barry-langley Review of Highschool of the Dead

Highschool of the Dead (2010)

Takes a certain type of person to give this a 10 out of 10...

[5/10 · 18 November 2011]

Okay my first review. after watching the ENTIRE series of H.O.T.D one Friday afternoon (sweet unemployment) i was certain that the time had come for me to put in the time to write my first anime review on IMDb. I will try and keep this as brief as possible, as pretty much every review below 5 stars on here says much of what i think about this show. It saddens me to see so called anime fans giving this show a 10 out of 10. The writing is cliché and sloppy, even for your typical zombie teen flick. the characters are plain awful with little depth, and are actually annoying. especially the 'doctor' with ridiculously sized boobs (that come with there very own sound effects some of you will be joyed to hear) The kind of stuff i would be embarrassed as an anime fan to watch with someone else who isn't, i imagine i would get a disapproving look like 'dude?.. THIS is anime?'. The action is probably what i enjoyed the most, but very hard to take seriously when a guy starts using a girls breasts as a riffle clamp, so after i learned to take it for what it was it was OK. Basically the best thing you can do is take it for what it is and you should have a chance of enjoying bits of it. I did laugh a lot but mostly on the parts they didn't want me to. I felt that most of the time during the action sequences and the 'heart felt' emotional scenes this show genuinely wanted me to take it seriously and then bang... animated ass and titties. Dozens of interesting rules are discovered whilst fighting with these zombies that could have been used to the writers advantage of creating exciting scenarios within the plot yet none of them are ever put into place or followed through with in future episodes, for example, the zombies cant see but find there way around by sound alone, important right?! nope... this is never exploited in their encounters with the undead. there are many more but probably the most important was that the zombies can only be killed by smashing there skull, after episode six this seems to go out the window as they start running through crowds of zombies just slicing and hacking anywhere with complete disregard of the epiphany that saved them from death in the beginning, and zombies are now dropping dead all around them. I watched this series in English, sorry American dub, im British so i found the 'relatable' American gags especially cringe worthy, like a mention of 'walmart cheetos' and a comparison to Sarah Palin all topped off with a joke about Asian women drivers... wtf?? i thought we were in japan. Finally the ending is just... well it just ends... Although i don't think H.O.T.D is as bad as some people think, it is rubbish in comparison to some of the true works of art and story telling genius that japan has given anime fans all round the world. it was worth watching though, because weather i like it or not it seems this anime is becoming some what of a cult classic, mainly to the kind of people who thrive on mind numbing blood, gore, ass and titties, and lets face it, sometimes we all do, however its those that know only that who are giving this high ratings. the reason? they are ignorant to the truly amazing anime that is out there.