Hi, everyone! Sorry for the delay in getting out this latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers. What can I say? The holidays are a crazy, crazy time. If you promise to keep reading and watching then I promise to not be late again in the future. Deal? Deal.
And now, without further delay, here’s 6 more trailers!
1) Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out (1989)
This film was directed by Monte Hellman, who directed some of the best films of the 60s and 70s. So, in case you were wondering what you get for directing a work of art like Two-Lane Blacktop, well, here you go.
2) Black Christmas (1974)
Continuing the holiday theme, here is the trailer for the original Black Christmas. This film was directed by the late Bob Clark, who later went on to direct a totally different Christmas movie called A Christmas Story.
3) Madhouse (1974)
I love this trailer for the melodramatic opening. I love the way the old grindhouse and exploitation movies would literally dare filmgoers to stay away. That takes confidence!
4) The Freakmaker (1974)
With a title like The Freakmaker, it has to be good.
5) The Creatures The World Forgot (1971)
The World, I am sure, had its reasons for forgetting.
6) Prehistoric Women (1967)
This film is also known as Slave Girls and I’m sure there’s probably prints out there entitled Slave Women and Prehistoric Girls as well.
The last couple months has been all about HBO’s Game of Thrones fantasy series adapted from the novel of the same name. With that series’ first season now in the books and the fifth book on it’s way to it’s inevitable release on July 12, 2011 I had to find something to fill the void until the new season rolls around next spring. One fantasy series which I loved when I first saw it almost 20 years ago and still do to this day is the fantasy anime 13-episode series Record of Lodoss War (Rōdosu-tō Senki).
This fantasy series was adapted from a series of novels and role-playing games by Mizuno Ryo which borrowed heavily on the core rules and role-classes from the classic Dungeons & Dragons pen-and-paper role-playing games. In fact, the first time I saw the anime (through the VHS set which cost quite a penny when it was released by Central Park Media in the US in the early 1990′s) my first thoughts were that Record of Lodoss War was almost like Dungeons & Dragons.
The series lasted 13 episodes and were produced by acclaimed Japanese animation studio Madhouse (Highschool of the Dead, Summer Wars, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Gunslinger Girl) and even 20 years since the series first premiered the animation still holds up. The story of Record of Lodoss War was your typical high fantasy epic tale of a young man’s journey into becoming a hero, a complex antagonist whose agenda never becomes fully known until the end, a world on the brink of war and chaos plus a diverse group of characters who band together to save the world. Anyone who has ever played a Dungeons & Dragons game and/or read the countless fantasy novels of the past 40 years would be right at home with Mizuno Ryo’s Record of Lodoss War.
I really would recommend this anime series, old as it is compared to the latest ones, to those needing to find a way to fill the void before season 2 of Game of Thrones begins. While the story might seem to be right out of typical high fantasy the characters in the anime were actually more developed that your usual fantasy characters. It’s hard not to watch the dark knight Ashram through the 13-episode run and not have him become a favorite character. Record of Lodoss War has something for everyone and someone doesn’t even have to be a huge anime fan to fully appreciate just how entertaining the series turns out to be.
Highschool of the Dead (Gakuen Mokushiroku in Japan) is the horror-ecchi 12-episode anime series which had a simultaneous premiere and series airing in both Japan and the United States in the summer of 2010 has finally been released as a DVD/Blu-Ray set. I was able enough to watch the series as it aired during it’s initial summer 2010 run. I was able to watch 11 of the 12 eisodes aired and wrote up “first impressions” of each episode right after they aired. With the 12th episode still unwatched I held off doing a proper review of the whole series. Now that the series has been released on home video that has changed.
The anime was adapted from the original manga (still ongoing though on hiatus at the moment) from Sato Daisuke and Sato Shouji who wrote and drew the series for Monthly Dragon Age. This was a manga that gained popularity outside Japan through fan scanlations of the original Japanese issues. So, it was with great anticipation when Sentai Filmworks and Yen Press announced at anime conventions of 2010 that the series will be making its way to the US in its manga and anime format.
