First Impressions: High School of the Dead

So the Summer 2010 anime season has well and truly begun. As usual, everyone’s assumed that it’ll be crap and that anime is doomed. But it can’t be that bad, right? Err… Anyway, there are usually a few hidden truffles to snuff out every season, and I’ll be hoping to cover some of those over the coming weeks. At the moment, Occult Academy and Shiki are looking interesting enough.

One anime has arguably had magnified interest before the season started thanks to a fairly unique premise for an anime, which is strange both because “unique” and “anime” don’t often belong in the same sentence these days, and because the trope almost feels like it has been overused in other media. Zombies!

It beggars belief that there hasn’t been a proper Dawn of the Dead-esque zombie apocalypse anime before (at least, not that I know of). The medium has the potential to lend itself very well to emphasising the scale of such a disaster, as well as the human stories that arise from it.

So here we have High School of the Dead. It’s based on a popular manga which, as of Comic-Con 2010, has been licensed by Yen Press in the US. Luckily, US Yen Press releases tend to trickle on to the UK market as well.

An admission – I am terribly excited about this show. It has an original premise, giving it lots of potential, it promises balls-to-the-wall action thanks to the undead perusing the streets and as we see from very early on (episode one), it isn’t afraid to get into some of the moral strains that can appear during zombie apocalypses.

It’s being animated by Madhouse, which as we recently found with Redline, appears to still have the money to push the animation of its works into a different league compared to your typical late-night anime. The stellar opening sequence takes the time to transliterate its staff members into English. If that isn’t a sign of a show confident in itself, I don’t know what is. All in all, everything’s looking good.

The show doesn’t waste much time in setting up its advertised plot. While Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 left us waiting for the whole episode for the inevitable to happen, HOTD drops us right in with the gore turned up to eleven. Excellent!

After the initial excitement, we settle in to a flashback of how the high school was overcome. And we’re brought crashing back down to earth with a reminder that this is anime we’re watching – yep, we have a classic tsundere in the ranks! I counted eleven “bakas” in 51 seconds, making that 0.22 baka/s. I mean, of course they played up the tsuntsun end of Takagi’s bipolar attitude for comedic effect. But, when watching TV, we often put ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist, making her doubly as annoying as she would be normally. The last thing your want stuck to you in a zombie invasion is a tsundere. Well, the second-last thing.

As we’re slowly introduced to the main cast, many typical characters start to emerge. From my point of view, it was groan-inducing to see these anime cookie-cutter characters introduced, but it does serve a good purpose – throw them in to this situation, and they are very capable in their own ways. The situation effectively lessens the stereotype.

Another common anime trope that occurs in abundance in HOTD is fanservice. Lots of it. Most of the girls are incredibly well-endowed, and Madhouse have gone to pains to ensure the physics of their chest balloons are animated in great detail, with bounching sound effects to match. I feel that it can get in the way (no pun intended) of both the plot and the moral situations the characters are placed in, especially when most of it is completely gratuitous and is only there to sell DVDs to those that demand it.

I did think that it was all bad, but was reminded that some fanservice can in fact enhance the plot rather than diminish it. In episode four, a crazed man attempts to take Rei away at a petrol station, fondling her breasts the entire while. It charges the situation, and also poses an interesting question to the viewer – would you purposely injure and leave this crazed pervert behind to be eaten alive?

The above picture depicts a scene in episode four quite reminiscent of 28 Days Later, showing the city completely empty with quiet, tranquil classical music in the background. The bathos is strong here – things like the advert above and the self-service petrol pump are laughable in the current situation. It’s these and the other seeds that have already been planted that mean HOTD should be a good series in spite of the fanservice. And hey, I’m sure people appreciate that as well.

High School of the Dead is currently streaming on The Anime Network.