Highschool of the Dead.

A change of pace here with an anime i've watched recently. I'm a pretty big fan of the zombie genre. Not necessarily horror, just zombies. I think it's the survival thing. It's formulaic. I like the decay of human morals in the face of apocalypse. And secret bases. And looting. Seriously, zombie apocalypse has to be one of the best ways to go.

 In this series, we follow a group of students, a school nurse and a young girl as they struggle to survive in a world that has fallen to the dead in a matter of hours. And falls to the living with their nuclear holocausts, shortly after that. Hectic. The action scenes are great, covering sword and gunplay, it's got a bit of everything.

Not to detract from it's awesome plot, character dynamics and overall animation style, the first thing you will probably notice is.. The fan service. For those not familiar with anime, wikipedia defines fan service as the following:


In Japanese manga and anime, Fan service (ファンサービス fan sābisu), fanservice, or service cut (サービスカット sābisu katto),is material that is designed to amuse or excite the audience with especially derived content. It is about "servicing" the fan - giving the fans "exactly what they want" – and usually refers to "gratuitous titillation".


So, basically, boobs and panties. 

Pretty much.

Honestly, most of the time i don't even notice it, it's just a part of the culture when watching anime. But this show is seriously pushing it. A lot of what the zombie theme is about is the gratuitous gore. But most of the time, instead of showing the action, you get a close-up of their squirming panties. It's quite hilarious. At other times, just frustrating and annoying. But, honestly, if fan service is the only thing you have to complain about, it's not a bad anime, i guess.

Like i said, they're pushing it.

So. Gratuitous titillation aside, this show has all the classic zombie elements with it's own original twist. Being set inside the school in the first episode, the students are limited as far as weapons are concerned, it makes for some interesting improvisation. Also, one of the characters is your typical trench-coat-wearing, otaku, gun-nut whose biggest issue is pretending he isn't having the most awesome time of his mouth-breathing, basement-dwelling, geek-fest life.

"Finally, Wood-work class comes in handy!"

It's interesting to see how the different characters, from different backgrounds and social circles, deal with the inevitable decay of what they believe and how they think they should feel about hacking down the animated corpses of their former lives. I enjoy that they only really reveal themselves a little at a time.

Indeed.

So, should you check it out? If you're a zombie, anime, boobs and gore fan, yes. But unless you fit into a minimum of 3 of these categories, i wouldn't bother. The core story is good enough to keep the casual anime viewer interested but the fan service is seriously overboard. So, if you can handle that, i say check it out! 

Here's a video of the opening credits, to get an idea of the animation style. Cool, punky tune, too. If you've seen it, let me know what you think.

I know this won't be everyone's cup of tea, so let me know of some shows you like in the comments and i will definitely check them out! :)