There’s def­in­itely a space between “High” and “School” so why High School of the Dead dropped it for the canon­ical abbre­vi­ation H.O.T.D. is unknown but this is just one of many oddit­ies the first three epis­odes of the zombies-invade-Japan series con­tains. It plun­ders recent genre movies with gay aban­don but still feels unique; it lays on the gra­tu­it­ous — blood, breasts and banter — but never feels pro­trac­ted or bey­ond the pale; it has a punk rock open­ing and end­ing themes but steers clear of banshee-strangling or ALI PROJECT dirge. What the series so ably does is nail the neces­sit­ies and leave everything else to sort them­selves out: char­ac­ters are ste­reo­typ­ical and bland, the storyline hack­neyed, but damned if it doesn’t fire full bore with the action while keep­ing the pace quick and let­ting the ten­sion build.

“carnage, com­bat and cleav­age blend together into a heady cock­tail that stim­u­lates all the right areas of the liz­ard brain”

It is another unevent­ful day at Fumiji High School: Takashi is loaf­ing about, Saya is berat­ing him, Rei is in class, and no one has any idea of the apo­ca­lypse unfold­ing around them. A single zom­bie inad­vert­ently bites and kills a teacher at the school gate and from there, panic and ter­ror spread until the entire school is either the walk­ing dead or in hid­ing. Takashi and Rei meet up with other sur­viv­ors includ­ing the kendo club’s cham­pion, a fire­arms enthu­si­ast and the ditsy school nurse; together they man­age to pro­cure a bus and escape from the school, but with the city in ruins and dis­con­tent brew­ing in the group there is the import­ant ques­tion of whether they will ever see their fam­il­ies again. If they want to sur­vive they’ll need to put aside whatever quibbles they have with each other and find a way to exist in the now ruined world. Read the rest of this entry

Inten­tional or not, medi­eval fantasy series always fall under the shadow of Ber­serk. Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu doesn’t do itself any favours by fea­tur­ing an effem­in­ate, sil­ver haired leader or an desir­able, unusu­ally power­ful ally. There are cer­tainly other par­al­lels to be drawn but the first three epis­odes prove whole­heartedly that the series has its pri­or­it­ies straight by focus­ing first on char­ac­ters, then on nar­rat­ive and some way down the list on the mythos-specific idio­syn­crasies. In short, it’s for­ging its own path and being thor­oughly enter­tain­ing while doing it. Its title may be out­land­ish but the strength of the cast and its will­ing­ness not to cower before gore or tragedy means it is a prom­ising start to an intriguing full-length series.

“The open­ing epis­odes don’t pull any punches […], cap­tur­ing that dark fantasy vibe bub­bling under a façade of sky blue and sun­set amber”

In the king­dom of Roland, rav­aged by war and rot­ten with cor­rupt nobles, a magical academy that takes in orphans and the chil­dren of crim­in­als has two par­tic­u­larly spe­cial stu­dents. One is Ryner, a slov­enly and unmo­tiv­ated boy who has cursed eyes known as Alpha Stigma which give him immense magical power. The other is the cha­ris­matic Sion who was sub­jec­ted to fero­cious bul­ly­ing while young due to his birth as a bas­tard child of a noble father and com­mon mother. Now though, he has the sup­port of a shad­owy and lethal fam­ily of body­guards as well as the con­vic­tion to ascend to the throne with the aim of pur­ging the coun­try of its ruin­ous ills. Both will be instru­mental in the upcom­ing tur­moil — war and civil unrest — and the old legends of power­ful demons and her­oes may yet play a part in that. Read the rest of this entry

Play­ing fast and loose with fairy tales, Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamata­chi is a sur­pris­ing com­edy that straddles the line between famil­iar and fresh, whim­sic­ally mash­ing up ele­ments pluck from its con­tem­por­ar­ies. Cer­tainly the protagonist’s hair col­our and demean­our could have been lif­ted whole­sale from Tor­adora, her pugil­istic atti­tude and devi­ant sidekick are another mat­ter. So it is with the rest of the cast, just when the meas­ure of a char­ac­ter seems to be had, a tan­gen­tial quirk is revealed turn­ing them on their head. The strength of the show then is defy­ing expect­a­tion and in three epis­odes it proves it has the legs and the occa­sional comedic tim­ing to pull off its crazy take on well loved stor­ies, but whether it will be able to main­tain that for a fur­ther ten is up for debate.

