Since Zack Snyder’s re-imagining of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, zombie’s have a new place in mainstream media as the new monster that everyone loves and at times hate. We have seen countless incarnations of this genre, with some highs, Shaun of the Dead, and a whole lot of lows, House of the Dead. When I heard that an anime adaptation of High School of the Dead was in development, right away my dreams of a fast-pace, character driven, gore-tastic series was coming to life; all of which still using the traditional zombies that Mr. Romero have laid the foundation of. Not only does HsotD succeeds in keeping the audience glued to the screen, but the show itself plays it very close to the source material that it’s adapting.
A while back Freakin’ Awesome Podcast did a quick review of Daisuke Sato’s Manga series, High School of The Dead. The series follows several students and the school’s nurse surviving a zombie apocalypse in modern day Japan. Since then an aime adaptation has been created by MadHouse, a popular anime studio that also produces Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D. The anime series started airing early July of 2010 on The Anime Network.
Currently, the series seems to be following the same liner story line as the manga. This might be a good thing for anyone that has no idea that the manga exist, but might also discourage fans that read the manga from watching a story they already know too well.
As I watch this series unfold throughout the year, I’ll be giving my impressions of each episode and hoping that this series will become one of the better Zombie stories we seen.
- Read Episode 1: Spring of the Dead
- Read Episode 2: Escape From the Dead
- Read Episode 3: Democracy of the Dead
Episode 1: Spring of the Dead
The first couple of minutes of "Spring of the Dead” you’re thrown into the action with fast cut scenes depicting zombie’s heads bashed in by a baseball bat. Not only is HSotD (High School of the Dead) violent, but it doesn’t hold back. The mix of fast pace action sequences, point-of-view shots from the zombie perspective, and shaky cam adds to the drama to this zombie apocalypse. Also, Ecchi (a genre of Anime dealing with sex, but in that soft-core kind of way) comes into mind with plenty of panty shots and believe me this episode has a lot of that.
This episode begins in the middle of the chaos that’s in Fujimi High School. We join Takashi Komuro, our protagonist of the story, racing to the top of the roof with his child hood friend Rei Miyamoto and her boyfriend Hisashi Igō. After a couple of minutes of them defending themselves against the undead we are right away shown the Opening credits. The opening title screen for HSotD has the typical Jpop music playing while a montage of the main characters are shown. Like most Anime shows, the main theme song lyrics doesn’t make sense with the series premise. This might be a cultural thing, because I sure didn’t get it.
After the opening, we are now transferred back before the incident happened in school and Takashi is hanging out on the school’s steps balcony as he thinks back to his child hood. The way this is portrayed is by cutting in-and- out of the flashback with the film being torn like an old movie reel, giving it a unique style. As this is happening we’re introduce to Saya Takagi, childhood friend of Takashi, she exchanged a few words on the step balcony with him before the real mayhem happens. As she leaves Takashi notice a strange incident at the entrance of school gate. An incident that makes Takashi panic making him think of Rei’s safety.He rush down the halls of the school to get Rei and warned her. After a couple of minutes of trying to convince Rei into coming with him, we hear the school’s announcements come on. The announcement advised that students stay with their teachers because an incident has happen resulting in people being killed in front of school, this is the same incident that Takashi seen on the step balcony.
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Takashi manages to convince Rei into coming with him, but she needed her boyfriend Hisashi to also to come along. The tension between Takashi and Hisashi is done really well. You get this feeling of jealously from Takashi as he hesitates to agree with the arrangement. As they work their way to the roof top of the school, the one place they figured out would be the safest place to stay, they are attack by one of undead. During the struggle, Hisashi is bitten and being a long time fan of Zombie films, we already know what that means. The scene ends with Takashi bashing the zombie in the head with the baseball bat and this is where we see the realization of characters as they figure out how to stop them.
On the roof top our suviving characters view the city in chaos. It’s visually stunning to see the entire city in mayhem. Hundred of films portray this moment differently, but animation is the only way to get the epic scale of disaster that you can’t do with film’s limitations. We also view the perspective of other students in the school as they cope with this disaster that is brought upon their school.
The last 10 minute of the episodes deals greatly with morals issues that you can only incounter with when you know the world is going to end. The hard decision that Takashi has to make in killing Hisashi is the defining moment for the series. It gives the story that important lesson, that’s it kill or be killed world now. You have to forget about your emotions and let human’s nature for survival guide you.