Highschool of the Dead has quite a simple story. It’s pretty much a survival horror tale of a small group of Japanese high school students trying to survive the sudden arrival of a zombie apocalypse. The zombies themselves don’t get too much of an explanation as to how they came to be only that one day the outbreak began all over the world. We see this through brief scenes when the core group of characters stop to try and get some news of the crisis at hand. It’s during the first two episodes that we meet the members of this group. There’s the group’s reluctant leader in highschool student Komuro Takashi who also happens to be in love with another group member, Miyamoto Rei, and best friends since kindergarten with another, Takagi Saya. Into this mix comes in the highly confident and supremely calm Busujima Saeko whose mysterious nature soon becomes clear later on in the series as a certain darkness in her nature becomes known which adds a layer of complexity to the character. It is no wonder that the Saeko role has become such a major favorite of the male fans of the series, but also of women fans. One cannot go into any anime convention in 2011 and not see dozens of females cosplaying as Busujima Saeko.
The group is rounded out by the military-obsessed otaku, Hirano Kohta, who seems to worship Saya despite her belittling attitude towards him. Also, rounding out the group is the only adult along with the teenagers, Marikawa Shizuka who was the school nurse at the school the group escapes from when the zombie outbreak reaches it’s height. Along the way the group picks up young Marisato Arisu, the 7-year old whose father gets killed in an attempt to save her young daughter from the zombies. The series even has a cute puppy in the form of Zeke who becomes quite attached to young Arisu and becomes the de facto mascot of the group who senses the arrival of zombies and barks out his warnings to the group.
To say that Highschool of the Dead is not your typical zombie apocalypse tale would be too simplistic. There’s enough of the usual zombie story conventions to make the series familiar to fans of the genre, but enough tweaks were added to the story that at times it does feel fresh to American eyes. For one thing with the series being set in Japan there’s certain Japanese cultural themes which may sound out of left-field to it’s Western audiences. There’s the concept of a land where violent crime is so low that it’s police force don’t come equipped with the necessary force to deal with the zombie outbreak which in turn just helps fan it hotter to the point that things quickly spiral out of their control and chaos becomes the norm in a society steeped in order. There’s also the use of fanservice in the series which may surprise new fans of the anime format who have been introduced to it by way of this series.
Highschool of the Dead has an inordinate amount of fanservice and this means most of the females in the series were drawn to be quite busty and beautiful. It also means that there’s huge amounts of scenes where the animators go out of their way to include panty, stocking and bra shots into a scene even when at times it boggles one’s mind why it was there in the first place. Some anime fans have complained about this and how it has ruined the series for them, but as a fan of the original manga I knew going in what the series will include so the fanservice didn’t bother me. The fact that the original creators of the series having done hentai-manga before this series should’ve given the more knowledgable anime fans a clue as to what they’d be seeing in the series. One such scene of the series’ use of fanservice which has become quite infamous (or famous depending on one’s thoughts about the subject matter) would be dubbed the “Matrix Boobs” by fans.
The series does explore some serious themes about human nature and their moral codes in the face of the zombie apocalypse and the possible extinction of one’s race. Like most good zombie stories the series tackles the concept of the human’s themselves becoming the bigger danger to each other than the encroaching zombie horde knocking on their door. We seen through the series how the teenage group of survivors have adjusted better to the apocalyptic event better than the very adults who are suppose to protect them. In fact, it’s some of those adults who seem to hide their heads in the sand or take advantage of the situation for their own benefit. I found it ironic that the only adults who actually fare well would be the right-wing extremist and his retainers who impose the necessary rules to keep everyone safe, but also try to rescue as much people as possible when the government (both local and national) have failed to do what’s needed and right to restore order.
As I mentioned earlier the manga is still ongoing with 27 chapters (or Acts as they’re called in the manga and in the anime), but with the series only at 12-episodes there’s much about Highschool of the Dead which get left up in the air once the 12th episode airs. The series also leapfrogs certain chapters from the manga to keep the series moving forward instead of being bogged down. The anime also borrows certain scenes later on in the manga and uses them instead to help create backstory for some of the characters in the show. No one knows is this 12-episode will be it for Highschool of the Dead or will a second season be in the future depending on sales of the DVD and Blu-Ray sets. I’m hoping for the latter since the manga definitely gets real serious about the story and tones down some of the fanservice in later chapters. It’d be a shame if Highschool of the Dead ends with just these 12-episodes.
