Gakkougurashi!

If you have no idea what this show is about, you’re one of the lucky few that can still dive into this quirky ‘slice of life at school’ show blind. It’s mostly centred on antics and club events thought up by Yuki, guided by the athletic Kurumi and motherly Yuuri. You’ll either love Yuki, (she’s so crazy~) or empathise with Miki’s level-headed reactions to her; Miki acts as a foil to Yuki, providing some gravitas to the show. After one episode you will likely either want to drop it or watch the rest. If you don’t know anything about it, watch an episode before you ... read the rest of the review.

If you’re reading on past this paragraph I’m assuming that you’ve either finished the first episode or at least know what happens in it. It’s pretty much impossible to describe the show without giving away things that happen in the first episode, but I’ll avoid spoiling anything beyond that.

If someone had come up with the idea of ‘moe horror’ I would have regarded it with the same suspicion that I would regard a ‘death-game harem’, or a ‘mecha romance’. It’s all well and good in theory, but if you try to keep a consistent tone while staying true to the concept you’re inevitably going to wind up with too much ‘harem’ and not enough ‘death-game’, or too much ‘moe’ and not enough ‘horror’ (or, to continue with the analogy, some really inorganic character development). To balance out the conflicting themes in this instance you really need some sort of excuse to violently flip between a light-hearted slice of life show and a dark post-apocalyptic horror without breaking the audience’s immersion. Fortunately, one method to making this strange transition between completely different tones work resides under Yuki’s cat-ear beanie. With what comes across as either complete insanity or a pathological determination to keep things happy and light-hearted, Yuki manages to get the other characters to forget about their situation, which in turn lulls the audience into that same sense of security. With such a setup, flipping the show back into a horror is as simple as cutting away from the mood Yuki has created.

We soon discover that the show’s title is a clever pun in more ways than one. ‘Gakkougurashi’ follows the daily lives of a cast of mostly schoolgirls that are quite literally living at a school, flipping between their attempts to have fun and enjoy their lives on a day-to-day basis, on the one hand, and showing how each of them found themselves in such a situation, on the other.

A significant portion of ‘School-Live!’ is spent on flashbacks, showing events that led up to their current situation. This approach takes away from the tangible sense of threat, but has the advantage of bringing the oh-so-rational Miki into the first episode (which is an amazing thing for people that aren’t a huge fan of Yuki). It’s a trade-off and a departure from the source material, which unfortunately leads to a few minor plot holes being ripped open from the fabric of the narrative. Given the context of the narrative presented, I was happy for them to spend plenty of time showing how the situation had come to be the way it was. That’s where most of the excitement of this setting should reasonably come from given the nature of the show. Once our protagonists have managed to find safety, the plot as it is generally needs to rely on their desperation or stupidity to inject any new threat into the narrative without the audience losing immersion, so focusing on the lead-up to their situation was a good idea overall.

The characters vary widely in personality traits and outlook, and you’ll likely find that at least one of them has a mentality you can gel with. The power dynamic and relationships between the girls are multifaceted and interesting mainly because of what they represent. Yuuri holds an unspoken and uncontested authority over the group as a pre-designated maternal leader, Kurumi is a hot-headed badass that quickly resorts to violence, Yuki is a psychotic and emotionally manipulative idealist, Miki is a stoic and cold-shouldered pessimist, and Megu-nee is very similar to that clumsy yet lovable substitute teacher you likely once had: she panics, falls over, and drops things, and is ignored far too often by her students when they don’t need her help. From that melting pot of conflicting ideals and character archetypes comes a series of friendships built from necessity; built upon the cornerstone that is the hardship of their desperate situation.

There’s a sense of self-awareness maintained in the writing throughout, whether it’s (quite literally) pointing to other works that it has drawn inspiration from (such as the movie ‘I am Legend’ and the novels of Stephen King), or lampshading apparent plot contrivances by having the characters ask questions the audience were themselves wondering about (viz. why is this school so oddly well prepared for what happened?). This is one of the biggest strengths of the show and a huge part of why I’m comfortable giving it a high score. The writers clearly knew the artistic context of what they were doing and had a reasonable sense of how the audience would react to what they were seeing.

