 Hey everybody, welcome to another installment of a week in Gigdom Reviews. I am your host Yvonne Medantes and this, my friends, is episode 5. On today's episode, we've got a small little review for you guys, and it's actually an old anime series that I quite enjoy on my day. It's actually... We've got for you today a little gem called High School of the Dead. It's not exactly what you guys were expecting, or at least what I was expecting to review, but I watched it a couple, I think it was like a year ago, I think, on theanimenetwork.com and I liked it, but I was left curious, you know, when they actually released it on DVD and they finally did, I got it on Blu-ray and it's not what I was expecting of a zombie-slash-anime mash-up, because of all the horror franchises, I'm a huge zombie fan, so when I heard like anime mixed with zombie action, I was like, I'm sold. But as it turned out, eventually the anime side of things won, and I don't know, the series quickly evolved into some weird hybrid of the two, and it really wasn't what I was expecting of it. So I'll start quickly with this review by saying, you know, it's clearly one of the best new dubs I've heard in a long while. I've been out of touch with the dubs, sorry, so, or anime in general, so, and as I was watching it, I was really enjoying all the new voices, because some of them I haven't heard before, I haven't heard of them, and it was pretty rad to, I said rad, it was pretty rad to hear them, and I read on another website, I'm not gonna tell who they are, but they were talking about, I believe it was all the changes that were made to the script in relation to the original material, but I gotta say, I thought the script changes were pretty good. I mean, I'd laughed at most of the jokes and real-life references, like there was a few paling jokes here and there, and I thought that was unique, I guess that's the word I'm looking for, but all the swearing and whatnot, I read on that same review that they were a little bit uncomfortable by it. It's a zombie mashup that's not supposed to be like the highly sophisticated drama that you would expect. I mean, it's no Walking Dead, it's no Romero film, it's nothing like that. It's just having a good time on an adaptation of Emangah that's yeah, it was 12 episodes long with one really crappy over, but yeah, seriously guys, it's just losing up. I mean, it's 2012, what are you expecting? But in regards to the actual episodes, the quality was amazing, all the episodes look fantastic, I was blown away at the clarity of the Blu-ray transfer and Mad Props to Sentai Filmworks. I hadn't heard since ADV dissolved and whatnot, I hadn't heard a series from them, so this was my first exposure to them and this is actually pretty darn good. The mixing was pretty solid. Some occasions I kept losing a little bit of the audio between the bullets and the action and explosions and stuff, but yeah, it was pretty good. I'm not too quite fond of the cover though, because in my opinion, that's just me, I don't know about you guys back home, but the actual, I guess you would say the actual art of the manga, it's okay for what it is, but the anime itself looks totally different in my opinion and the style of the anime, which was kept consistent throughout the whole 12 episodes, was actually really fun to look at, all the character designs and stuff, and of course all the fan service and I will get to that in a second, but I don't know, I guess this this cover is a little bit misleading. I'm gonna try to point it where the light of the computer doesn't hit it. There as you can see, there's the back of it. But yeah, it was a fun ride and as an episode, as a series, in and of itself, plot-wise, it was all over the place, folks. I mean, the reason I bought this aside from the, of course, obligatory fan service, is actually the first couple episodes. The first three episodes take place, as the title says, in a high school. And I thought it was unique, you know, the zombie apocalypse scenario taking place at a high school, or at least where the main characters are situated. I thought it was pretty cool, and I wasn't, I wasn't a big fan of the later stuff, but those first three or four episodes, if I'm not mistaken, are awesome. You know, the first one in particular is so pretty to look at and the dialogue and the action is frantic and you don't know quite exactly what's going on, but then they take you back and explain just a tiny little bit of info and you sort of sort it out and what, or how the characters came to be. And then when the whole thing, like, hits the wall or hits the fan, you know, it's gonna be epic. And the first three episodes are rock solid. They don't disappoint at all. All the characters are great. Even the bad ones or the good ones, it doesn't matter. You like them. But then, eventually, this doesn't stay in a high school, of course. That will be stupid. Them staying there with so many students