The Blu-Ray set for Highschool of the Dead has been released in the US through Sentai Filmworks which acquired the licensing rights for US home video distribution in 2010 (US manga distributer Yen Press releases the manga volumes). Like most anime Blu-Ray releases, Highschool of the Dead is pretty much barebones when it comes to supplemental content. The set comes in a two-disc set with all 12 episodes split between two discs. Disc 1 contains episodes 1 thru 8 while Disc two has episodes 9 thru 12 and the cleaned up versions of the show’s intro and end credit sequence.
There’s not much to the disc in terms of language content. Sentai Filmworks really keeps things basic as it just includes two languages to the series set. There’s the original Japanese language cast which (to my disappointment) has been mixed in just regular Stereo 2.0 while the English Dub option has been given the much more heftier 5.1 surround sound mix. I understand the reasoning for this as the original Japanese distributor of the series wishes to keep the Japanese surround sound mix in the more expensive Japanese region Blu-Ray. It’s just one of the more assbackwards business reasonings between the Japanese distributors and it’s American distributing partner that frustrates anime fans in the US.
Despite these flaws in the Blu-Ray set there’s no denying that the series has made a near-perfect visual remastering. The series looks great in 1080p HD with little to no digital noise in the playback. Madhouse’s visual artwork comes in very clean and clear with even some of the more CGI-element in the animation blending in well with the more traditional handmade animation of the series. While the animation is not the best Madhouse has done in the past for a series that’s a weird mash of horror and ecchi themes the look of the series should please fans of both (though I will admit that the series really leans a lot more towards to fanservice side of things than outright horror).
In the end, Highschool of the Dead is a series that’s tailor-built for people whose experience with anime is very little to non-existent. The two themes of zombie horror and softcore, fanservice of ecchi should be the sort of things in an anime that should reel in those wondering what it is about this show that has so many people raving about it. It’s almost like a gateway drug of anime. It’s not the greatest anime or even the best one of the past year, but it definitely panders (which in this case is a good thing) to the grindhouse and exploitation denominator that’s in everyone whether they like to admit it or not. If there was ever a grindhouse anime series then Highschool of the Dead is it.
PS: The titles of each Act (chapters) is quite grindhouse.
Anime films have been the type to make a major crossover from Japan to the United States when it comes to the US mainstream audience. While anime series typically still remain the realm of the hardcore fans of the genre the stand-alone films get much more love from mainstream critics and audiences in addition to the hardcore. One such film which looks to have made a successful mainstream crossover to the United States was the anime film Summer Wars which was originally released in Japan in August 1, 2009. The film saw it’s American debut at film festivals around the country in 2010, but since I saw it in late May 2011 I consider it a 2011 release for me thus qualifying it as one of the best films of 2011.
Summer Wars was the project of director Hosada Mamoru whose previous stand-alone anime film, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, was well-received by fans and critics alike. Working from a screenplay by Okudera Satoko (adapted from a story written by Hosada himself), Summer Wars was a nice blend of science-fiction, romance and Japanese slice-of-life. The story begins with the introduction and explanation of the OZ on-line community which becomes a major focal point to the film’s story and the many characters in it. OZ was explained as an on-line, social networking community which has become so ingrained in the world community that everything anyone does was done through it’s portals. Think of OZ was an amalgamation of Facebook, Second Life, iTunes, Netflix and every other social networking site all working under one umbrella. It’s a virtual world where people just don’t socially interact through games and chat lobbies, but also a place where every real-world store has a portal where people could purchase things online. It’s also become a palce where governments from local cities to whole countries have set-up their own areas that would control their cities and countries’ infrastructures. It’s Facebook on steroids.
One of the film’s main characters happens to work as a part-time moderator for OZ. Koiso Keiji also happens to be a 17-year old math whiz who would become instrumental in the story to come. The bulk of the story has Keiji being invited by a high school friend in Shinohara Natsuki (explained to him as a job she needs for him to do) to come with her to her family estate where he ends up meeting the rest of Natsuki’s very extended family and also it’s soon-to-be 90-year old matriarch in Jinnouich Sakae. This part of the film makes up the romance and it’s comedic aspect as Keiji gets introduced by Natsuki to her great grandmother Sakae as her boyfriend and future fiance much to Keiji’s surprise. As Keiji tries to awkwardly play along with Natsuki’s plan the second part of the film’s story kick’s in as he inadvertently assist someone or something into hacking into OZ and begin a sequence of events which threatens every account in OZ, but later on even threaten the world.
