Title: High School of the Dead
Published by: Madman Entertainment (Australia / New Zealand)
Based on: Manga Series of the same name by Daisuke Satō
Genre: Horror, Action
Audio: English and Japanese Dubs
Subtitles: English
Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic Widescreen 16:9
Runtime: 300 minutes
Cost: $59.95
Classification: This title has been classified MA15+ for Strong Animated Violence and Sexual References
Blurb: The zombie genre of series seems to have been overused in almost every media type nowadays, but in amongst them all is High School of The Dead, an anime focusing on a group of students who escape their school which is mostly converted by zombies and try to make it through the city killing zombies and trying to survive. The storyline is okay and makes room for a potential sequel, but this series is nothing about boobs, violence and zombies and after the 12 episodes have finished…. they have barely done anything.
Special Thanks: Madman Entertainment PR Team for providing me with a review sample of this title.
For the record, this review was done on a DVD copy of the series, and some of the comments in regards to design may not relate to the Blu-ray edition of the series. This is yet another zombie series that follows the same mechanic as almost every other series of the genre – a group of people fighting to escape zombies who convert you when bitten. Of course….. there is always one aspect of anime that zombie series don’t always touch upon – and this series exploited it good. To find out what this is… read on!
A deadly new disease is ravaging the world, turning the populace into mindless zombies, and the number of infected is skyrocketing by the second. As their fellow classmates and teachers succumb to the infection around them, a small group of students at Fujimi High School are fighting for their lives after surviving the initial outbreak. It is up to Takashi Komuro to unite the group of weary survivors and try to escape the horrors that surround them. In this new world of the living dead…will they escape?
You cannot fault this series for not portraying how society would react to the discovery of a zombie outbreak that begins worldwide. Suddenly ethics goes flying out the window and instead it turns to an every man for himself role where only a few will band together and fight without throwing each other out at sacrifices to aid their escape. This may be in lieu of actually finding out the cause of the zombiefication for this season… but at least there is nothing such as being immune to zombies (Aka. Dead Rising) or a deux ex machina plot device that aids them. However, whilst this is a positive aspect of the storyline, there are many more things that ruin it for the story.
Okay, over the last few months I think I have adapted quite well to fanservice elements in a series, to a point where I usually won’t mind them so much unless it is staring at me right in the face with big neon signs pointing to areas on the screen saying BOOBS! and PANTYSHOTS!. The series didn’t even need the neon signs as they were noticeable at the start of the series and all the way to the ending episode. The way these scenes were delivered were varied from the normal elements such as ripped clothes to an entire episode where they decide to essentially walk around their safe house wearing as minimal clothing as possible. Many series have tried to deliver the fanservice elements during action sequences, but I couldn’t say it sat well with me when a character is about to be mauled to death by a zombie and all you see is what lingere the character is wearing. This might seem like a minor element in the storyline, but it holds prevalent through all the episodes. Lets not get into the teacher who forms a lustful prostitution cult….
I bet you are wondering what the storyline is correct? The protagonist of the story is Takashi Komuro, a High School student at Fujimi High School who is introduced musing about his friends, Rei Miyamoto break of their pinky promise at being a couple when they were older. Upon realizing that their school is under attack by zombies (Which within a few seconds seemed to have gone from one or two infected to almost the entire school), they alongside four other students: Saya (Your yandere rich girl), Kohta (A gun otaku), Saeko (The star of the schools Kendo club) and Shizuka (The ditzy school nurse) meet up with each other and work together to escape from this hell. These characters are generally the only main characters in the storyline and are introduced within the first or two episode, with the exception of Arisu (Believe it or not, they actually kept Arisu instead of Alice in the English dub) who they rescue later on…. to use loli appeal to balance the boob appeal.
After escaping the school, their objective is to ensure the safety of their loved ones – however comes to the point where they must escape blockades, zombie swarms and the occasional psychopath to make their way to safe house after safe house in order to survive and carry out their task. When the series isn’t showing off the character goods, they spend a good amount of their time dueling zombies with increasing quality weapons (Unlike Dead Rising there is no duct tape that can do everything) and various times across their journey they are provided with or steal weaponary for use by generally the four main fighters in the group. The other issue provided is the one about the characters conflict with morality. Whilst this isn’t touched upon as much as I would have liked – issues such as is it safe to kill a living person for that persons honor or to protect someone else? or is it safe to rescue a little girl from being attacked by zombies instead of hiding out in what could be the ultimate safe house?