As Takashi makes his decision, we hear a hunting melody that is familiar to 28 Days Later’s theme “In the House .In a Heartbeat”. This melody alone gave me chills as Takashi finally makes his decision. It was a great way to pay homage to another zombie inspired story. The Ending credits interrupt the tension and again we hear Jpop theme music. At my surprise, the episode wasn’t even over yet. As the ending theme plays, the scenes fads into the roof top where our final two characters exchange words.
HSotD is a great addition to already over saturated genre. I haven’t seen an anime series tackle this genre without any gimmicks. They don’t use traditional scares, but scares one might have if you lose faith in humanity. Personally I love that they use a more traditional zombie that George A. Romero has created. You feel the tension when the characters are surrounded by two or three zombies. The pace of the episode is well done, you get a sense of character development in short amount of time, and makes you wanting more after it ends. If you’re a huge zombie fan like me, then this series is for you, but if you think zombies are overdone by today’s mainstream, I would still recommend you to give this a shot before you kill it.
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Episode 2: Escape From the Dead
Multi-Character perspectives are great, especially in a zombie themed story. You get to view the struggle from the rest of the cast of characters while still enjoying the chaos that’s around them. In “Escape of the Dead” we’ll see the perspectives from other students and also facility that survived the mayhem in Fujimi High School. This is a cross weaving episode that will cause our character to encounter each other while protecting themselves from “Them”. Most of this episode centers on Saya Takagi and Kohta Hirano survival. Saya, if you remember is a female student and friend of Takashi. They had a conversation on the schools stairs balcony in the last episode. Kohta seems to be a loner in school that has feelings for Saya. From here I can see a love/hate relationship developing between Saya and Kohta. Easily you can see that Saya is the type of person that needs to be in control and Kohta is more of a follower then a leader, until he is met with the right situation. While Saya and Kohta devise a plan, we also see what Rei and Tankashi are doing on the school’s roof. Rei manage to contact her father but is met with shock while hearing her father struggle over the phone. This is another dilemma that our characters have to think about. Knowing that your father might be dead; do you still try to contact him? Even though Rei constantly tells Tankashi her father is a police officer, makes you wonder how much of the situation they have control of. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="652" caption="Violence is the only Answer!"]
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We are then introduce to Suzuka Marikawa, the nurse with the bouncing boobs. Yes, you heard that correctly, her boobs literally bounce but the creators also made them have a bouncing noise. This is one of the silly fan services that HSotD endures. If you aren’t a huge anime fan, like me, these types of things feel out of place and silly at times. Still, I enjoyed it. A struggle between students occurs while Suzuka finds supplies to help out in the situation.
During the struggle, Saeko Busujima saves the nurse and student. Saeko is actually my favorite character in the manga. I can describe her as the most honorable one among the cast of characters. Saeko is approach a similar situation that Tankashi had in the last episode. With honor, she chooses the best outcome to save her and the nurse.
At this moment, our characters are traveling at similar path. While Kohta mange to create a weapon out of a nail gun and wood, he shows his true purpose in this chaos. Saya respects him more because of this.
Without spoiling anything, I have to say that this episode shows the true potential of what a Zombie story can be about. We view this genre in the eyes of adults, while this series give us another perspective, that of a teenager. Even though none of them, besides the nurse, are old enough to drive they’re old enough to defend themselves and that’s what really counts in a situation like this.
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Episode 3: Democracy under the Dead
Now that our heroes are all together, let the real drama unfold. This episode sets up a really good theory about the undead, can zombies see or do they just react to sound? It’s nice that the characters are smart enough to think about a theory like this. Not many zombie base films tackle this angle of zombie’s behavior. Most of the time the audiences just assume they can see, but sound plays a big part of their senses. In HSotD, they rather focus on the blinded style of zombies that can give you fighting chance to walk pass them. Of course with every theory comes an experiment and sometimes you can fail.
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This episode also does the cliché’ storyline that many Zombie films also tackle, that there’s always a corrupted and immoral group of survivors. HSotD does it a little differently though by introducing a group that has a teacher as their leader. HSotD main theme has always been adolescent versus the adults. So having one group ran by a child while the other ran by an adult fits the themes perfectly. Near the end of episode the series pay homage to two well known zombie centric stories. The first is from Resident Evil 2, a video game that takes place in city that’s over run by zombies, by separating our protagonist with the group. The other reference is from Shaun of the Dead, a film that has the protagonist name Shaun surviving in London that’s over run by Zombies also. It’s nice to see that the creators know there zombie references and willing to take that storyline and insert into their own.
The episode is a blast to watch and seeing Takashi and his friends helping one another with no drama what so every is great. This episode has a lot more action then previous episode because the group is bigger and they have more skilled students to fight off the living dead. It’s nice to see the story actually leaving the High School backdrop and expanding to the city.
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