This part of the story actually worked quite well due to the recent major hacking of Sony’s Playstation and Qriocity networks which gave hackers access to tens of millions of account users’ info. It was hard not to think about this real-life event as something similar (albeit much more massive and danegrous in scope) occurred in Summer Wars. The fact that the film was completed in 2009 and the Sony hack happened just a month ago was real life copying fiction instead of the other way around. It’s this part of the story’s plot which added to the thrilling aspect of the film as Keiji and others (mostly the extended Jinnouichi Clan he meets) try to take on the cause of the OZ hack (which we quickly learn wasn’t a person but an advanced A.I. program released by the U.S. Army into OZ to test it’s capabilities not knowing it would become self-aware and hard to control).
Weaving in and around this science-fiction are some of what makes some Japanese anime so easily accessible to those outside of Japan. We see a slice-of-life that, at first looks to be typical Japanese daily life, but as the story moves along becomes something that everyone would recognize and have some sort of kinship with no matter their race or culture. It’s the theme of family togetherness even through adversity and the occassional disagreements between family members. It’s here we see Natsuki’s great grandmother Sakae show the need for the family to always find time to sit down and eat dinner together no matter what problems each and everyone may be having. It’s these very serene, at times quite hilarious, scenes of family life with the Jinnouichi Clan that Summer Wars will tug at audiences’ heartstrings and cause more than just a few to tear up. Some have said these scenes were too maudlin and corny, but I look at that complaint as people trying to project their own cynical nature on what was really an honest look at family life and how keeping a family together through adversity (both big and small) becomes a reward unto itself.
The Japanese voice cast did quite a good job bringing their animated characters to life from the main leads in Keiji, Natsuki and Sakae right up to the little children who added some levity to the situation. While I try to always watch anime with the Japanese language on with English subtitles for Summer Wars I also watched it with the English-voice dubbing. I was surprised to hear that the English-dubbed version was not as bad as most anime dubs and was actually quite good. Summer Wars looks to boast a who’s-who of English dub voice actors which probably lent itself to a quality dubbing in the end.
Summer Wars was produced by one of Japan’s major animation studios with Madhouse and the look of the film bears this out. The virtual world which made up OZ looked beautiful and made great use of CGI-animation. The avatars used by OZ account members were inventive and a menagerie of characters that all looked to be very distinct each and everytime a new one came on the screen. The animation for the real-world aspect of the film used traditional hand-drawn animation. While it didn’t have the sheen and flash of most anime series the flat-look and natural color scheme used for scenes when outside OZ lent a sense of realism and the natural that made it easier to get into the film. These two contrasting animation styles really helped in pointing out just how different OZ was to everything else.
Hosada Mamoru’s direction keeps everything from becoming a jumbled mess as the film juggles not just two major plot threads concurrently but smaller subplots involving certain individual family members of the Jinnouichi Clan. It’s a testament to his handling of the film that we’re never lost as the film’s story unfolds. Whether it’s the fake relationship between Keiji and Natsuki becoming something more real to the prodigal son coming back to the family after a self-imposed exile of ten years right up to a high school baseball tournament involving one of the family’s younger members who also happens to be a star pitcher.
In the end, Summer Wars should be seen as a landmark film that officially heralds the arrival of one of anime’s great filmmakers. With the untimely passing of Satoshi Kon there’s been a scramble within the anime community to find his heir apparent. Hayao Miyazaki will continue to be one of anime’s godfathers and pillar of quality work, but amongst the younger generation there was really no one stepping up the way Satoshi Kon did in so short a time. I think with Summer Wars it wouldn’t be too farfetched to say that Hosada Mamoru has also stepped up to join Miyazaki as one of the creative geniuses in the anime world. It also shows younger anime filmmakers that there is success to be had doing anime outside the usual mecha, mahou shoujo and shonen series which remains the backbone and meal-ticket for animation studios in Japan.
