, leaving him alone, with no resources or transportation, while all he could do was beg pitifully.

Akira Tendou
Gonzou acted as team leader for a black company that Akira was working for where he was brash with his jokes and uncaring about the wellbeing of his employees.

He has the forceful attitude to make the employees go on an all-nighters often.

Shizuka Mikazuki
Gonzou saw Shizuka as a sexual object to exploit where he told her to drink beer and to let him massage her chest, hinting at them of doing it and he said that he had something else for her to swallow.

He even went as far as hitting her when she told Akira to stand up to him.

Kenichirou Ryuuzaki
As Kencho only wore a t-shirt and jeans, he gets seriously injured due to wearing no protective gear while riding his motorcycle after Gonzou set up traps to burst tires of passing vehicles.

Gonzou saw Kencho's health as a way to manipulate Akira into working for him again and had no intention of letting him go. This made Kencho despise Gonzou that he was willing to let him be devoured by Zombies.

Etymology

 * The name Gonzou means "right/rights, authority" (権) (gon) and "warehouse, cellar, magazine" (蔵) (zou).
 * Gonzou's surname Kosugi means "small" (小) (ko) and "cedar" (杉) (sugi).