Highschool of the Dead – Anime Review

The first anime to make it unto my interesting summer 2010 anime list was Highschool of the Dead. Wouldn’t say I’ve been a big fan of zombies in video games, movies or anime but I fell in love with the high energy trailer of this series I decided that I’d give it a watch. The first 2 episodes started things out well and by the time I made my HOTD first impressions post I was already a massive fan. Did this action, horror, romance, thriller high on fan service live up my expectations, read on to find out.

Plot Overview

The plot of Highschool of the Dead (H.O.T.D.) is a very simple one, A zombie apocalypse is upon the world which reaches your high school when a when a zombie pays your school a visit and infects members of the faculty who went to greet him. Pretty soon the entire school is overrun with zombies and a group of students (and the school nurse) band together and escape the confines of the school. They soon realize that this is no minor local outbreak and things start to spiral out of control.

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Duuuuuudddde?!?!? there is blood coming out of your eyes

Assimilated by fan-service

Highschool of the Dead started out well in the early episodes and besides the random flashing pantsu or jiggling over-sized mammary gland things were relatively free of fanservice. I did not read the manga at that point and couldn’t anticipate the cesspool of fan-service it would deteriorate into. Strangely enough I found myself liking the fan-service after a while but by that time I had already begun to have a massive crush on the angelic Saeko Busujima.

fan-service done right?

Character roster

The main characters Takashi and Rei were quite generic and the online cool think Takashi ever did was bitch slap Rei in submission problem is she didn’t learn and continued to be an annoyance throughout much of the episodes. The Khota x Saya relation though was quite interesting, Khota being the gun obsessed geek and Saya trying her best to hide just how smart she really is. Mix in a sadistic teacher, a retarded school nurse, an innocent little girl and weird looking dog and you have a main cast that ranges from boring to awesome.

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Zombies cower in fear when they see Saeko Busujima

Cliffhanging explosion of light

I really enjoyed watching Highschool of the dead, the story wasn’t as ordinary as many make it out to be as I think the real world references and side stories added meat unto the HOTD bone. By the time the last few episodes turned around I was over the hiccup that occurred half way through the series and the anime ended in a cliffhanging explosion of light. Check out this anime if you haven’t done so already, it’s only 12 episodes long, if you have already watched it I would love to hear what you think via a comment below.

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Khota and Saya are two of the more interesting characters
A zombie Apocalypse is upon us!

[smile]

12 thoughts on “Highschool of the Dead – Anime Review

    1. my goodness you didnt know this anime… the story is how can you survive with the plague and through their way they become close to each other find love in the mids of chaos.
      I still waiting for the next episode after the 12 episode that they post bec. i cant go on with the mangga, im so bored reading mangga i love to watch rather than to read.

  1. This was the first anime I reviewed episode by episode. I agree that it started out strong, stagnated, and then ended well. The fan service was just too much. It was so much that after a while I stopped caring about it. I also thought Rei and Komuro were really boring characters. Kohta and Saeko were my favorites, though I wouldn’t by any means call Saeko “angelic”. She’s got a weird personality and enjoys inflicting violence on people. In a normal world she’d likely have grown up to be a serial killer. It’s interesting to see her being successful in a post-apocalyptic environment, though.

    I’m looking forward to seeing the 2nd season of this and if I can ever get settled in after that international move, I’m going to read the manga.

  2. I disliked when Takashi slapped Rei… :\ Also the amount of fanservice was just waaaay too much for me.
    I liked the character Saeko, some of the others were kinda boring, and I found the school nurse the most annoying. -.-

  3. I loved this anime! It was so addicting and fun to watch. I can’t wait for season two!!!

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