Summer Wars is an anime film that I’d highly recommend to all whether they’re fans of anime or have no idea what an anime was. This anime is that good and one that deserves to be called just film without the anime tag. It will be interesting to see what Hosada Mamoru comes up with next. I, for one, can’t wait to see what it is. Also, I recommend people watch this on Blu-Ray. The difference in how the animation comes across between Blu-Ray and DVD is leagues apart.
As I continue my current binge on all things anime and manga there’s one anime series that I thought deserved to be profiled in the usual “Anime of the Day” segment. This series comes from the action genre and heavily promoted towards the seinen (Males 18-30) demographic. While girls and women love this show as much as their male counterpart it definitely appeals very much to boys and young men. The anime I speak of is Black Lagoon (Burakku Ragūn in its original Japanese title).
Black Lagoon is the brainchild of mangaka Horie Rei. The manga began in the Spring of 2002 and continues a strong showing to this day. Like most manga that gain a large following it was just time before an anime adaptation was made and in 2006 the first season was released by anime studio Madhouse with Katabuchi Sunao handling director duties. To say that the anime became as popular as the original manga source would be an understatement.
The book’s main leads in Revy and Rock became fan favorites. One cannot go into an anime conventions anywhere around the world without seeing at least a dozen young women in Revy cosplay. She’s a character that actually is the most kickass in the group of mercenaries she works with and they’re all men. That just showed how appealing she became not just to the boys and men who followed the manga and anime, but to girls and young women who usually do not see such a powerful and kickass female protagonist who puts her male counterparts to shame.
The animation by Madhouse is its usual excellent self which also one reason why this series has caught on with anime fans worldwide. Black Lagoon has been released in the US by now-defunct Geneon Entertainment. They released the first two seasons (the series is just now into it’s third) and with that companies folding it’s quite difficult to find those two season box sets. It’s the hope of legion if anime fans that FUNimation Entertainment (who took over some of the licenses that Geneon Entertainment used to have) will re-issue those two seasons and give fans a price respite.
Black Lagoon might have been targeted towards the boys and young men demographic, but it’s success and popularity across the board makes it one of the growing lists of titles who break through prescribed genre labelings and why it does continue to grow in popularity. Plus, I think it doesn’t hurt the show that it’s main character in Revy is one kickass example of why some of the strongest fictional female roles are in anime (despite being drawn to be sexy to draw the male audience). This past Spring’s Sucker Punch may not be anime, but it’s kickass female characters definitely owe some of their foundations on characters like Revy.
A sneak peek of Season Three: Black Lagoon: Roberta’s Blood Trail
Ever since it was announced in around Fall of 2010 that an anime series was going to be made based on the first two seasons of the popular CW drama series, Supernatural, I knew I had to get the DVD and/or Blu-Ray release of this series.
Like most Japanese anime series they rarely got shown in the US unless it was part of a video set. It’s rare to find newly shown episodes in Japan shown in the US at the same time. Lately, a new practice of streaming new episodes on-line through official anime streaming sites has given American anime fans the same access to new episodes as their Japanese counterparts. A fine example of this recent practice was the simultaneous airing of each new episode for the horror-ecchi series, Highschool of the Dead. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case for the Supernatural anime series.
So, it was a relief to read the news release earlier this week about the anime series being released in the US through DVD and Blu-Ray sets of Supernatural the Animation season 1.
The DVD and Blu-Ray Season 1 sets will be released by Warner Home Video on July 26, 2011.
If there was ever a series that belongs to be redone in anime fashion it was, and is, Eric Kripke’s Supernatural. As I joked with people about this news once it was confirmed, the Supernatural slashfic community will now have to deal with an equally rabid yaoi community which has already sprouted since Supernatural the Animation premiered on Japanese TV earlier this year.
One thing that should please both subbed and dubbed warring camps is that the DVD and Blu-Ray release should have both original Japanese voice cast (which includes the very Japanese voice actors who dub the Dean and Sam Winchester characters in the live-action showing of the series in Japan) and the stars of the series itself, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padelecki dubbing the anime series in English (though it would seem Padelecki will be voicing all 22-episodes while Ackles only select episodes).
