Review of High School of the Dead

HOTD really disappointed me because it had the potential to be one of my favorites. The story was interesting, and we don’t really see many zombie animes so it could have filled a niche, and done it really well. The only problem is that the whole show is filled with way too much fan service. I personally don’t like fan service at all (probably because I’m not attracted to women) but usually it dosnt bother me. In HOTD they throw it in your face 24/7. All of the girls (most being in high school) are constantly extremely sexualized, with boobsway too big and bouncy, scenes that have nothing to do with the girls suddenly pan to their skirt or panties, and full scenes of them doing nothing but changing/ bathing for long periods of time. With the cherry on top being that they also managed to sexualize a small CHILD (7 YEARS OLD). This happens when Alice Miraculously falls on Kohta’s crotch and he start blushing and making noises. (Like wtf) And with full frontals of some of the girls we really couldn’t have gotten one shirtless man?

That is all to say that if it wasn’t pumped with fan service I might have actually liked it. With the extra screen time they probably could have made a whole extra episode that they could have used to flesh out Shizuka’s character. She is the most sexualized out of all of them and has almost no use to the group even though she is literally a doctor and we are in a dystopian world with no active hospitals. In my opinion she is a good example for the whole show. Great potential as a character. Being a medic they could have showed us the ways she cures diffrent Broken bones scrapes etc. and been a big help to the group, but instead of making her a good character that brings something to the table, she is baisically two big walking breasts (that are bigger than her head). Also Rika (Shizuka’s friend) could have been a really strong and interesting character but instead they chose to sexualize her within 2 minutes of her being on the screen and they went nowhere with her character.

There where some redeeming parts, which is why I didn’t give it a 3. Like I said not many other anime are filling the zombie niche, and I think it was cool what they did Saya’s relationship with her parents. Furthermore the fight scenes are pretty cool to watch. And I liked how they showed the government trying to slow the spread of the virus and many citizens ignoring it.

So overall I gave it a 5, because while it could have been an easy 7 the constant fan service gets way too annoying for me to put it any higher than average.