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Anime

Show of the Season: High School of the Dead

By AnimeEv 1 year, 10 months ago

Like a lot of you, I’m a busy man. There were days in the past where I had hours of free time that I could fritter away on all kinds of luxuries, but alas those days are over. I now have work, school, recreational alcoholism, and interior design to fill up my schedule, leaving me precious little time to follow every show coming out of Japan.

But I will ALWAYS make time for zombies.

High School of the Dead’s licensing news came to me the day I flew out for AX. I intentionally did not research the series after hearing that the manga by Daisuke Sato and Shouji Sato was being adapted into an anime because I am a zombie fan, and thus I will use my refined gorehound faculties to generate a proper opinion untainted by the likes of PR. I love Romero, Fulci, Bava, et al, and was ready and willing to let this show either flounder before my eyes or to be enthralled by it.

The verdict: by the end of the first episode I had claimed it as my show of the season, replacing the much-beloved Durarara!! as my weekly must-watch.

I will go ahead and verify your hopes and/or fears right now, because I’m good like that. High School of the Dead is exactly what you think it is: it’s dumb. It’s cliché. It’s bloody. It probably has more funbag fan-service than that stupid bra and panties show Gainax is working on right now. It trades on gore. It features stereotypical characters who’s names I forgot faster than I forgot algebra after high school. It’s exploitative and bloody and mean and harsh and irreverent.

It is, in a word, GREAT.

The show starts off with a bang and keeps moving. That’s not to say that the human element isn’t there, but let’s face it, the stars of this show spend most of their time looking to eat the human element, which is something I appreciate thanks to my myriad of social problems.

Ahem.

Takashi, the ostensible protagonist, is bummed that his former love Rei has left him for a dashing black belt by the name of Hisashi. While Takashi laments his situation instead of going to class, the tsundere du jour Takagi shows up and gives him a heaping helping o’ guff for skipping class and being lovesick before she wanders off. After being left alone Takashi watches the staff confront a strange man lumbering around at the main gate of the school, whereupon a teacher by the name of Mr. Tejima attempts to show him who’s boss.

How did this work out?

NOT WELL.

(Got your attention back, didn’t I? Stick with your boy on this one… I’m good for it!)

See, herein lies the beauty of the show: we are over and done with that plot thing in a matter of minutes, and then chaos reigns. The cops are overwhelmed, the students are panicking and all-too-willing to betray their friends in the most pernicious manner possible, and the zombies are hungry all the while. We were hooting the whole time at the office while we watched Hisashi, Takashi, and Rei try to make their way out of this nightmare.

At the risk of sounding like a know-it-all, I’m going to have to give this show a break-out character right now. Ready? It’s Hirano, a super-geek who escapes with the smart-mouth Takagi moments before the school turns into a Japanese running of the bulls. Judging from the fact that all of the photos in the trailer show him smiling and wielding a machine gun like he’s the happiest man on Earth, I dare say we’ll see a lot of chubby fanboys donning glasses and growing their hair out as the convention season kicks into full gear. About time we got a cosplay-able zombie killer who eschews things like sit-ups and fitness!

Oh yeah, and there’s a mysterious girl student with long black hair and a sword in the mix. Yes, your guess is as good as mine.

I hope I’m not sensationalizing the show too much here, but the best part of the show is that it is truly sensational by nature, and it’s about time we got a full-on zombie war in anime form. The production values are good, the atmosphere is the right mix of tense, horrifying, dream-like, and insane, and a lot of the “impossible to pull off without 100 million dollars” shots that you’d never see in a movie get rolled out on the regular here. There are several shots that are indisputably beautiful as well, even without the added cachet of blood-drenched lumbering zombies fighting over a carcass.