Review of High School of the Dead

When I started Highschool of the Dead, I was already aware of the many cliché scenes and overwhelming fanservice based on previous research. I have heard of the series before and yes, I held off on it because it didn’t seem like my kind of anime. I was never fond of the High School Genre and Romance, especially when it tries to take itself seriously. I realized around 2/3 through the anime that I wasn’t very far off on my expectations, but then again, I was a little surprised on why I was still watching it and hadn’t dropped it yet. Something clicked with theanime but it still wasn’t all that special even after all of the great review it had received.

Story: 7

Okay, the first thing I realized is the fact that this anime was trying too hard to be your ideal anime. When a zombie apocalypse breaks out, a “perfect” team is created of the master swordswoman and Kendo club president Saeko, the overconfident and way too brave protagonist, Takashi; His “girl” Rei; a smart bitch, Saya; and a gun expert, Kouta. Then there’s the ditzy school nurse, Mrs. Marikawa. They all form the expert zombie-killing group and manage to survive longer than the actual adults in the anime. Nah, too perfect. It just seems too cliché to click. There would be a handsome, confident, ovary exploder with spikey hair that wants to get into the skirt of a hot, big –breasted girl that won’t stop crying about her dead boyfriend, but instead gets into the skirt of an equally sexy Tsundere swordswoman… I’ve seen these elements in almost every school anime. It’s as if this anime wants to be taken seriously, but it’s just… not. There are just too many unbelievable and convenient events that take place. While this is the unavoidable truth, I think zombie apocalypse and supernatural animes develop a successful franchise altogether and I like the idea of combining an everyday school/slice of life anime with the zombie apocalypse genre. That developed and interesting plot and overall I think it was alright.  Unfortunately, I also realized that the plot didn’t really lead anywhere. I got the fact that they were trying to find their parents, but there were just too many extra characters and elements that kind of drove my mind away from that main goal and kind of brought my head to believe that the main goal was for the main protagonist to get inside everyone’s pants and kill as many zombies as he can while looking as cool as possible. Jk, but seriously, the plot strays a lot, and that kind of bothers me.

Art: 10

Art is always a tough one to analyze in an anime because you’re not just looking at the characters, but the design of the backgrounds, the animation, and the color scheme, etc. Character wise, I think they were all designed with a special thought to their character. Takashi, the protagonist was made especially cool and confident looking, Saya had glasses to mark her intelligence, etc. The fights and animation scenes were generally fantastic. There was great movement in the fight scenes and you could say that they were very “pretty” and “fun to look at.” The setting design and color scheme kind of went together on this one. I noticed that not many scenes took place in broad daylight. It was always in twilight or nighttime; I think that was to add to the fear element and kind of gave the mood of the anime a boost in darkness. I liked that feeling and it worked well with the rest of the anime.

Sound: 7

Normally, when thinking of sound, I review both openings, endings, OSTs, and also voice acting. To start, the openings and endings weren’t that good. Normally, when I don’t listen to it in its full every time I watch an episode, there’s nothing special about it. The same went for the OST unfortunately. The voice acting, however, was hilarious. I watched dubbed for this anime and the voice acting definitely proved my point that this anime was trying too hard to be way too serious. Swears were thrown in at random and it definitely wasn’t the best acting, but to tell the truth, if it were subbed, I can assure you that I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as I did. The acting just added to the ridiculousness of the entire scene and made everything hilarious. I liked that about the sound, above everything else.

Characters: 6

The characters, of course, were too archetypical and there wasn’t much to like about them, really. Normally, when writing a review about an anime, I look for what I liked before what I didn’t like first, but the first thing I realized when I starting watching this anime, WAS the weakness of the characters. Many of them were pretty much useless and served no purpose to the plot whatsoever. If anything, the added fanservice completely took away from the plot, and I didn’t like that at all. I find that the overwhelming “over 9000 mark” fanservice was completely distracting and once of the reasons why I didn’t take the anime very seriously. Also, he personalities of the characters and their archetypes made it extremely hard to actually like a character. The only one I really had a connection with was Kouta, the fat, gun expert, and that was because he took everything seriously and looked at the world through realistic eyes, and that wasn’t because he was coward either, it’s because he’s good at looking into the true meaning of things and only risking his life to protect what he cares for most. His friends. The other characters were God-awful. So, 6, sorry.

Enjoyment: 9

I can’t help but enjoy this anime. Even though it was trying to be serious, I found it more humorous and amusing to watch, mainly because of the unneeded elements that took away from everything else and added such that wasn’t meant to be added. The action scenes were very fun and my favorite parts of the entire anime. I basically watched because of the action scenes and not the clusterfuck plot. It met my expectations and unfortunately didn’t surprise me anywhere, but I found amusing enough to deserve a 9 in enjoyment.
Overall: 7