Anime Review: Highschool of the Dead

Highschool of the Dead is the most overrated show of this entire season. While it does have a satisfying beginning and conclusion, a few exhilarating fight scenes and a dark atmosphere, the overabundance of fanservice, painfully slow mid-point, and a lot of poorly acted scenes really do a lot of damage to what could have been a fun show about the zombie apocalypse. It also doesn’t help that the show suffers from an identity crisis, as it tries to be both a horrifying story of survival and an over-the-top testosterone fest, resulting in a show that fails at being scary or thrilling.

HOTD follows Takashi Komuro, a high school sophomore who is depressed over losing his girl friend Rei Miyamoto to his best friend Hisashi Igou. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have time to mourn over his loss, as the zombie apocalypse begins for no adequately explained reason (It’s a show about zombies! Who cares?). In the midst of an attack on his high school, he groups up with various survivors, such as Rei, Hisashi, Kouta Hirano, a gun otaku, Saeko Busujima, a psychotic kendo master, Shizuka Marikawa, the useless nurse, and Saya Takagi, the arrogant, if intelligent, student council president and escape the high school. The rest of the show has the survivors trying to survive in a zombie-infested Japan.

While the story to HOTD may sound interesting, and is at first, the pacing drags out in the middle of the show, causing it to be a painfully boring experience. There is nothing wrong with a plot that slowly develops for the purpose of fleshing out its characters or creating lots of tension, but HOTD does none of this, instead focusing too much time on a fanservice episode, poorly executed morality situations and even cheesy rhetoric delivered by Takashi and various other characters every single episode! If HOTD focused more on its characters and how they survive, maybe putting them in constant danger in order to actually create some tension in each episode, then the slow pacing could have actually been used to its advantage.

Thankfully, the characters are decent, even if the majority of them are stereotypes. Takashi, while being your generic delinquent, is at least a likable protagonist, despite having the nonsensical habit of abusing Rei mentally and physically when he does in fact have feelings for her. Kouta and Saeko, on the other hand, are easily the coolest of the survivors, as while they aren’t given that much in terms of depth, (Saeko only receiving a little back story) the involvement they have in fight scenes really makes up for their shallowness. The only character who is actually well fleshed out has to be Saya, being that while she’s unlikable in the first few episodes of the show, the unveiling of her inner conflicts towards the finale does a great job of allowing the viewer to feel sympathetic towards her. The only characters who actually drag down the show are Shizuka and Rei; Shizuka having no purpose other than to bounce her cleavage around, Rei constantly being used as the damsel in distress archetype, making her appearance alone an annoyance.

But of all the flaws that HOTD the largest has to be the pointless and irrational use of fanservice. Now, fanservice is not necessarily a bad thing in anime, as it can sometimes be utilized in a way that benefits the show, just like shows such as Cowboy Bebop and Hayate the Combat Butler, the former using it to make their characters seem sexy, the latter using it for parody purposes. HOTD uses fanservice for no reason other than the fact that the cast mostly consists of female characters, often influencing the movement of the plot itself in order to get to moments of gratuitous panty shots and overwhelming breast jiggles. The problem is amplified by the fact that action scenes and moments of intense are gore are intertwined with fanservice, resulting in numerous execution hiccups that sometimes cause the experience to be incredibly laughable at times.

The only thing that makes HOTD worth a watch has to be the action scenes, as while they are incredibly inconsistent with many characters gaining the ability of Schwarzenegger and blasting through hordes of zombies with nothing more than melee weapons in one episode while struggling to defeat another horde despite gaining shotguns, assault rifles, and snipers in another, they are extremely satisfying to experience. This is mostly due to the grotesqueness of the zombies and the gratifying blood splatter, which is exaggerated, but only makes the turmoil all the more turbulent. Unfortunately, their isn’t enough action, as the majority of the show isn’t action, meaning that these moments occur about once every three episodes.

Ultimately, HOTD could have been a great series if it weren’t for the slow pacing, excessive fanservice, and poor execution. If it had tried to create a tense atmosphere, each episode making us wonder if the characters survival was in fact guaranteed, than it could have been a good survival horror show. It is by no means, the worst show of this Summer season, but it is nothing more than a dumb action show that does nothing to distinguish itself from other products of its genre. I can only recommend this to only the most hardcore fans of fanservice, action, and gore, but even they may be disappointed by the lack of tension and the disappointing middle portion.

Highschool of the Dead is licensed by Sentai Filmworks and is slated for a DVD release. Watch it now at The Anime Network.

This review will be reposted when the DVD is released.

ENJOYMENT
The beginning and ending are the best parts of the show, the middle is just boring.

RECOMMENDATION VALUE
Only to fans of fanservice, action, and gore. Maybe they’ll like it.

REWATCH VALUE
The action scenes are rewatchable. Everything else isn’t.