Review of High School of the Dead

**This review is not polished. Please do not bother reading this** One can easily summarize this series with boobies, zombies and bloodies. Highschool of the Dead is practically the first anime that fully adapts the western Walking Dead and World War Z style story. Tho one can argue Shiki and Gantz are also like this, but HSoD is the only one with survival of zombie apocalypses. STORY The story is very generic and predictable. Since the series is not yet finished, all the episodes are about how a group of high school student (and a teacher) try to survive the madness by using a bunch of zombiebattles in different settings.

This is does not mean that that plot has no meaning and message however. On multiple occasions, people with overwhelming amount of fear act irrationally, killing innocents and even preventing others from safety even they are not getting anything out of it.

Despite the fact that there are some amount of "meaning" and "depth" in the show, they are not very well done. Most of the time it is some people's random monologue and crazy actions. Once they are over, they are over. No explanation, no development.

That said, I still think the plot is good enough as a zombie show. It's not like we should expect anything out of it. It is not a good plot, but it will do.

CHARACTERS

Um, a typical protagonist is tagging along with a bunch of boobs and an otaku. All of them have boobs, yea I know dah.

Although it is easy to tell that the author did try to create background stories and personalities to the characters, all of the effort seem to be overshadowed by the boobs.

Efforts themselves aren't impressive either. All of the character designs feel really rushed and underdeveloped. The rich girl for example, sure she did suffer some mental issue from her family, but those issues are very unrealistic and irrelevant to the whole image of "running away from the zombies".

All in all, the characters are not well designed, and cliche. Little development with confusing motivations, characters are not where this series shins.

ART & ANIMATION

Well, the art is pretty good. not especially good looking, but the character models and backgrounds along with the objects do feel refreshing. Clear lines to separate the colors, brightness and shadows are very dramatic.

Oh and boobs, of course. I don;t dislike fanservice. As long as they serve some sort of purpose to the plot, (like kill la kill) I'm fine with it. The problem here is the show is showing us fan service for the sole sake of fan service. What's the point of showing girls in bathwater in the middle of fighting zombies? I just don't get it.

The Animation is directed by the same director of Attack on Titans, so the effort and quality is unquestionable. They are very smooth and action packed, rarely you see a image put idol for more than 3 seconds.

However, we need to come to the realism here. As good the animations may be, they are just not acceptable. The boobs bullet dodging is simply.. yea you'll know what I'm talking about. Admit it, it is cool, but insane.

If you are watching this show for boobs and action, you are in the right place.

SOUND

The OP and ED are nice, catchy songs, but they are not memorable to the least. OST are fitting, and they's all it is. They fit the scene, and carries the feel. Again, not memorable OST.

Now here is the Sub vs Dub. Sub defenders tend to argue that a translated version will not get you the jokes you get from subtitles. I completely agree with that. However, this does not account to the recreation part of translating. In this show, the translator actually makes the dialogue interesting by sometimes completely change the dialogue to make it sound natural for native English viewers.

Since I don't speak Japanese, I can't say if the original audio is funny or not. But I certainly totally enjoyed the dub. They are funny, they are westernized and it is one of the few dub that I would actually recommend over sub for English audience.

ENJOYMENT

Like every zombie production, the story is usually not interesting. I did enjoy the animation and the action scenes tho, as boobilisious as they are. You would probably fall in to one of the three camps. One being the people who think the action is crazy and cool, two being the people who laugh at how stupid the actions are and three being the people who are just simply offended. Again, I think this is very enjoyable, people's opinion varies.

OVERALL

I think High school of the dead should be weighed leaning toward the animation. Since the plot isn't their sales point, what they have done is successful and appealing to its target audience, I give them credit for that.
Therefore I give it a VERY VERY generous 8/10, considering I tend to enjoy story over action.

Thank you for reading this review, and please give me some constructive feedback if you have the time, thank you. :)

Peace.