Highschool of the Dead first impressions

Ahhhhhhh this needs to seriously be a video game. I’m not kidding – imagine a Prototype/Infamous sandbox game except you’re Takashi leading a group of people in Japan with different missions. Ahhhhhhhh please have a game producer read this post.

Before I being, here’s the OP [Highschool of the Dead] which is probably the third time I seen an opening named after its anime.

HOTD is a zombie survival story – aka everyone but the main characters are stupid enough to get bitten so it’s up to a group of individuals to survive and find a safe haven. That being said, Madhouse is also planning to make this only twelve episodes, which means if they want to do it right and take it at a correct pace, we should expect some twist from the manga and expect the series to end at the first human-haven they come upon and have the anime turn that haven into “the” haven where humanity rebuilds. Either than or we can expect a second season soon.

Storywise, there’s not much to tell in the first episode – crazy guy bites ones guy who ends up starting the zombie apocolypse at the school until only a few survivors are left. This episode only focused on two of the main characters (and one irrelevant character) – Takashi, Rei, and Rei’s boyfriend Hisashi. While they end up fighting their way to the roof, Hisashi gets bitten and later turns into a zombie. Of course Rei, being the good girlfriend, wants to get bitten by Hisashi and become one of the zombies but Takashi knocks her back into her senses. Did I forget to mention that Takashi and Rei were best friends from childhood before Hisashi and Rei’s holding back? If you’re wondering why she was held back, one of the teachers didn’t like her family and forced her to stay back. This teacher, of course, will be the main antagonist of the series who leads sinners and whatnot to prosper throughout the survival with sin and… yes, that kind of stuff. (I didn’t spoil it – it would’ve been introduced in the next episode but it’s good to have background information… right?)

I didn’t like the conversations that they skipped on the roof, especially the comtemplating suicide scene from the manga but that’s to be given if they want to cover this series in 12 episodes.  I wonder if they’ll introduce Alice, since it has to be 1~2 episodes just to save her and escape from the house.  Madhouse certainly showed a lot of fanservice with a lot of different pantsu (given they had a big budget) shots and they certainly didn’t tone down on the bouncing boobs.  My only regret is a cute girl getting killed – and there were a lot of cute anime girls getting their necks and limbs eaten out.  Hmm, I guess Japanese zombies don’t like brains.

It was interesting to see that the first episode only focuseed on Takashi and Rei other than the other survivors, but I guess the nurse and her possy will be introduced in the next episode. I found it interesting how Madhouse portray the savage behavior of students in panic as they were seen punching each other and sacrificing each others to zombies. That one scene in the chapel was a bit weird because although I can see that Madhouse was trying to have a fanservice scene with the pantsu, she was being eaten at the exact same time. Another thing that I found interesting was the rate of how the zombies infected the living – by the time Takashi and Rei (and her soon-to-be-zombie boyfriend) were on the roof, it seemed that the whole city was up in flames. Shows you how fast the unliving move… like how they keep getting faster in every passing Resident Evil (I swear, people will be sprinting by Resident Evil 6). An overall decent episode – good plot, good action, and good interpretation of the manga – and I will continue to blog this. By the way, never read the manga before watching the anime because the anime sometimes gets boring since you basically know what is going to happen and what the characters are going to say.