Reviews

Apr 2, 2011
I had heard about H.O.T.D. from my friend who had watched it already, and he pretty much got me hyped about it. With all the zombie video games and films coming out, an anime is to be expected I suppose. And why not? Zombies are interesting and can easily be used in something very good. All I knew about HOTD was that it was about zombies. Meh, good enough reason to watch, can't be that bad, right?

This anime, like all new anime, are gorgeous. They look spectacular. Everything is great to look at, with the intimidating zombies to the attractive girls. The sound effects, voice acting, and bgm are all high quality as well.

The story, sadly, isn't really worthy of the great animation and sound. For a twelve episode anime, I can't really say very many things happened. A lot happened in episode one, a little too much actually, and then later episodes had little to no action or plot development. The zombies come, the characters fight them, some people get eaten, the characters escape. Rinse repeat ~twelve times.
It begins to feel forced after a while, specifically one time point. The characters arrive at an apartment loaded with weapons, food, and water, and they spend whatever amount of time there, and then leave. I'm still not sure why they leave, but I have a hunch they were just getting bored and wanted to be around more zombies.

The biggest problem with this anime is its focus. Its supposedly about zombies, but by the finish of the twelve episodes, I knew no more about the zombies then I did after episode one (except that these zombies have no senses except for hearing, which makes no sense. How do they know they're eating people?!). Instead of the zombies, the anime decides to focus on the many girls in the anime. The anime decided that all viewers watching zombie flicks must all be extremely horny and all want lots of fan service, fan service, fan service. As a guy, I can wholeheartedly say that I greatly dislike fan service in anime. If I wanted to jack off, then I would just go look at some real stuff. There really is no need for it in the anime itself. However, I don't mind the occasional panty shot or breast bounce, as long as its minimal. This anime, however, went waaaaay overboard. In episode one alone, there was a whopping seventeen panty shots! thats almost one every minute. Like seriously, how can I take the zombies seriously if the anime is too busy approaching porno?

Another problem with the anime is its pace, as it seems to speed up at times where it shouldn't, and slow down at spots which I wouldn't mind skipping. For example, the very first episode has a lot of events packed into one episode and an insane pace. As soon as a seemingly important character is introduced, he is then bitten and then zombified and killed. All within ten or so minutes. In comparison, another episode has the many characters in an apartment taking showers and whatnot, wasting time. The anime's pace starts off too fast, and then the last half of the anime has a pace that's far too slow. There's an easy explanation for this, however. There simply wasn't any more plot left by episode six or so. They had to spread a single square off butter unto six loafs of bread.

The final problem with the anime is its characters. There is simply just too many of them. For a twelve episode anime, seven main characters is far too many. It just spells disaster. All the characters end up having very little character development, and they all just feel one dimensional by the finish. Take a great anime for example, Toradora. It has 25 episodes, and has only five main characters. By the finish of the anime, all five characters have been very well developed, and I can wholeheartedly say they all feel very real and complex. This anime doesn't accomplish that, and its simply because there's too many characters to cover.

This anime could have easily been really good if it actually focused more on the zombies. Instead, it feels like another harem anime with shallow characters and an extra zombie gimmick.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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