Review of High School of the Dead

Guns. Swords. Romance. Fanservice. Harem. Zombies. What do these things have in common? If you couldn’t tell already, they’re combined together to make a show called High School of the Dead. From the title alone, you would think that this is your average zombie blockbuster but in anime and… that’s because it really is. This used to be my shit when I watched the hell out of it as a kid. Yeah, it had a lot of gory and nude stuff shown but some scenes with excellent production are what caught my attention. Looking at it now, the animation behind it aged well but thestory content certainly doesn’t. This isn’t just your average zombie popcorn entertainment, there are a lot of problems we need to consider.

The story starts with our lead, Komuro Takashi, hanging around in high school. But suddenly, zombies began rising in Japan and they were spreading around the school. With that, Takashi is forced to kill his best friend to join an organization and vow to protect Miyamoto Rei. Together, alongside a few other women and another man, they work together to cleanse zombies out of the world. To start, this isn’t already a bright sight. I mentioned how HSOTD is your generic zombie blockbuster but in anime, the premise alone already proves that. It doesn’t matter what kind of characters you have, you still have the same slay zombies with few people strong enough to survive ideas. In fact, zombie stories are arguably the weakest monster stories in fiction simply because how most of them are cheap and formulaic. Sure, you still have blood and gore around but so do vampire stories, sea creature stories, and alien stories, among others. With zombie stories, you just don’t have much variety to work around with. If you think that’s bad enough, though, wait till you hear this.

For starters, the fanservice is bad. I want to make this abundantly clear that fanservice is purely subjective in general storytelling. They’re the type of scenes that are made purely for style and style only. Sure, they don’t highlight a story but they also don’t degrade it either, depending on what series you make. Unfortunately, however, HSOTD really likes to inject boob and/or butt shots everywhere to the point where it’s hard to take the show seriously. This series couldn’t go for a single episode without sexualizing any of its female characters. The reason why this is insane is because it’s everywhere. The show doesn’t at least give a decent explanation as to why this is focused so much. The female cast shows their boobs or butts most of the time for genuine budget reasons. Let’s not forget that it also injects harem elements everywhere. Those two things are everywhere that the show itself might be classified as pornography instead. The fanservice is rather distasteful and prevents the show from being even enjoyable on a basic level.

Heck, even if you take out the horrible fanservice, everything else about it also sucks. I can’t be annoyed enough at just how poorly-created the scriptwriting is. The show takes itself so seriously at times. It throws in a bunch of monologues to appear smart or reasonable but in reality, they’re all surface-level garbage. You would think that this show would even compensate for the jarring fanservice with its dialogue but let’s be honest, we wouldn’t really give a shit about it. The dialogue consists of either pseudo-intellectual lines that failed to be smart or serious or straight-up budget Spongebob quotes. The direction is the reason why all of this is horrid. Heck, you can also see some of the dumbest sequences known to mankind. You have characters appearing that they’re on the right but either bring themselves to even greater danger or are just stupid. Either way, for absolutely no reason. There’s no tension. There’s no buildup. There’s no backdrop. We just go from point A to point B without a consistent plan or such.

Oh, wait! How about the zombies? Surely those are supposed to be important additions to the show, right? From what I see in my 4 to 5 hours of observation, I wouldn’t agree with that. The zombies are useless. The only reason why they’re seen to be remotely close to being threatening is when any of the characters act useless for some reason. If you want a story that makes zombies a threat and a major driving force, look at Plants vs. Zombies or Resident Evil for example. They’re not anime but those two actually establish their zombies extremely well. PvZ makes zombies not only strong but also have unique personalities that make them memorable. Those zombies are equally goofy and lovable but they can also pose a serious threat thanks to their leader, Dr. Zomboss. If that doesn’t suit your style, Resident Evil has you covered on that front. Even though its zombies can also be mindless, they’re absolutely high on crack and will easily break your bones if you’re not prepared. HSOTD wouldn’t learn from any of those. It has the exact same zombies you would see from most other popcorn entertainment titles.

Now for “characters” (if you can call them that), with Takashi the emo protagonist, and his gang of… um… let’s say a group of boobs and asses that possess limbs… and maybe even Kouta, I guess. These characters are one-dimensional, even your typical battle Shounen protagonist will have more development than whatever they have. They’re all walking archetypes/Gary Stus with no personalities other than typical zombie slayers. At times, they’re practically rendered useless when the plot says so. Other times, they make some very stupid decisions when they want to appear “smart”. I would have gone into more detail for these “characters” but let’s face it, they’re so bland that there’s no way you would think they’re worth at least 2-4 sentences individually.

If there’s one aspect we can all agree on, it’s that the animation is outright amazing, albeit shamefully. The action in this series is so well done because of the production. Not only do you actually see characters move in a very badass way but each frame is smooth and fits well with the intense fights well. The character designs, not so much, especially the female ones which are solely used for fanservice. A similar case can be said with the music. I guess they fit well with each sequence but outside of that, they’re not much to talk about. The voice acting is decent. Each voice performance conveys each character quite nicely. I will say this, though, the English voice acting is a superior experience compared to the Japanese version since it brings more entertainment value.

High School of the Dead may be a childhood show in my eyes, even if it’s for the wrong reasons since it’s fanservicy and gorey as hell. But as of today, this is not the hill to die on. It’s one of the few anime that is popular for having zombie aspects, but that doesn’t really excuse the shallow and dumb writing while also being misleading. If the zombies are the most useless parts of the show then what’s the point of making them important? You were far more focused on the Ecchi and Harem aspects anyway and those aren’t even very good either. All we have left is some nobodies effortlessly flexing around while being sexualized so hard to the extent of making the show almost unwatchable. Eh, at least we still have the glorious and infamous Matrix boobs scene so I guess there’s that.