High School of the Dead follows a straightforward formula — just take a group of high school students and turn their world upside-down with a zombie invasion. In just a matter of minutes, you’ve got a story with horror, drama, violence, and some black humor too. True to the midnight movie, roots of this story, Daisuke and Shouji Sato also give readers a heaping helping of T and A along with the blood and guts.
On practically every page of High School of the Dead, you can count on seeing three things: zombies chewing on flesh, a terrified high school students, and a flash of panties or cleavage from some ridiculous angle. For the most part, High School of the Dead delivers on the promise of its title and cover art — if you pick it up expecting great literature, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself if this book falls short of that standard.On the upside, High School of the Dead is a fast-paced read that dives right into the action.
While the threat of being eaten alive by zombies is terrifying, the survivors must also deal with a bigger problem: each other. Stripped of their usual roles and identities, students and teachers’ personalities are transformed, friendships are betrayed, and long-simmering resentments come to a boil.This alone would make for an entertaining horror comic, and for the most part, that’s what High School of the Dead is.
Sato’s artwork does a pretty good job of telling the story, but the main downside to this first volume is its high ratio of fanservice to plot. I’ve been around enough manga to be able to stomach an occasional panty shot and some cheeky flashes of cleavage, but the near unrelenting T and A in this book is obnoxious and distracting.It’s probably just my hang-up, but I had a hard time stomaching the gratuitous scenes of the school nurse and her humungous rack.
Modern engineering is amazing, but as far as I know, there are no brassieres that can mold breasts into pointy, pendulous torpedo-shaped projectiles.I know fanservice is a big part of Japanese manga, and it’s never going to go away. I’m not against it, because when it’s done right, it can be a fun wink and a smile to readers. However, fanservice is supposed to be cheeky and sexy, not utterly ridiculous and distracting. In this case, the fanservice in High School of the Dead ends up doing a disservice to an otherwise trash-tastic horror comic.
