Highschool of the Dead – Zombies and Pantsu!
Scene – Highschool (you figured that though, right?) front gates, some dude is banging on the gates to try and get in. The (obviously) muscular male PE teacher is agitated and grabs said punk by the scruff of his shirt collar and tells him to beat it. Oh no! the punk grabs his arm and bites it, spurting blood all over the screen (god I love a good bit of ultraviolence). Thus ensues infection of the ENTIRE school in a matter of a couple of hours, tops.
The first thing that made me take a liking to this anime was the fact that they didn’t try to explain what was going on, or why. I mean there is no good reason for a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE so why try to even create one? The second thing is the homage to movies and anime and manga with the constant referencing to the fact that this “seems to be like a bad movie”, or “If this was a movie, we would need to hit them on the heads; HARD”. Or something like that, they aren’t direct quotes but you get the idea. Constantly throughout the series they make these self-ridiculing comments. The most amusing 1 being “it’s not like this is an eroge!” (erotic manga, which ironically, it is for those of you who don’t/won’t know that).
Seriously, this anime is fantastic, myself and bfgirl managed to session all 12 episodes in less than a day and I swear I cannot tell you the last time that mood took me for any sort of anime! I mean fair enough, it’s ecchi as hell and it’s a harem anime (not normally my bag) but its bloody brilliant. The stereotypical characters are there. The spoilt rich girl who’s a genius, the quiet girl who loves to kill and is damn good at it, the busty useless nurse who makes a nice “boingy” sound every time she moves 
(most amusing) and the object-of-the-main-chars-affection who is also a kick ass fighter. Oh, the final stereotype being the fat glasses-wearing nerd(NOT ME SO SHUT IT!) , who quite rightly asks the hyper-fit rich girl why he chose her and she said “you’re a gun nut aren’t you?” (it later conveniently comes out that he has been trained by blackwater dudes in yankland, handy huh!) There are peripheral characters but they haven’t had too much of a part just yet, maybe the second series.
The story of this series is them asking a whole lot of “WTF!?!” and trying to get to their parents to see if they are ok, all the while no attempt at an explanation is made of the situation and the unnecessary voiceovers comment on how it was the end of the world as they knew it. The story is definitely not finished, more the first adventure.
I was thinking about what really made me like this, in fact I love it. It’s the mixture of some of the things mentioned above (such as the in-jokes and the lack of explanation) but it’s also the feel. the characters, whilst stereotypical ARE rememberable and that there is the rub. How many anime series out there have generic characters who you will instantly be able to forget? Throw in some ultraviolence, gratuitous, but loved, ecchi shots of boobs, ass and suggestive innuendo’s and you got yourself one hell of a combination!
Heartily recommended!
EL.
