High School of the Dead is one of my go to animes. Is a show with zombies new? Not by any stretch of the imagination but this show does it better than a lot of movies do. It does some things well and of course it has it’s faults too but does more well than it doesn’t.
The show revolves around a group of students who go to school as if it’s an ordinary day but end up in a zombie apocalypse. This is not a moe version of zombies like School Live! This is a much more hardcore zombie fest with blood, slashing, bashing and killing. The action starts right from the beginning so there’s no drama leading up to it, you just get zombies on the move and a little background on how the school got over run. The main characters are a group of students who team up together for their survival in this new zombie infested world.
The characters in the show do follow some anime tropes and archetypes. A somewhat clueless hero, the childhood friend who rejected him, a rich, stuck up tsundere with a piss poor attitude, an otaku, another tsundere who is more kuudere-ish and a nurse with some massive breasts and not too bright. You don’t really need deep character backgrounds or anything since the show is mainly about running from zombies and killing zombies but you do get some background so that you can feel some type of attachment to the characters.
I have to say that production is where things fall off but in these type of shows that happens. They try to get more bang for the buck with the action side of the show vs the art. The art is definitely rushed and inconsistent but I assume they figure most people would stare at two things, breasts or zombies. Those things aren’t inconsistent for the most part but other things are. Some people won’t be as picky because it’s not a show that really is focused on that. The music is good, the plot is simple but works but for those picky ones, the art is kind of inconsistent.
High School of the Dead is one of my favorite shows about zombies. While it does a lot in the “hey look at my breasts” department, it still tells a story that rivals most zombie films. If I had to compare it to something, I’d probably say the 28 Days/Weeks Later. If you want a zombie show that is a bit more than just killing rampaging zombies, this would probably be it. If you’re familiar with Triage X, it was supposedly done while waiting for a sequel to High School of the Dead though we still have no sequel to this date even though the last episode and the OVA leads you to believe there will be one but a lot of anime ends like that.
[yasr_overall_rating]