Review of High School of the Dead
This show laughably fucking terrible at it's worst but I love it so fucking much at it's best. It's a highly ecchi zombie shoot em up with bullets, brains, and tits flying everywhere all at once, and if we where to just rate the show on those traits alone then it is without contest a masterpiece. However, it's not a masterpiece, that doesn't mean it's not good though. Story 7/10: Zombie outbreak in japan, some highschool kids get caught in the middle during an otherwise normal day of school, yada yada yada you've heard this a million times before. Basic zombie survival premise, the kids anda school nurse fight to see tomorrow and live everyday like it's there last while searching for supplies and trying to reunite with their families. Not anything special, but it's not really the focal point of the show and it gets the job done.
Art 8/10: It doesn't feel like it's trying anything new or reinventing the wheel or anything like that, but it just takes your basic anime art style and makes it look really nice. From your panoramic shots to the fluid moving camera shots everything comes together really nicely and it just looks smooth and polished all around. A ton of attention to detail goes into the firearms whenever they become a focal point in a fight scene, and aside from the somewhat stale character designs I can't really find anything significant to fault this part of the show for.
Sound 9/10: I love rock and alt rock, and the opening is probably one of the best I've heard in a minute. The 9 I gave this section is 100% a bias towards my own tastes in music, but you'd have to be a pretty lame person at parties if you genuinely find zero enjoyment from the OST. Sound design was good as well.
Character 6/10: The weakest link of the show. Most of the characters feel like they all fit into really lose archetypes that exist for the sole purpose of getting into ecchi situations most of the time, and the other half of the time they just feel like slaves to their stereotypes; unable to break free from a predetermined set of character traits and lacking in even the most basic of humanly unique charictaristics. That said, I really liked the gigachad firearm nerd Hirano, occasionally best girl Saeko, our MC Takashi some of the time, and Saya towards the end of the anime.
Enjoyment 9/10: I could understand not being able to enjoy a show because you don't like ecchi or maybe you just don't like it when ecchi creeps in on other genre you enjoy and you would be right to rate it as you feel, I totally understand and agree with that. I definitely think that there is some enjoyment value lost and/or gained from this show in the name of heavy amounts of fanservice (and that one bathtub scene that was basically just porn). I enjoyed it plenty in spite of all that, as I personally am indifferent to lewd stuff in my anime and it doesn't really sway my opinion one way or another nor does it bother me, it's just kind of there.
Overall 7/10: Most people would probably give this a 6 and I would agree with that, but I had way to much fun with the soundtrack, visuals, and the fast paced action to rate it any lower than a 7, even if it's not exactly fine art; ecchi aside.