High School of the Dead #01 — BOOOOOOOOOBS
July 5th, 2010
Japanese zombies apparently don’t like brains.
Impressions:
This show certainly wears its budget on its shoulder. It never misses a chance to have thighs writhing together, showing off lacey panties, or boobs strange alien fluids attached to women’s chests bouncing all over the place. Whatever fabric Japan has invented that conforms so perfectly without stretching or moving the rest of their clothes is amazing. In fact, I think we might even have perpetual motion machines going here, judging by how much energy is created around their chests by the smallest of motions. *ahem* When the show looked good, it looked great. When the show decided to eschew animation and spend a minute or two of nothing but stills while they shook the camera, it… did not. There was more of the former than the latter, but the sheer number of times they resorted to stills or shots of the scenery was kind of staggering for a first episode.
If you’re here for the writing, you’re in the wrong place. I did find it funny how after witnessing a couple deaths, whosits (I so do not bother to remember names until at least episode 3) walks into a classroom, slaps a girl, runs out, and then class just keeps going on like normal. Shortly after that, everybody listens to the PA announcer be murdered, then sits around for a few dramatic moments before the attack of the shakey cam and stills envelops them. A tight and sensical narrative is not this show’s strong point. It has T&A and hitting zombies. That plus the elongated art style brought back fond memories of Tokyo Majin personally. Of course, TM also had about 99% less irritating screaming, but I expect that to trail off now that everybody’s dead. The music in general could also have been a lot better if they were going for any kind of tension. Also, whoever sings the OP should be dragged into the street and beaten with a tuning fork.
So anyway, when it was fun, it was fun. When it was not, it was ugly and boring. I’d give it about a 80/20 share of the two so far. Even that 80% was at least partially made up of shots that were so ridiculously corny that they were amusing. Given that the budget is always blown on the first couple weeks, I can see that balance shifting pretty quickly, so we’ll have to see how it goes. I appreciate breasts, asses, and zombies as much as the next guy, but this much budget saving this early is not usually a promising sign. It’s not like this show has any other competition for my attention in the vaunted Sunday night (Monday morning in Japan!) timeslot anyway.
Preview:
Collecting more survivors.
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I do hope that the anime production goes in a different direction than the manga this time around, as the latter volumes focus less and less on the zombies and more and more on the fanservice. Though I wouldn’t be too surprised if many preferred the latter to the former…