High School of the Dead Part 1 Episodes 1-4

It was another day, a day like any other…and then all Hell broke loose.  Without warning, a zombie virus erupts across the city, turning millions of citizens in mere moments.  As the chaos reaches their halls, a group of High School students from different walks of life, find themselves the only survivors of a nightmarish slaughter.  The only way to make it to tomorrow is for them to band together…and unleash their own inner demons.  If they have the skills, the tools and the drive, its possible this motley crew can survive a night in the High School of the Dead.

The Zombie Genre, it’s practically perfect for Anime.  It’s become a major pop culture staple in the last couple of decades thanks to successful Video Game Franchises like Resident Evil, and of course TVs nearly unkillable juggernaut, The Walking Dead.  There’s plenty of Horror Anime out there dealing with the dead walking the Earth in droves but I doubt many have the intense and guilty pleasure laden thrills offered by the show we’re beginning today.  This, Dear Readers, is the perfect excuse to turn off your brain, enjoy the actions and visuals…and yes that includes a few bad ass girls with overexxagerated bodies smashing Zombie heads.  This is High School of the Dead and man does it know how to get down to business right away.
 
This is a series with a  very genre savvy cast.  It doesn’t take long for anyone to recognize what’s going on and just how bad everything is about to get…and by anyone I mean the main principle cast at least, most students are wiped out in minutes in various, but equally grotesque fashions.  There are several points of the premiere where everyone is listing off all the major tropes you see in Zombie shows and movies, from turning into one mere moments after youre bitten to needing to shoot them in the head to make sure they stay down.  On the one hand, this is how you’d want everyone to react really.  By this point, we all know what Zombies are and how to take them down.  It helps get the show running quickly, with very little build up to everything going to Hell and a hand basket.  The progression of the first three episodes maintain the same fast paced momentum til the escape from the High School but HSOTD isn’t above stopping to recognize how much of an impact this is having on the core cast and how they’ve had to change so quickly to adapt to the new world they’ve found themselves in.  Yesterday is gone, only staying alive is what matters…no matter what it might take. 
 
Speaking of, lets meet our core six suvivors.  Takashi, who’s witness to the very first attacks on his school.  He’s apparently a delinquent everyone has a problem with but we don’t know exactly why that is.  Next is Rei, Takashi’s beautiful, long time crush who used to be with his best friend, Hisashi before he became one of the first victims of the undead apocalypse.  She bounces back and forth (no pun intended, we’ll talk about why I say it like that in a sec, if it isn’t obvious enough) between competent bad ass and girl who is on the brink of tears at the reality of it all.  Hirano is a Military Otaku of the highest calibur who is able to create makeshift weapons on the fly and finds his true calling as a Zombie Slayer but is also a nice guy.  Also, his full name is Kohta Hirano, named after the author of Hellsing, Kouta Hirana.  Hirano is constantly being berated and belittled by the biggest pain in the ass of the six, Takagi.  She proclaims she’s the biggest know it all in the school, if not the world, and sees herself as superior to just about everyone, intellectually.  Sure, she might be genre savvy about what’s going on but unlike everyone who jumps into the fray against the Zombie hordes, she has no idea how to implement what she knows about Zombies into action, relying on others to do the slaying for her.  Takagi does get one kill in, one of the most intense actually, which results in a breakdown she sorely needs…and then she continues to act like the most important person in the world, yeah she’s my least favorite.  But then you have my favorite character, Busujima, who is a gorgeous, Kendo sword wielding Goddess who’s every bit as olden day Samurai as she is Modern day Zombie Slayer extrordinaire.  She plays a very respectful, capable and all around perfect ally for Takashi, the two are pretty insync in the action.  Lastly there’s Shizuka, a school nurse who’s pretty scatterbrained and…well…is mostly around for what we should probably talk about next.
 
Let’s just address it now: High School of the Dead is a show of pure excess and that pertains to the high octane action, over the top gore and yes, the fan service that sometimes borders on being a Hentai.  Every girl in this series, but mostly the core four, have some of the most voluptuous character designs I’ve ever seen in Anime.  And HOTD doesn’t miss a chance to show us a panty shot or let the girls enormous boobs bounce around sometimes just from taking a single step.  There’s a running gag that everytime the camera is closed in on Shizuka’s butt or boobs, you get cartoonish bouncy sounds tacked on (I don’t think Rei, Takagi or Busujima have the same thing).  This could be seen as a turn off or an excuse to have hot girls battle Zombies while finding themselves in increasingly promiscuous positions…but that’s part of HOTD’s initial appeal.  And the girls are pretty compenent too, especially Rei and Busujima (could care less about Takagi) and Shizuka can step up and behave less aloof when she needs to keep students in line.  In short: this is meant to be a sexy show but there’s character with each girl to match…so there, addressed it, moving on, will probably come back to this in subsequent reviews if the excess goes beyond excess.
 
High School of the Dead feels like it’s trying to invoke the extreme vibes of 90s Anime like Ninja Scroll or Akira with the amount of violence, language, and sexual themes it throws out every few minutes.  Anything that can be used as a weapon will be to smush Zombie brains from a baseball bat to a Bokken to a nail gun and you better believe the school has one helluva new coat of paint by the time the survivors eventually escape the titular High School of the Dead.  But what’s nice is that it isn’t just about the boobs and the violence.  As I said, the world changed for Takashi and crew pretty fast and they’ve had to adapt just as quickly and, for the most part, everyone has.  The Zombie Apocalypse has awoken the fight or flight instinct of each main cast member and it makes me think about a line from Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, “We all believe we’d run into the burning building.  But until we feel that heat, we can never know.”  Busujima wont hesitate to leap into danger to help a student survivor and Hirano comes to life once he creates his trust nail gun to keep Takagi alive.  Takashi is finding himself more than anyone.  He’s forced to kill his best friend to keep him from turning after he falls to a Zombie bite.  But probably the coldest moment for him is what Takashi does to a potential rapist who attacks Rei…he shoots him and leaves him to die to a Zombie horde.  Like the quote says, we don’t know what we’ll do when it comes to danger until we’re staring it right in the face.
 
Overall, the only problem I had with the first four episodes of High School of the Dead, besides wishing Takagi had a mute button, was the fourth episode being a Clip Show for half the runtime.  I get this is a short series but FOUR episodes in and we needed to recap what had just happened?  Clip Shows are necessary at the halfway mark of long shows at best if you need a good jumping on point.  Episode 4 made an unnecessary detour with it, even if the last bit with Takashi, Rei and the Gas Station Rapist was good stuff.  Everything else is solid with fun action, good characters and an overabundance of blood and violence one should expect from a Zombie Anime thrill ride…a ride that continues Monday, right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.