High School of the Dead - impressions

After a ton of deliberation and consideration on my part, I finally decided to pick up High School of the Dead.  I like zombies, I like intense anime action and I love the high school setting.  Throw all three of those things together and you have High School of the Dead.  That's what I read, anyway!  I also read that some people really enjoyed the show while others weren't too keen on it.  For what it's worth, here's my two cents thus far.

I've managed to watch two episodes of the show, and I really do like what I've seen so far.  I watched with my girlfriend and another friend, and all three of us came away impressed with what we saw.  There's definitely plenty of action in the first couple of episodes, and a nice bit of character development as well.  We gain a reason to really get interested in two of the main characters within the first episode, and also see how the story could develop outside of the zombie attack storyline.

The one word that comes to mind for this series is 'fun'.  If you like zombies, I'm thinking you like High School of the Dead.  I don't know how complicated the story is going to get, but right now it seems like the name of the game is zombie survival.  You're going to follow a group of high school kids that are trying to avoid being turned into a zombie, and they're ready to kick some butt along the way.  You do what you've gotta do, and sometimes that involves bashing in a few heads!

Without a doubt, the quality of animation and artwork in High School of the Dead is very high quality.  You get a lot of sweeping camera angles and interesting shots, which definitely help to keep the action entertaining. The character design itself is pretty damn great, and the visuals in general seem top notch.  I am honestly very surprised with just how good this series looks.  I think part of that beauty might come from the Blu-ray transfer, which looks nicer than any other Blu-ray anime release I've seen.

The one big stumbling block that people seem to hit with this series is the fan-service.  Without a doubt, there was a ton of it on display in both episodes.  Any chance the camera gets to look at bouncing boobs or up a girl's skirt, it's there.  You already know if you can look past fan-service or not, so that should have a big impact on how you take this series.  If you're not into that kind of thing or you can't look past it, you might want to avoid this show.

It's worth noting that I found some of the fan-service a bit out of place.  I can take upskirts and all that during my action, but there are some scenes that take fan-service to another level.  There's one character in particular that is very well endowed in the chest.  Of course, you see her bouncing all over the place...and that's to be expected.  My issue is that they continue to use a 'bouncy' sound effect whenever she's around, and I almost feel like it's ruining the scenes she's in.  If the scenes are meant to be humorous, then I can deal with the sound effect.  There are a couple serious/action scenes where the sound comes into play again, and there it just doesn't seem to work.

The positives of the show far outweigh the negatives thus far, that's for sure.  I'm actually more invested already than I thought I would be, so I'm very much looking forward to where the series takes us.  I'll be sure to offer up more impressions as the show continues on!