Age Appropriate: Older teens+
Emotional Response: gross, sadness, anticipation, GO TEAM
Notable Features: ZOMBIES
Language: English
Length: 1 season, 12 episodes
Overall Recommendation: Not bad
"I like turtles" - Hirano
High School of the Dead is essentially what it sounds like. It's an anime series about a group of high school students battling the living dead, aka ZOMBIES. You can't have a review of anime series without zombies, right? The zombies are traditional, stumbling, bumbling, mindless creatures who only respond to sounds. The infection/disease is spread through bites. The transition doesn't take very long, actually. The only difference between this anime series and a typical zombie movies is live action vs. animation.
There is a set of main characters that meet up in the first few episodes; primarily focused on Rei and Takashi - a set of friends with an unbalanced romance. Each group member has a specific role to play: geek weapons guy, kendo captain, school doctor...etc. They attempt to make their way to safety outside the high school while picking up stray survivors along the way. The main focus of their travels is to reach each other's families in the hopes that their parents are still alive, and throughout their journey they ride on motorbikes, drive an SUV, jump fences, and have multiple group battles agains the evil dead forces.
I'm shocked, really, at how much I ended up liking this series. I admit my primary decision to watch it was because I realized that I've pretty much liked everything I've reviewed and wanted to give myself a chance to delve into something I wasn't sure about. Oops. I'm still not a huge fan of zombie movies, but if I had to, this would work for me. Perhaps it's just live action zombies I don't enjoy.
The characters are actually pretty intense, and when they're not brooding and yelling, they're doing ridiculously inappropriate things. Sometimes the timing felt a little off for shenanigans but they were definitely necessary to make it through. There are quite a few T&A shots, in true anime fashion. Good anime for typical guys actually.
While I felt that it started a little slow and depressing, by the end I was shouting encouraging things at the characters - because, you know, that helps. Some of those fight scenes were pretty cool. Given the zombie battlegrounds, there was plenty of grossness, but not as much as you might expect. I've definitely seen worse. I think my "Older Teens" rating is much more for lewdness than violence. Recommended for zombie fanboys and girls with zombie fanboy boyfriends - or zombie fangirls.
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Next for Mini-Geek Girl: Elfen Lied
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