Category: Finished Series: Horror

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Things are looking grimmer and grimmer for our four heroines as Yuuri can’t bring herself to kill Kurumi, Miki is trapped on the lower floors and zombies have subsequently knocked out the power and overrun the school. Leaving a surprisingly stable Yuki to save everyone’s hides. The zombies knocking out the power by destroying the generators through pure coincidence is a rather far fetched development but current developments call for more bad luck and this shows the school is beyond saving.  I mainly expected Yuki’s snap back to reality to be a morbid change as she learned just what was waiting for her but it’s turned out to be a fairly positive change. Admittedly the second half of the episode does deal a bit too much on Yuki accepting Megumi’s death when time is short and while Yuki’s staring at flashbacks of her past, her friends are getting closer to their deaths. The emotional draw didn’t quite work for me considering that every second Yuki stares blankly at a visual memory is a second Kurumi inches near the point of no return. We already got plenty of emotional weight behind this so I don’t see the point of adding more when the situation calls for drastic action.

Miki’s encounter with Taromaro was brief and could possibly be a encounter they are saving for the finale. Miki killing Megumi for good was a great scene as well as her running around with the shovel trying to imitate Kurumi to weak effect. It shows that Kurumi isn’t so easily replaceable and without her the group is going to be missing some vital offensive force. But Miki managed to do what Kurumi couldn’t and kill Megumi. At first however it looked like she was making a beginners mistake in zombie films and was attempting to speak with it while the zombie gets within striking distance. Miki left things pretty close her as Megumi was right on top of her before she swung the shovel down. I get paying respects to the dead but perhaps you should do it with a room’s worth of distance just in case. It’s not as if Megumi would take offense…or would she?

One thing that Gakkou zombies have that most others don’t is residual memory. That last time I saw this explored was in George Romero’s Day of the dead or the “A Ride in the Park” sequence of VHS 2. The zombies of Gakkou have a higher level of memory than other kinds, Megumi being a prime example. She continues to write in a journal despite her writing being nothing more than random scribbles and hangs around the basement where the medicine is. The medicine case itself has bloody landmarks on it, suggesting that Megumi tried to reach it while she was still human or has been trying to open it while undead. It asks the question, just how aware are these zombies? It’s a scary thought that under that facade could be a person internally screaming for help.The big question now is whether Gakkou can tie things up satisfactorily for the final episode as no word of a second season has come. A life goes on ending would be the likely choice and not a bad option as it does leave the possibility of a sequel. But the enticing idea of a full tragic original ending is a delight far too rare. That said the chances of that seem slim as this episode shows that the direction is aiming for a more hopeful outcome.

Murphy’s law has come into full effect and I must say that you will either watch this episode with a sadistic smile or with a worried interest. The episode started slow with what could be a fourth wall breaking moment of Miki discussing the book she finished. Her words about having read the translated version of the book and that it’s only natural that the original version would end the same seem directed at the manga readers. Basically a wink to let us know that what’s coming isn’t going to change from the source. But I must admit there is some masterful misdirection here. As we all no doubt guessed, Taromarou is now dead or undead in this case as he was bitten. Hardly a surprise as the dog’s death was heavily foreshadowed for the past few episodes. The opening even has gone through even more changes as now zombie Megumi is shown and Taromarou is missing completely. Not to mention Yuki’s hat at the end of the opening is now covered in blood. So we all knew this dog was going to die, yet under this obvious twist was a far more surprising one. I am fairly certain that nobody(who is watching anime only) saw Kurumi’s death coming.

I knew about it but only because I accidentally spoiled myself on that matter and am currently kicking myself for it. I mean out of anyone in the group, I thought Kurumi had the greatest plot armour. She’s a fan favourite and is the group’s main attacker and scout. Killing off Kurumi puts the rest of the group in a much more dangerous situation and her character was one who could get them out of dangerous spots. Well to be honest she isn’t confirmed dead yet as there still some mention of medicine in the lower floors but if that turned out to save her it would be a fairly cheap plot device. Part of me wants there to be something to save her as I do like her character yet I feel her dying lends much more to the story to come. In looking at the situation it looks very likely that she will die and doing so puts Yuuri in a awkward position of killing her turned friend. She did take out a familiar cloth wrapped knife from the ending and she did make a promise to end her life if she ever got bit.