People I know who have seen the series while it aired in Japan have spoken nothing but positive things about the first season. So, far the announcement hasn’t been followed up with the items being put up for pre-orders on Amazon.com or any of the online video retailers. I’m sure that will change once more details about the DVD and Blu-Ray release come down in the coming weeks.
A couple weeks back I posted an article about Warner Home Video and Madhouse (anime studio) collaborating to adapt the very popular CW supernatural series Supernatural into anime. The series will comprise of 22-episodes and has a tentative release date in Japan around January 2011. More news has since come down the pipeline that the 22-episode season will see a DVD release with English-subtitles a couple months later.
From the preview trailer which has come out since it looks like the anime keeps the core theme of the show with the two Winchester Brothers fighting not just through demons, monsters-of-the-week and other supernatural problems, but also their own familial issues. The animation by Madhouse should appeal to non-anime fans since it skews more towards a realistic style instead of the hyper-kinetic wide-eyed animation style many non-fans think all anime looks like. I like to compare the animation to this series to a classic supernatural action anime which came out during the early 1990′s, Ninja Scroll.
The use of deep blacks to shade the character animations and give some definition to their faces gives the whole animation style quite the fleshy, rounded look instead of the angular, almost mechanical style of current anime. The incorporation of typical anime-style monsters was a nice touch. That was definitely tentacles coming out of that monster/demon. Though I must say that I’d be surprised if this series used said tentacles in other ways other than to be an instrument of destruction and bloodletting. I don’t think Supernatural the Animation will have much hentai qualities in it.
Anime horror usually don’t come out as often and when they do they’re usually of the hentai variety. If the folks at Madhouse even do half a good job in adapting the original tv series then this is one anime series I will have on my must-see list.
….And yes, that is a Japanese band cover of Kansas’ classic rock song, “Carry On Wayward Son“, which has become the tv series’ unofficial theme song.
CW Network’s very popular tv series Supernatural looks to expand into a new media as Warner Home Video plans to release a 22-episode anime adaptation of the tv series. The series will come out in Japan this January of 2011 with acclaimed anime studio Madhouse doing the animation. The series’ first season will encompass the breadth of the original series’ first two season, but will have room for new content which explore and expand of the two Winchester Brothers’ early childhood as Hunters. Some secondary characters from the original show will also get a much more expanded role within the anime series.
I, for one, was quite excited when I first learned of this development. The original show has been a favorite of mine since it first debuted in the Fall of 2005. While for some the idea of an American TV series getting an anime adaptation might seem farfetched, but I think Supernatural‘s aesthetics lends itself well to the hyper-realistic conventions of anime. Madhouse has already shown it could do straight up horror with its very popular zombie anime series Gakuen Mokushiroku (Highschool of the Dead), so creating a series out of a show based on the supernatural and monsters and demons wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the studio.
The Winchester Brothers in the anime will be voiced by the two same actors who dub the original series for airing in Japan: Yuya Uchida and Hiroki Touchi. There’s no word on whether the series will get an American dub version when the dvd/Blu-Ray comes out in the US so fans hoping to hear Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles voicing their anime counterparts may have to temper their hopes.
Time will tell if this anime adaptation will catch on in the US, but with Supernatural having such a huge and vocal fan-base there’s a chance it may just and allow a second season to be made.
We are down to the last final episodes of this first season of Madhouse’s anime series adaptation of the zombie and ecchi manga series, Highschool of the Dead. The last episode was the start of the calm before what I hope to be the major storm that will take this series into a second season.
Episode 11 didn’t linger on too much on the fanservice side of the series with the exception of an all-too-brief look inside the school bus of Shido-san and his sex cultists. We get a glimpse at how Shido deals with the students who don’t conform to his twisted (albeit must be quite fun) outlook on the new world order as it stands now. The manga had shown that particular sequence of why that one student was thrown off the bus to be taken by the zombies. In this episode we didn’t see what caused his expulsion, but got a sense that the student didn’t want to join in on the bus orgy going on between the students with Shido-san acting as a sort of Aleister Crowley-like figurehead.
While inside the Takagi compound it looks like the episode skipped some more of the manga and didn’t show how Takagi’s father was finally swayed to allow Kohta to keep the groups weapons. I can understand the Madhouse writers trying to cram as much of the manga into a 13-episode season, but the way they’re going about things they could catch up to the manga by episode 13 which would definitely might be a sign that a second season won’t be in the offing. Here’s to hoping that the writers were just trying to move things along to the crisis which sends the group out of the compound and back into the dangers of the city-proper.