The art of ‘28 Moes Later’, however, was an unfortunate stumbling block that marred the show in some respects. I’m not against the ‘moe’ art design and see nothing intrinsically wrong with it (except that it’s being used so often in modern anime that any departure from it feels like a breath of fresh air). The problem is moments of laziness and inconsistency that were obvious enough to be distracting: the characters are occasionally drawn out of proportion or with slightly misplaced features. It’s not something I would normally bring up, but it’s an obvious bad sign when such mistakes are even apparent to people that aren’t looking for them.

I briefly mentioned before that this show had departed from the source material in several respects. Some of these changes were worse than others. The inclusion of Miki in the first episode was a reasonably appropriate change from the manga; however, cutting out most of Miki’s character development by simplifying her backstory was a strange decision. If only they hadn’t included multiple episodes worth of drawn out sequences of events that did nothing to further the plot (viz. filler), we could have at the very least blamed the restrictions in episode length and number for biting the source material in the backstory! Speaking of backsides, that’s about how abruptly (and awkwardly) this show segues into fanservice. The artistic direction panders to its audience in this regard to the point where it gets in the way of the plot; the writers of the show seemed to hold contempt for the idea that there are only so many appropriate times and places for panty shots or getting changed into bikinis. Fortunately these moments don’t tend to occur in conjunction with the more ‘dark’ scenes, a plot contrivance that I’m more than happy to forgive when faced with the alternative (a brutal deconstruction in more ways than one). Suffice to say, if you’re put off by unnecessary fanservice you may find a few scenes cringeworthy. Most of it is well within the bounds of plausible deniability though, so it’s fair to bet that you won’t find it worth dropping the show over.

Back to the positives, the OP of this series is a blast! Each episode the opening video is slightly (or dramatically) altered so that it’s full of Easter eggs and little pieces of foreshadowing. One of the fun things about following along with the show week by week as it aired was seeing the community pore over all the minor details and changes, most of which I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise! The ending songs ranged from ‘boring enough to skip’ to ‘delivering emotional crits’, depending on how well you’ve connected with the characters.

‘Night of the Living Lolis’ is in some respects what you make of it, which is fitting given that one deeper theme brought up in the show is about the extent to which one can construct their own reality, and to what extent this functions as a tool for overcoming adversity. It’s a theme that’s there, but the onus is on the viewer to engage with that theme if they want to. No direct questions and answers about these things are thrust in the audience’s face, but how you engage with the aforementioned ideas will be made clear from what you think of the characters that espouse respective opinions on those same ideas through their conduct.

After a middle arc easily described as wading through treacle, the final arc of ‘GG’ regains focus and the plot starts to lunge forward to an exciting conclusion, quelling any fears that the setting had been forgotten about. How much of an impact this show will have on you will come down in part to how willing you are to forgive plot contrivances due to being invested in the characters, although in your judgement of such things you’ll often be less disappointed if you give the writers the benefit of the doubt. For what it’s worth, rape alarms are that loud, rusty metal is that weak, generators do make noise, and shovels are heavy.

If ‘not judging a book by its cover’ has equivalents in anime, one could be ‘not judging a show by its genre’. And while it certainly wasn’t many of the animators, at least someone from Lerche genuinely tried to make this work. At a first glance, Gakkougurashi! looks like the result of moe creeping into ever more unfitting genres and settings, but thanks to the great writing it truly showed signs of life even when it should have by all rights been dead on its feet.

To the reader:
-~- I feel it's absolutely best to go into this show with no prior knowledge. The synopsis here is vague for a reason. Go in with an open mind and no expectations, and I think the viewer will have a much better experience. -~-


I first encountered Gakkou Gurashi about 6 months ago- when it was announced as a Summer series anime. Reading the description, I got absolutely nothing from it- but a little more digging led to the discovery that it was a cross between moe and post apocalytpic with some emphasis on psychological narrative. I was immediately interested- as I'd never ... seen such a combination before, and it sounded like it might be cool.

Cue the first episode- They say you can't have plot twists in the first episode... they were wrong.