“though the out­come is pre­dict­able, this is def­in­itely a case where the telling is more import­ant than the ending”

Otogi High School has its share of inter­est­ing clubs, the “bank” though is dif­fer­ent and spe­cial­ises in doing favours for people in times of need. The only catch is that per­son owes them a favour to be col­lec­ted at a later time. So it is that Ryouko, the eponym­ous Ookami, and her dimin­ut­ive com­pan­ion Ringo become part of the bank and carry out some of the more phys­ical jobs they have to deal with. Sur­roun­ded by other oddballs such as the cross-dressing pres­id­ent, a bespec­tacled and thor­oughly bonkers sci­ent­ist, and a boy with social anxi­ety dis­order who wields a mean sling­shot. Together they deal with the vari­ety of cases that come to the atten­tion of the bank: from a girl who doesn’t want her senior in the ten­nis club to leave to someone who wants des­per­ately to win the school’s beauty pageant; regard­less of the prob­lem, Ryouko often needs to bran­dish her iconic cat-shaped box­ing gloves to achieve a solu­tion. Read the rest of this entry

Amagami SS parades hol­low, vacu­ous sim­pletons around in a grot­esque approx­im­a­tion of a romance plot; cret­ins drawn with all the grace of a gor­illa with a crayon shoved up its nose, splattered whole­sale into a story that is as if the plot of a romance novel were faxed to the writers but was hor­ribly smeared and dis­tor­ted in the pro­cess, leav­ing just a grim and dis­figured estim­ate as to what was inten­ded. These are not even char­ac­ters but amal­gam­a­tions of the most tired, staid and all-round tedi­ous aspects of arche­types that have mutated into a hideous, cringe­worthy diorama of what sociopaths believe real­istic or dra­mat­ic­ally enga­ging human inter­ac­tion is. There is no mer­ci­ful release from these man­nequins pre­tend­ing to be people, only the grim real­isa­tion that there are twenty four epis­odes of unin­spired, stu­pid­ity indu­cing drivel to come.

“delights in emas­cu­lat­ing her syco­phantic barely-male toy that one day latched onto her like an unwel­come parasite”

The plot as it stands con­cerns Juni­chi who after being slighted by an as yet name­less girl doesn’t take the hon­our­able and budget sav­ing route of giv­ing him­self over to a psy­chi­at­ric ward and instead con­structs a pithy home made plan­et­arium in his cup­board out of marker pen and tears of rejec­tion. Through the abject fail­ure of nat­ural selec­tion, the dod­der­ing halfwits he asso­ci­ates him­self with haven’t murdered him out of bore­dom or com­pas­sion and con­tinue to pot­ter about their own super­fi­cial lives. His hor­mones even­tu­ally determ­ine he should pur­sue a girl one year his senior but whose mind is the col­our of bitu­men and has all the per­son­al­ity of a long deceased lem­ming. While he kow­tows to her every whim­sical desire, humi­li­at­ing him­self in front of his sole male acquaint­ance in the pro­cess, she remains fickle and obtuse and, with any luck, is plot­ting a gory end to his pathetic exist­ence. Read the rest of this entry

High School of the Dead recently began air­ing and has brought the irre­press­ible zom­bie to a media which has pecu­li­arly ignored their arche­types in favour of more cul­tur­ally rel­ev­ant afflic­tions such as demonic pos­ses­sion and the like. Based on the manga of the same name, in only two epis­odes the series has shown a remark­ably sym­path­etic hand for includ­ing genre sens­it­ive ele­ments — is that the sig­na­ture tune for 28 Days Later at the end of the first episode?

“it says volumes that the only females to sur­vive are cur­va­ceous and beautiful”

Widely cred­ited with the cre­ation of the zom­bie movie genre, George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is one of his earli­est and most widely known movies and cham­pi­ons a lot of the situ­ations and scen­arios that High School of the Dead apes. More inter­est­ingly though, Dawn of the Dead and its mall set­ting is a scath­ing com­ment­ary on the dec­ad­ent con­sumer­ism and hedon­ism of the period which is still just as rel­ev­ant today. Like the best fantasy and sci-fi its fic­tion was a cri­tique of soci­ety and cul­ture, a rel­ev­ance which very few zom­bie movies have man­aged to achieve since. Read the rest of this entry