While the fanservice was limited the harem aspect of the story continued to grow as Rei literally threw herself at the mercy of Komuro but to no avail. Does Rei know that Saeko and Saya may be competing with her for Komuro’s attention? If that’s the case then Komuro definitely has shown quite a bit of restraint when it comes to Rei’s increasingly aggressive advances. There’s also the fact that Komuro and Saeko may have already sealed their partnership a few episodes past though we never really saw it but definitely implied.
The arrival of Shido-san into the compound definitely explains why Rei was so adamant to leave the safety of the bus early in the season. The fact that Rei dismissed Shido-san as less than worthy of her attention was a nice touch even though this could become a major problem for the group down the line. Even in the manga the fate of Shido-san and his group of students were not truly explained though not all of them could’ve survived their subsequent exile.
With two episodes left and with the major superpowers throwing nukes at each other, I hope that this calm has finally ended and the storm that’s been brewing since the group arrived at the Takagi compound can finally smash into the city. If there’s to be no second season then these last two episodes need to put the previous 11 in terms of action, horror and fanservice to shame. It’s the only way for the series to go out with a huge bang.
We’re now heading towards the end of this first season of Madhouse’s anime adaptation of the zombie manga Highschool of the Dead. It is still up in the air whether this 13-episode initially produced will be the first season or just the first half of what will end up being the only season. If the latter is the case then the series just took a relaxing calm before the storm of what will be episode 11 thru to 13.
Episode 10 brings everyone in the group back together as Takashi Komuro and Busujima Saeko finally makes it back to the relative safety of the Takagi fortress-compound in the previous episode. This episode was actually pretty devoid of much of the fanservice which were prevalent in the last 5 previous episodes. The only nod to it’s ecchi side of the series was in the beginning where one might think Rei and Komuro might just end up going all the way (something that suspiciously might have already happened between Komuro and Saeko in the last episode), but alas it was not meant to be. It was just a medical intervention to help Rei heal up from being sorely bruised from the action of episode 8.
While within the Takagi compound we get to know more about the life of Saya and her relationship with her parents. To say that she has lived quite the privileged life would be an understatement. But while in other media the privileged children of rich and powerful parents end up being useless beyond being spoiled and entitled, Saya seems to have grown past being just a spoiled brat and into a child who has tried to live up to the perfection that are her parents. I mean her father is the lord of the manor in more ways than one as the Takagi-clan looks to have been the same clan in centuries past which ruled over the city during the Feudal-era of Japan. Takagi Souichiro and his wife Yuriko are quite formidable parents and we see where Saya gets both her beauty and coldly, logical brain.
This episode to me also shows us just how far Hirano Kohta has come from the geeky and shy introduction from the first couple episodes. We’ve seen him become quite the badass to help bookend Saeko in terms of pure zombie killing power. He’s been the most useful of the group not just in how expertly he handles the guns the group comes across, but in teaching others how to operate them. This new zombie apocalypse world has made Kohta useful in his eyes. So, when the demand by the “adults” at the Takagi compound for him to hand over the weapons he and his group brought with them his reaction was both understandable and quite saddening.
To survive the last couple days as a highschool student while adults around them died and became “Them” it’s jarring to Kohta and the rest of the group to suddenly be treated as children once more. While his tear-filled reaction to not wanting to go back to being a helpless otaku seemed overly dramatic it’s easy to sympathize with him. Thus, it was great to see not just for the group to have his back and support his decision to hold on to the weapons, but to see Saya do the same. The fact that she uses Kohta’s help in securing her safety a way to show her contempt for her parents for not trying to find a way to save her shows the rift between daughter and parents.
While this respite from the doom and gloom action of the previous 3-4 episodes was quite good, this partcular calm before the storm looks to be ending quite quickly as the sneak preview for the next episode show the return of Shido-san and his bus of cult followers. Plus, just when I thought Madhouse was going to cut the bus orgy scene from the manga it looks like they just kept it for the end of episode 10. Now all is right with the world.