now turned into zombies. But, yeah, after they leave the high school, it all just completely falls apart, in my opinion. Like, it, the quick, the series quickly fell into all the anime tropes that you know and love and hate or whatever. I mean, I mean, from the excessive, well, not, not gore, but the excessive fan service in particular. Like, ah, every male out there does not mind at all a little fan service, but it sort of gets to a point where it's just totally like, um, I guess, like, there are certain scenes where the, they emphasize on chests way too much to the point where you're just laughing and I know that I guess that was part of the joke, but, uh, it kind of, it's kind of bothersome because you get all these boob shots when other scenes, you're trying, they really want you to take this series seriously. But, yeah, I get the in-joke and all the fan services, whatnot, but, um, it just kind of didn't work. I mean, for the first couple episodes, they were okay, but then there were a couple of them. They were just, like, episode six or seven, I think, or when they leave their friend, school nurse's friend's house. When they leave, they just completely emphasize on it for, like, um, like, 50 minutes straight, just random shots of jiggly action, which is okay, mind you, but in excess, it actually can't be boring, which is surprising to say, I guess. I'm sure my, uh, podcast friends and co-hosts wouldn't, would say otherwise, but that's completely different. I'm actually doing a serious review here, folks. But, uh, yeah, and, um, basically the series is divided in 12 episodes, and mainly it's just three set of action scenes and how you get from one to the other, because at the beginning, they're at the high school, in the middle, they're at their friend's house, or the school nurse's friend's house, and then at the end, they get to another, to a mansion, which you'll find out as you watch the series. So all the other episodes are mainly how the, how they get there, and of course, being a zombie, uh, story. At the end, you get the obligatory cliffhanger ending, because you don't know what's gonna happen to them, so that's sort of the appeal of the show. However, I must say that the ending was totally bittersweet, because that final episode was probably one of the best ones after the first three. The rest were all junk, I could care less about them, but that last one really showed promise at what you could really do with a series like that, in anime form. So by the end of it, you are, at least I was totally let down, because I was not expecting that at all, and you know, they say the manga continues, but you rea- I don't really want to read it, because once you start watching the series, it's kind of hard to just leave everything aside and start jumping in, reading a random chapter, and I guess that's just not my style per se, but I was hoping like there would be a second season, but so far there has been absolutely nothing. And on that note, of course, we can't forget that this being a zombie show, the actual zombies themselves are pretty awesome. I like that they were Romero style slow zombies, those are my favorite, and it kind of a little, it looked a little weird when they did the whole self-shaded computer animated zombie walking around in the distance. It looked like looked like a bunch of crabs walking, and it was kind of weird at parts, but yeah, the series never lost a heartbeat. It was always frantically running around, and that was good, I guess, but it just didn't match the first three episodes. That I mean by the end of the third one, that was the peak, I think, and afterward it slowly started descending into familiar territory for anime fans, I guess, and then by the end of it, it was just a one big goopy mess of zombie, fandom, jiggly, boops, action, I guess. But yeah, the DB is completely scarce, or should I say the Blu-ray version is completely devoid of special features other than the opening and endings animations, and other trailers from other shows from Sentai, but yeah, I was kind of hoping like an audio commentary for at least one episode would have been great, but I guess they didn't have the money for that, so yeah. I'm a big DVD extra fan, so not having that many extras on it was a big minus for me. I still liked it, and I will say this again, I still liked it for the three episodes, and I believe it was one of the episodes made way that was really awesome, and it had some interesting ideas. I love the idea of it being compared to a plague instead of like a random event, and sort of like it was a medical thing, or at least they were thinking it was something like that, you know, they were comparing it to like, say, the bubonic plague and possible solutions, and it was really fun, and yeah, it was all kind of, I don't know what's the proper term, but it was all kind of loose, like they didn't really know where to go, but at the end you just got a basic story