High School of the Dead – This needs to get animated

I bought the first volume to High School of the Dead yesterday and some other random manga that I really don’t know what it’s about. I saved two dollars on the purchase too thanks to my point card at Wonder Goo. Why can’t America have a point card system? If you’re wondering the other manga is called Kamogawa Horumo and apparently it is based on a book and getting a film adaption soon. I got it mainly because it has a cute short haired glasses girl on the cover and I thought it was a romance comedy, but it apparently is more along the lines of Pokemon where people battle using spirits they control or something? I dunno…

Anyway, about High School of the Dead. I’ve heard about and I’ve been told to read it too, but for some reason I am so against reading fan translations of manga because I would much rather have the text in front of me than read it on a computer screen. So, here in Japan I guess I get my chance to pick the series up.

High School of the Dead seems to be a apocalyptic zombie manga that takes place in Japan. It centers around some high school students as they try to find a cause of the outbreak while avoiding zombies. Why high school students? I don’t know. Maybe because high school students are the only people that get shit done in Japan obviously.

I personally don’t like zombie movies, and totally freaked out of the theater when I went with friends to see 28 Weeks Later. But High School of the Dead is awesome. Just awesome stuff. I wouldn’t have bought it if they didn’t have a book on display that you could read about 10 pages or so in. Why isn’t this animated yet? Anime lacks a great apocalyptic zombie horror show. It has 5 volumes out now. Surely they could go somewhere with that honestly. Even if they don’t have enough material they could just make up material I mean what is there really to think up for this kind of stuff?

One of the main reasons I got it was because it provides furigana, which is real odd considering how violent and gory the artwork is. But hey, I’m not complaining. I tell you, I find myself looking up at least one vocab word with each dialogue bubble. I have to deal with vocab like 自家発電機 (private power generator) and 一服 (a puff, a smoke) which I haven’t learned before, but makes for great learning material maybe? The grammar on the other hand is relatively comprehensible even for an idiot like myself that doesn’t really know Japanese at all despite my claims of knowing (some of) it. I have been using the fan translations as a guide as I go along reading each page. I would say that it is important to pay attention to what is going on in a frame and what someone says because context really makes things make sense. I just really never seem to notice when reading manga in English.

The artwork is really reminiscent of the Battle Royale manga that I read but just kinda stopped reading due to it just getting seemly ridiculous and my interest was waning in the series itself. Least in High School of the Dead, the character designs look like they are in high school. None of these high school boys with huge muscles and body types that make they look like they are in their 20s. Ok, I will say that the female characters do look older like they have some what huge breasts and panty shots abound but that makes for an entertaining zombie manga if I must say so myself.

I am only about 10 pages in so I really can’t comment on much about the story but just browsing through the manga it looks like it really gets good action wise, and depending on how fast I go through it I might pick up volumes 2 and 3. Maybe this is my problem. Someone once said to me that there is a lot of manga out there that doesn’t get animated and that manga is really a whole lot more diverse than anime is. I guess I am going to have to agree to that. If I had money to spend and knew Japanese better I would probably check into manga a whole lot more.

So sure High School of the Dead probably isn’t all that amazing but it really does satisfy my yearning for mindless violence and action, which isn’t all that much of a bad thing now and then especially when you’re watching shows with titles like Moe Lyrical † Princess.

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