Directed by Tetsuro Araki
Featuring Voices by Leraldo Anzaldua, Jessica Boone, Taylor Hanna, Maggie Flecknoe, Mark X. Laskowski and Monica Rial
When a zombie outbreak hits the world and you’re stuck in 3rd period math, what do you do? Break off a broom stick, grab your voluptuous female classmates, give a gun nut a nail gun and go bust some undead heads!
The Series
Highschooler Takashi Komuro witnesses a single zombie attack at the front gate of his school, and in that moment, his whole world changes. Soon, the school is overrun with the undead. Takashi joins with his ex-girlfriend/spear expert, the kendo star, the rich class genius, the military otaku and the school nurse, four of which are extremely busty and attractive while the otaku Hirano is short and stocky. They find themselves escaping their zombie-filled classrooms, falling in with crazy cultists, apartment crashing, humvee stealing and teaming up with a yakuza army in a new world disorder where the dead are hungry.
If you’re looking for action and T&A, this is your series. The girls by default wear skimpy schoolgirl uniforms, and often hardly even that. The main girls though aren’t just eye candy, as they kick a lot of zombie ass, particularly the broom-stick wielding Rei and kendo club captain Saeko.
This show combines scantily-clad fisticuffs with some fire action from the increasingly artillerized Hirano (and the star Takashi get in there too) to pull off some well choreographed and kinetic combat scenes. The hand-to-hand combat, fire fights and vehicle action are grand, ridiculous and edge-of-your-seat captivating.
Sometimes, the fan service crosses into the overly perverse and grotesque. First off, these are highly-developed high school students, still minors. Just what does Japan put into their food? Besides that, zombies gorging on high school girls is not the ideal time to be inundated with cleavage and panty shots. The series definitely takes advantage of its more mature rating to appear to as many prurient interests as possible, albeit without actually showing complete nudity or acts.
The series likewise uses its more mature rating for slip in a fair amount of cursing. You’ll be shocked at all the f***s and Jesus Christ swears in the show. Not being as familiar with Japanese curses though, I can only attest to those found in the English dub.
The dub itself is decently acted, with the voice actors seemingly well matching their characters. The dub is Americanized a bit with references to American politics and pop culture, including a Sarah Palin mention as well as George A “Romeo” (I’m honestly not certain if the character saying “Romeo” instead of “Romero” is intentional or not). It actually suits the series and makes it feel more like the kind of action zombie flicks we’re familiar with. Definitely better for broader appeal.
This is an enjoyable series for any B-movie zombie nut. It’s not entirely superficial, fleshing out the characters and making some of them a little more than clichés. The characters themselves have real and believable bouts of emotion during this crisis, yet they also manage to be calm and intelligent and not make dumb mistakes that will have you screaming at the screen. Unfortunately this isn’t always the case, as the entire female cast has an inexplicable crush on the main character Takashi. It certainly is a harem show. The girls just need to show some attraction to the awesome geek with the assault rifles and that’ll make everything better.
8/10
The Video
The show is presented in 1080p 16:9 widescreen. The animation is smooth and the colors are vibrant. Rarely does the series feel like it has still shots to save on animation budget. Taking out the eye candy, it’s still a nice series to look at.
8/10
The Audio
The English track comes in DTS-HD Master 5.1, while the Japanese is in DTS-HD Master 2.0. Both sound pretty decent and clear, and again, the English dub is fine to listen to in this collection
7/10
The Packaging and Bonus Features
And here’s where things fall apart, as there are almost no bonuses to speak of. Sure, there are the clean openings and endings, as well as trailers for other Sentai Filmworks products (which are never really bonuses), but this is pretty standard for anime releases these days. This is a pretty bare-bones collection otherwise.
The entire series fits on two discs in a standard blue Blu-Ray case. The cover art knows what the series is about, featuring blood and busty girls.
3/10
I had fun watching this series. Even ignoring the cheap grab for attention with the hot chicks with swords and rifles, the combat and the actions the characters take are captivating and intriguing. The series is left open for a sequel, and the original source manga does go on for longer. I hope it gets it, as this series makes for good Halloween zombie film fodder.
Overall (Not an Average) 8/10
The Review
The Series 8/10
The Video 8/10
The Audio 7/10
The Packaging and Bonus Features 2/10
Overall (Not an Average) 8/10