like all zombie stories about a group of survivors and what they have to go through, and it was fun, you know, it was definitely something that I was not expecting at least, but yeah, if you're in for a surprise and you don't mind the excessive amount of fanservice, it's not like, it's not vulgar in any way, I guess, it's not explicit or anything, so still, you shouldn't watch it with kids or anything, but yeah, you know, you know what I mean, it's more PG-13 in my opinion. However, in one scene in particular, I think it was the character of Saiko, I believe was her name, where she is demoralized by remembering something from her past, being reflected on some kid zombies, the scene that follows afterward with the male lead and her was bothersome after a late-night rendezvous in an old monastery, if you will, yes, that completely happens when I just said, but afterward in the following scene, I thought it was a little bit weird, I guess, because after the midnight rendezvous, if you will, they find out later in the morning that zombies have overrun the place as well, so we never know how they got there, but they don't want to shoot them, because obviously that would attract more zombies to the monastery, but of course, Saiko is still a little iffy about the whole thing and not sure of herself, and then the most unexpected reaction I've seen from a male lead and then like ages that really threw me for a loop, and I'll leave it for you guys to watch, but I just seriously have to question the male perception of females in action movies or whatnot over there in Japan, because seriously, I was a little bit random and just like that, after what happened, she is magically okay, and she is reassured of herself, no longer any doubts, it just took one big scene, and might I add, it was a hell of a groping scene, so you'll have to see it to watch, and come back to us and let us know what you guys think, but yeah, I seriously sometimes question the Japanese perception of things, and how they represent women and stuff, because you would think, since they try to copy the West so much, at least some of our ideals, I guess, would go over there well, but I don't know, so I'm just gonna leave it at that, I'm not gonna get into it, because I don't want any trouble, I guess, but yeah, High School of the Dead, definitely worth checking out for at least the first three or four episodes, if you will, the rest are at your discretion. Stream available, there's a stream available at Anime Network or Crunchyroll, I'm not sure right now, but you can go check it out and see if you like it, if you do, go pick it up, either you like those episodes, if you don't like those episodes, then it's not for you, but if you do, and you want to check out the whole series, just know that they're not as majestic or as epic as the first round of episodes, but they are pretty darn good, so yeah, I mean, definitely worth checking out, at least for the first part of the series. So yeah, that's so what are we gonna give High School of the Dead? I debated and debated about this, I watched each episode meticulously to see if I could find more faults in it, but yeah, the excessive, sometimes there was excessive violence, but the excessive fan service and the lack of quality control on certain episodes really did a number on this rating for me, so I'm going to give it, originally I was gonna give it a two and a half out of five, but the Blu-ray quality sold me as well as the dub, which was amazing, the leads in this were amazing, and might I say Jessica Boone, it's great to hear her back, I hadn't heard her in ages in a dub, so it was really good to hear her voice as a zray, and all the other characters as well, it was really fun, a really fun dub and script, I'm sure they had a blast recording that, so we're gonna give it a three out of five, that's three, three out of five, of course for the Blu-ray quality, the first couple episodes and the dub and script, now for the bad points as you've already heard me say and seen, you know, the plot really took a nosedive, so that really basically put it under my list of just okay titles, so there you have it folks, High School of the Dead gets a three out of five on our A Week in Kingdom reviews program, so that's it for me folks, as always you can find us on Facebook, just search for A Week in Kingdom, you can follow us on Twitter, just at, or just follow us at A Week in Kingdom, of course you can write to us at www.AweekinGeekDom.com, look for us over there, write to us and send us feedback, suggestions and such, you can do that at www.AweekinGeekDom.com, of course links are posted everywhere and really, whenever you look for things, whenever you want to find info, be it social media, I promise you guys, A Week in Kingdom will always be there for you, so please like us and keep in touch, so that's it for me, I've been Yvonne Medindas and this has been Episode 5 of A Week in Kingdom reviews.