Review of High School of the Dead

To be honest, this show really isn't as bad as people say it is. It's a unique premise rarely seen in the East due to the fact that they haven't really jumped on the zombie apocalypse bandwagon yet. It's a pretty good show to be honest. Story - 7 The story isn't bad. The concept of a group of highschool teenagers surviving a zombie apocalypse got me pumped, because when I first read the premise of this show, it really does sound like an interesting show. It did let me down a little bit though as I watched. There was an over-use of fanservice which just madeit irritating to watch at some points and some of the jokes in the English dub were just plain awful. This series relies on fanservice where it lacks plot development, which I find is an increasing trend nowadays and needs to stop.

The story could go a lot deeper into the lives of these people during the apocalypse but for some reason they just add a lot of fighting scenes and boob shots instead of develop the plot some more. However, I gave it a relatively high rating because this premise is quite rare in Eastern anime with not many shows being based around a zombie apocalypse, the unique twist of a highschool setting makes it interesting to watch and see how so called 'regular' highschool teens deal with a pandemic.

Art - 8

The art is fairly good, especially for 2010 standards. The characters seem to be well-drawn and so was the fanservice (even though i don't really like it). The zombies looked pretty scary and all looked different so you can tell the art team paid attention to detail with the zombies. The fight scenes and the blood were drawn pretty well too. It was nice overall, nothing amazingly stunning though, and I can't really complain about anything either.

Sound - 7

I had no problem really with the OP and EP, they both sounded cool and the action music was pretty nice. However the sound really shined a lot in the fight scenes in the show. There wasn't too much of it shown, but when it was, there was a pretty big impact and it made it feel awesome. Unfortunately, some parts of the show feel pretty blank at some points because of lack of music, and even if they just put a quiet piece of background music there, it would make it a whole lot better.

Character - 6

The characters were really undeveloped to be honest (quite unlike the breasts in the show). There is the stereotypical idiot, the bitch, the 'elder sister' kind of leader and the arrogant girl the main character likes. The only really interesting and innovative character is Kohata who appears to be a wimp and fat otaku but is actually a gun beast. He really gets to shine in the apocalypse and show his true self, and I found that pretty neat. Otherwise, the show relies on boobs over character development and personality, and that isn't a really good thing.

Over time, you never really see the characters develop like you would in traditional shows. In some shows, even shows like this, you see characters develop and mature a lot. If you were to show me a clip of Takashi from episode 1 and then Takashi from episode 12, quite frankly I wouldn't be able to tell any difference because the character just feel the exact same over the whole course of the show.

Overall - 7

To be honest, I did quite enjoy this show. It wasn't too bad if you manage to ignore the fanservice (hard thing to do) and if you manage to look past it, it definitely can be quite enjoying to watch sometimes. The fight scenes are usually pretty good and the characters are still watchable, even if they aren't perfect.

This is definitely the best zombie apocalypse anime out there, it does have a lot of flaws, but if you manage to overlook these it definitely is a pretty good show to watch and personally I quite enjoyed it.