Review of High School of the Dead

In my opinion - Highschool of the Dead is great when you want to watch something ecchi but still get some good action. It gives you about 50/50 of both and delivers it in pure entertainment. At first I have to say I watched Highschool of the Dead/HotD because I was looking for some action/ecchi, something which isn't that difficult to follow, an anime where you don't have to pay attention for whole 24 minutes - just typical ecchi. So I brought myself to give HotD a try and I ended up -surprisingly enjoying it a lot + giving it more attention that I actually hadplanned.

HotD is known for having a shitload of fan service so I kinda got worried at first that it will be just another boobspam anime like all the other I have watched so far of this genre but it turned out that the story was kind of decent and specially the characters grew on me. The fact about the fan service kinda confirmed itself through the series but HotD managed to hold the balance between boobies/panties flashing and action pretty well. I have to be honest that I skipped some of the hardcore fan service parts (like the bath scene) but hey I didn't start watching it for the titties.
The action scenes were pretty well made and had some nice eye catcher and thrilling enough to concentrate on them.

The story surprised me the most - I was expecting a simple anime which actually focus on the fan service to cover up the bad story (you find a lot of those animes inside the ecchi genre - a lot) but nope, HotD isn't like a normal ecchi. Ok, the plot is not something new, we have seen a lot of zombie-themed series being released in the past few years so it might appear at first as a tryhard in this genre by making it extra fan service-heavy. Or on the other hand - being a tryhard ecchi with some super cool zombies... When you give this anime a try you will find out really fast that all the half-naked-school-girls thing is just a part of this anime and only here to attract certain people to get interested. The story isn't that deep to get you emotional involved into it but keeps you interested enough to continue watching.

My favorite thing about this anime is the well-made character development. Each character has its own personality to pay attention to and special skills (even though Takashi seemed a way too overpowered to me like why does he suddenly was able to ride a motorbike like a fucking pro, how old was this dude again? oh wait.. almost everyone of them were overpowered since none of them seemed to have the past of a normal student). You still get to know about the characters without having annoying fillers or longass flashbacks - it was enough for them to tell a bit about their past/family. Ok, I have to admit you find the typical anime character cliche in this anime like a Tsundere or the useless big-chested clumsy woman but it's tolerable since the interesting characters get enough screen appearance to cover up the weak characters. For me personally stood Hirano out the most. At first I thought he might be end up as your stereotype fat pervert but I was wrong - really wrong (Marginal note: He became almost the main reason why I was enjoying this anime so much). It was also the first time that a cast of an anime didn't annoy me for some reason.

Some parts annoyed me though and made me facepalm a lot: the reaction of the population during the zombie invasion - seriously? How is a high school student able to analyse the enemy so far and fight against them but some trained police man isn't? It's like that suddenly all the people with an IQ above 100 disappeared. Everyone else just broke out in panic and acted useless. That made it seem like only our group of zombie-fighting-teenagers are mental developed enough to fight.. like they are some kind of overlords or something - what I didn't like at all. The contrast between the main characters and the normal population was just too high. Sometimes I even found myself yelling at my screen due the retarded behavior of some civilians there.. The whole situation was a mixture of trying to be realistic with an huge amount of exaggeration on a high level.

Exaggerated were also the physics of some boobs that bounced within this anime. It's like the boobs got their own physics that even bullets can fly through them at the right timing. However, since when do animes with such an amount of fan service care about realism?!

I cannot say much about the fan service except the "exaggerated part". As long the females in HotD wore decent clothes it was far more enjoyable for me to continue watching instead seeing them fighting in bras and shorts. But it has to be said that I am not really a part of the original target audience - which is male.

I haven't commented a lot of the art so far - maybe because of the fact that it's so unexpectedly well made that it even shocked me on a positive way while watching the series. The animations and the backgrounds were outstanding and nice to see. Also, the character design works perfectly with the certain personalities. Although the body proportions of some girls made you questioning about the human body and its limits (I literally got mental back pain after seeing the nurse and her meat watermelons). I don't want to focus only on the "living" cast of HotD at this point here - the zombies look like zombies should look.

Like the art, my opinion is the same on the sound. The voice acting fits pretty well, same with the background sounds during specific scenes. I cannot say anything about the OP/ED though since I usually skip them. But importantly: I cannot remember any ear-cancer-causing voice in HotD, which is a very very good thing.

After all, "Highschool of the Dead" didn't feel like watching a typical harem/fan service/boobplot anime to me. It felt more like watching something with the right balance of everything.

Nevertheless, I am still having the feeling that HotD could have done a lot better without being put into the ecchi genre and focused more on the story instead of the pink panties of high school girls. The plot and the production had enough potential to create a successful anime without being based on giving boners. You know, less is more. But that's a thing that I should rather criticize the manga about.