A VISUAL ANIMATED WHIRLWIND! WORTHY OF BEING ADDED TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS RANKS OF KICK A$$ ANIMES SUCH AS "BLOOD+" & "ATTACK ON TITAN!" WATCHING THIS SERIES IS LIKE WATCHING THE ANIMATED VERSION OF AMC's "THE WALKING DEAD!"
RATING: 5 of 5 STARS
DIRECTOR: Tetsuro Araki
WRITER: Yōsuke Kuroda
STARS: Junichi Suwabe, Marina Inoue, Eri Kitamura
REVIEW: Season 1 of "Highschool of the Dead", AKA Gakuen Mokushiroku [学園黙示録], was EVERYTHING I EXPECTED IT TO BE! The action sequences were everything I had hoped for. The blood, violence and gore levels are through the roof. The eye candy (yes, there is such thing as animated eye candy ... LOL) surpassed that of even 2008's, "RIN ~Daughters of Mnemosyne~ [ムネモシュネの娘たち]" anime, with PERFECT DETAIL GIVEN TO THE FEMALE ANATOMY, particularly butts and breasts. Even if you took the insatiable play on breasts and posteriors completely out of this series, it would not hurt overall it's rating, in the least bit.
The best thing about "Highschool of the Dead" is it immediately starts the way it ends .... ACTION PACKED with HORDES OF ZOMBIES and just as many, if not more kills than when the walkers stormed the prison in AMC's Season 4 Finale of "The Walking Dead". I can't help but reference AMC's FLAWLESS live-action series, because within each of these characters within the "Highschool of the Dead" survivors, I saw a "Walking Dead" character, for example ... I saw Rick Grimes in Takashi Komuro [Jun'ichi Suwabe] and I definitely saw Michonne in Saeko Busujima [Miyuki Sawashiro].
But what separates this show from the AMC blockbuster TV Show, is the fact that all of these survivors are barely teens yet, not to mention they acquire a toddler and a pooch, within their desperate attempt's to find out what happened to their parents and ultimately to flee the island of Japan. The leadership of Takashi & Saeko is no where close to being enough, to get these children safely out of their zombie infested high school, over the zombie infested draw bridges leading into the zombie infested city, without the aid of 4 more principal characters; Rei Miyamoto [Marina Inoue] -- the spear / bayonet wielding DEATH INCARNATE FIGHTER, Saya Takagi [Eri Kitamura] -- the rich kid, spoiled rotten, BRAINIAC, Kouta Hirano [Nobuyuki Hiyama] -- the tired of being teased, trigger happy, SNIPER and Shizuka Marikawa [Yukari Fukui] -- the dizzy, blonde, bombshell GETAWAY DRIVER.
The emotional level of this series, is truly roller coaster-like, in that ... these barely developed teen have to not only deal with zombies, but deal with adolescents, hang-ups with one another, gripes with teachers, lack of mirroring from one parent or another, approval from fellow classmates and abandonment issues. The best crying I ever heard in a series, animated or otherwise, was done by Eri Kitamura who plays Saya, after almost being bitten in a classroom and wondering how the rest of her classmates are holding it together so well. The second best cry, is when Alice Maresato [Ayana Taketatsu], the little girl who lost her father and was saved by Takashi from a Zombie horde, is told to jump the fence by Kouta with assurance that he and the rest of the group would follow suit and she replies ... "No You Won't ... You Have That Same Look On Your Face My Dad Had When He Was Dying ... I Want To Stay With You Guys Forever ... I Don't Want To Be Alone!1" All I need say on top of all that I've written is .... THIS IS A MUST SEE ... and clearly RATES 5 or 5 STARS! Onto Season 2 I go!