The setup and lead on with how we were seeing things versus in actuality were very surprising- shocking even. It had some of the most amazing framing and dissonance between the mental state of Yuki and her projection of reality I'd seen- and I was hooked. The subtle imagery as Yuki and Miki ran through the school, culminating with that classroom shot was incredible. I don't want to say too much here, because it's best to not know anything, but I really thought I finally had a worthy successor to the moe-horror that Higurashi had established itself queen of... but all was not well.

By the 4th or 5th episode, it was plain that Yuki's mental state and her way of dealing with (or not dealing with) the newly ruined world was not the focus of the show, but instead turned into this wishy washy dark and suspenseful tale one moment and slice of life cute-girls-doing-cute-things the next. While this type of flip flopping set up a really good vehicle for really hitting the viewer with the hard moments due to how light and fluffy it had been, Gakkou Gurashi still wasn't above typical moe/school show pitfalls. I mean, I get that school is in the name- School Live! being the closest English translation, but the inclusion of a pure fanservice episode at a KEY moment in the show, at the absolute climax was a horrible decision.

When everything is on the line, and major decisions and changes are about to happen- why not just throw in a swimsuit episode? Because what we needed in a unique show was SOMETHING ELSE to make it just like every other anime involving schoolgirls- some good ol T&A.
I can't stress enough how badly this wrecked the very tense and suspenseful atmosphere they had painstakingly built up - a real tragedy in an anime that could have been something better.

-----

In a lesser show, there would have been a lot of pointless side characters introduced- but Gakkou Gurashi stays strong with an unchanging cast of four. With the focus on their interactions, we really get a feel for how these characters are as people, and actually care for them- something not many anime manage to achieve. While Yuki's incessant naiveté is grating at times, at the point when I got sickest of it- the mood changes, and her illusionary existence comes crashing down, prompting a great shift in the show.

In the apocalypse, I think few people realize how important your health is. Often in such shows, the main characters are taken to heroic feats and ridiculous Deus Ex Machina moments because, well... they're the main characters and "they can't die, hah!" In this however, the sense of vulnerability is always looming. The characters remark over the course of the show how they realize that they can't stay at their school forever, and that there seems to be an ever increasing threat outside their tiny haven, and this gently increasing tension comes to a head at about the same time the sickening moe garbage was making my head hurt. The sense that the characters were in real danger and may die was there- and I genuinely expected deaths, I just had no idea whom. It was a really rewarding watch in that aspect, because the characters didn't just pull magic out of the hat, or develop supernatural powers. Gakkou Gurashi definitely stays very grounded, and I appreciated that very much.

The ending left a bit to be desired though. It was the kind of feel good ending that probably everyone saw coming, and with the buildup to it, I was expecting a bit more given the dark conclusion it was foreshadowing.


Side Note:
One thing I've discussed about zombie media is the portrayal of how the apocalypse came to be, and whether it takes one of three routes that form the basis for the conflict:

1. That Science did this! Biological weapon/genetic mutation experiments, who cares? It’s all vaguely scientific and intellectual sounding, so that’ll fool the teen demographic.
2. A Wild Virus Appeared! Some mutated microbe that’s unaffected by any drug affects all but some small number of populace who, by plot convenience, don’t contract the illness.
3. Who cares! Zombies are here and we have to destroy/evade/hide from them to survive!

Thankfully, Gakkou Gurashi took route 3, but definitely with some shades of route 2. The subject of a virus and a planned response by the government was touched on, but it was never the forefront issue brought up as to why. Again, it doesn't really matter why the zombies are there- and it didn't need a pseudo scientific explanation to prove to me, the watcher, that it was that thought out. That part of the setting doesn't matter- it's how the characters DEAL with it that does. For the most part- they dealt with it. But then again, that's the conflict, isn't it? How does one deal with it?


Scoring:

Artwork and Animation: 6
Consistently good, but not anything special- definitely some excellent single frame shots with great small details and framing

Sound and Voice Acting: 7
Cutesy intro, cutesy outro, cutesy insert music, and cutesy VA. What else is there to say?

Characters: 7
Since we had a full season to get to know and examine the characters, they feel genuine and the audience is actually given enough fodder to decide whether they care about/like the characters.