The storyline overall however is rather average and does not set itself apart from the many other crowds of zombie movies, anime, games and so forth that all use generally the same concept – even if this is more focused towards a group of characters with no added benefits (Eg. the characters having a camera that can build up their levels or the benefit of a person holding a controller watching them in third person controlling their every move). That being said, I won’t say that this series was boring to watch – infact if you were to omit the couple of episodes that were built for fanservice (Eg. Episode 6) and some of the later episodes, it was a series I could happily watch in one sitting. It was perhaps more disappointing that at the end of episode 12, they basically state “Thank you very much for watching this series, unfortunately the characters have reached the end of our source material, we will see you once more of the manga has been released” (Note, that was the message I got more then them actually stating this).
In terms of design, it is actually the one very rewarding component of the anime. To start of with, the animation. As this is a series that involves a fair level of violence in order to defeat zombies, I was overall pleased with the variety of approaches taken to make the action not look same-old, and the quality was better then what I was expecting. In terms of keeping things realistic, they do push the boundaries fairly often however. In terms of character designs, there were no complaints in my part in terms of both appearance and keeping their clothing alongside the state they are in (So no reappearing scraps of clothing for example), and whilst I am only reviewing the DVD version of the series, I think they are of the standard that a Blu-ray version is justifiable. My thoughts on the environment also stand similarly, with a high degree of detail being put into the city landscape (Both “Peaceful” designs and “Bloody Zombie” designs). Of course, the only flaw was the overexposure of the bust and panty area, but I have discussed that enough prior.
Opening Sequence
HIGHSCHOOL OF THE DEAD by Kisida Kyodan & The Akebosi Rockets
The opening sequence isn’t that memorable for the music, which is just okay – but the animation is highly memorable. Giving all characters – including the two male characters (An irregularity in series such as this) equal weighting in this sequence and generally throwing in some fanservice alongside the majority which is sorrow or violence against zombies.
Ending Sequences
For the sake of this review not being an extra thousand words long, I will not individually name and critique all 12 ending sequences in this series. All of them are performed by Maon Kurosaki, who played only a very minor role in the Japanese dub of the series. The songs were nothing special in my books whilst the animation consisted of a billboard consisting of character art and other posters relating to the outbreak that shuffled every few episodes.
When it comes to the music of the series, it does its job at setting the mood – however for the most part the soundtrack is average and unmemorable. If anything, it is the voice acting and sound effects (+ zombie groaning sounds) that really make the difference. On the topic of voice acting, it is overall above average – if not at least in attempting to set the tone of realism and desperation. Monica Rial as Shizuka was most probably the only one who might not have suited her role, as even if she pulled off the ditzy role, had too high a voice for my liking. Mark X. Laskowski as Kohta was the only one who really extended and went all out in his role, both suiting the nerdish voices of his usual tone and the hardcore “Evil” tone of voice when he snaps into shooting mode. Also in comparison to the Japanese dub, they seem to have added some more “coarse” language, dropping words like F–k, S–t and so forth to set a more serious tone, which considering the English dub actually worked in its favor.
In terms of the DVD packaging, it was generally designed to give you the impression that this series involves violence and zombies, if the title didn’t give it away already, and does stand out with its design. The back cover also keeps with the theme of blood, and covers your basic description, screenshots et cetera. The inside cover continues the blood theme with a white background and features both Saeko and Rei on it, however due to its design does not in my opinion fulfill the role of a reversible cover. The disc design is the same on both DVD’s, and has a black and white backdrop with all the characters on it. Just a real shame they didn’t include two different designs. In terms of extra content, there is nothing extravagant on the disc with all that was included being:
- A Clean Opening Song
- Clean Endings for all 12 Songs (20 minutes in length with only three different animation designs… YAY?)
- Trailers for the following series: Black Butler, Karin: Chibi Vampire, Dance in the Vampire Bund and Ga-Rei-Zero.
When it comes down to it, this series wasn’t anything new in the zombie genre and included perhaps too much fanservice which ruined the mood of some of the episodes. Despite all this, I thought it was an enjoyable series to watch with the exceptions of parts I just happened to skip through. Since this seasons release in Japan, they have released an OVA series and I assume they will be releasing a second season once the manga has gone a bit further ahead. I look forward to seeing how this turns out.
Final Score
Storyline/Character Development: C+
Design: B+
OP/ED Sequences: B-
Music/Voice Acting: C
Packaging/Extras: C
Personal Opinion: B-
Overall Score: C+
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