Story: 6
Post Apocalyptia X moe, little bit of drama, some suspense, and enough Slice of Life to fill everyone's need for the mundane.

Enjoyment: 6
With the inclusion of a completely wasted fanservice episode and a few "you idiot" moments, that knocked it down a point. Strong beginning and a decent made up for it though.


Overall: 6


Recommend?

If a departure from the typical moe blob show into a bit darker territory is something you might be interested in, why not?

(FIRST REVIEW)
(ALSO SPOILERS)

Gakkou Gurashi (School-Live!) is an interesting anime that blew up in the Summer 2015 season. Many people praised it for being unique, dark, and a fresh new take on the zombie genre. It has moe girls and zombies. 2 things to bait the anime community in. So how does this "masterpiece" hold up?

Story: 4/10

The story in this is so average. The story changes in tone shift from being a cute, moeshit, slice of life show from a dark and depressing Madoka Magica take. However, it does it horribly. There's no weight to either of these sides to the anime and it just ... makes the anime seem lazy and lacking. Also how some episodes would just focus on moeshit rather than the actual story we all came it to see. It acts like it doesn't care at all. However, something I can say about the story is how it takes some risks. I was surprised by how this show deals with some tragedy and the way it does it is quite impressive. Doesn't excuse the story from being lackluster and bi-polar.

Art: 5/10

Lerche was everywhere spewing out shows in the Summer season. Too bad all of them were fucking trash but at least they had some decent art. I like how the characters movements are so fluid in some scenes and how their movements would change with the tone. For example, Kurumi attempting to kill some zombies would have pace that's quicker rather than usual when she's just standing in the slice of life would. I also like how well the color pallet would stick well with the tones as well. Keeping it dark and creepy when it needs to. But sadly, that's basically it. The art does nothing to stick out but instead it just blends in with other anime. Also, most of the animation is SO STILTED. All the characters mostly do is just stand around talking. It seems like they even forgot they were in this terrible show. Not much to say, the art and animation are just average.

Sound: 4/10

The voice actresses showed some emotion in their performances here and there but nothing really seemed to stick out as well. They at least tried I'll give them that. A good thing about the sound however is the music box that would play here and there and would sound like it's dying right at the end when something bad happens. Yes, music boxes have been done to death in anime, but it was still a nice touch. As for everything else? MOESHIT TO THE MAX. Nothing in the soundtrack stands out at all. It's the same shit we've heard over and over and over again in other slice of life, cute girls doing cute things anime. Average.

Character: 3/10

Holy shit, where do I begin? These characters are so 2-dimensional. None of them have a personality nor do any of them develop.

Yuki is just the same old ditzy girl we see in all anime before who acts like everything around her is fine. She has a personality but it's annoying and she does not develop.

Kurumi is the tomboy who had to kill the love of her life (THAT IS NEVER BROUGHT UP AGAIN) who has no personality. She is a blank slate.

Yuuri, the worst character, also has no personality. She's just there to make food and keep the club under protection. Another blank slate that doesn't develop. The anime tries and make her seem different and attempt to "develop" her by attempting to kill Kurumi when Kurumi is turning into a zombie. It was handled horribly since Kurumi and Yuuri barely shared a bond together so how are we supposed to care? I sure as hell know I didn't.

Miki is an overprotective character who tried and seems like she cares for the club. Another blank slate who kinda develops but is done also horribly.

Everyone else is a waste of your time. The characters are the worst part of the entire show.

Enjoyment: 5/10

Although it was painful to watch sometimes, I still kind of enjoyed this anime. I was still intrigued on everything that was going on and was just begging that this anime would get better, but nope.

Overall:

Gakkou Gurashi is a dumb, moeshit, same old slice of life show we've seen a million of times in other series. The only thing that this show does different is that it has zombies. It has 1-dimensional characters, average art, a weak story that doesn't know what it wants to be, and a soundtrack that makes you want to drill your ears. You want a good slice of life show? Go watch Aria the Animation. At least that one has good characters, better art and a story that's actually well written. Stay away from this anime. It's just another show that goes into the trash just like every other anime from the Summer 2015 season. Lerche has fucked up big time.

4/10