What might surprise people is that Taromarou didn’t originally have this big a role in the manga. In the manga he was briefly shown in a flashback and was already bitten by the time he joined the gang. He had no connection to Miki and was originally found by Yuki and died before Miki joined them. The connection between Taromarou and Miki leads itself greatly to the story now as with Kurumi on her deathbed Miki has to go down and look for medicine. She isn’t quite aware that there’s still a zombie Taromarou in the lower floors. Though to make matters worse the zombies have broken down their barricade and are making their ways to the upper floors. The cherry on top of the tragedy is that Yuki by episodes end looks to have snapped out of her delusional fantasy and now sees things as they really are. Next weeks episode really cannot come fast enough. One concern however deals with the number of remaining episodes as it seems that there isn’t enough to cover the remainder of this arc from the manga. It’s possible they will attempt to make a original ending or they might cut the story off in the middle of the arc. Neither outcome is quite desirable as I am interested in seeing how this all plays out and would like another season.

In a world with no way to get to the beach, Gakkou does the impossible and manages to have a beach episode. Using the biology fish pool on the roof the gang get up to water antics and fun in the sun. I found this episode to be a bit unnecessary as we already know what’s coming and this looks to just be delaying that outcome. Though we did get heavy foreshadowing about Taromaro as that puppy got more death flags than a man one day away from retirement. From the dog walking alone in the ending, meeting Megumi in the last minutes and making up with Miki in the episode. That dog is ready and primed for Max suffering.

I decided to read the manga up to the point the anime has reached and in trying managed to spoil myself on two things. One was fairly obvious but the other was something that would have been a complete shock. Of course I won’t say it here but let me warn you that if you are planning to see the differences between manga and anime then it’s best done after the show is finished as it’s very easy to spoil. Adaption wise the anime does well to cover the manga though in execution the two are very different beasts. Overall the anime is the stronger of the two as it handles the reveals and twists a lot better than the manga which tends to show them rapidly without dramatic flair. The manga has some scenes I wish were in the anime such as Kurumi visiting her house during the “field trip” and Miki trying earnestly to snap Yuki out of her delusion before joining the club but the anime handles the story so much better than the manga does. The anime does tend to add extra Moe into the bundle such as our mainly anime original pool episode here but in terms of presentation and execution, it trumps the manga.

There isn’t much to say about this episode besides it being fanservice galore which I find somewhat amusing considering how the episode ends. If the blu-rays of the show are going to be brightened up then this episode after showing girls run around in minimal clothing has Megumi at the end looking quite…unappealing shall we say. If you took out the moments with Taromaro and the mentioning about the passage under the school this could be labeled a filler episode. Even though I have spoiled myself using the manga I am curious about what will happen with that passage. For the anime looks to be changing what happens down there. With the last boss Megumi guarding the passage, anything could happen next episode and it’s gonna be good.

Well this episode starts off with a dark revelation and we see that Megumi is not buried on the roof but instead is roaming the school as an undead corpse. Her location seems to be the door where Yuki talks to her. From the looks of things, after taking a picture with the group she was bitten in a sudden zombie attack and turned. The girls then left her locked up in a room in the school. One particular detail is when the girls were camping indoors a Megumi came to check on them. So was that Megumi the figment of Yuki’s imagination or the zombie Megumi walking past the door? There was some cheap fanservice this episode with the girls bathing Taromarou but frankly I am willing to give it a free pass. After all they got to get them Blu-ray sales somehow. This episode had Yuuki and Miki searching for the Lock the key they found last episode opens and I was surprised to see Yuuri prodding Yuki out of her comfort zone by bringing up a traumatic event of the past. If anyone I thought Miki would be prodding, not her. Still we have hijinks ensue as Yuki plays around while trying to find the lock and happens to really find it in a secret compartment in the staff room. While Yuki was playing around and got a picture taken of her I thought the picture might set her off as it shows the cabinets broken behind her but even in photos its seems Yuki sees what she wants to.

I must say the reveal at the end of the episode caught me off guard. It’s true that I found the schools facilities to be oddly convenient, the solar panels in particular, but I just wrote those off as the mangaka compensating for the odd situation. I thought the whole purpose of these things was to justify why these girls were staying in a school as opposed to more ideal locations like a Mall. I would have never guessed that the schools convenient facilities would be a plot point. While I admit there is still some scepticism over the school being some kind of weapons testing facility but the story potential for this is just too good so I will roll with it. The second thing that surprised me is that this series is actually going to explain the the zombie outbreak. Most zombie media tend to leave the cause of the outbreak ambiguous and only lend vague theories such as it being a act of God or, like this episode did, a biological weapon. But few actually confirm the cause. The implications of revealing this could lead to some interesting theories such as the outbreak being intentional and the girls are unknowingly taking part in a isolated psychological experiment. But one thing is for certain here. Even if there are people outside the city and this incident is isolated to this one place, those people would have no desire to rescue these girls. That is because there is a risk that they are infected by the weapon as well and are therefore abandoned. It’s one thing to believe that that you may be one of the last remaining humans, but another entirely to know you have been left to die by the rest of the world. This does depend on whether the outbreak was done on purpose or accidentally and how far it made it out.

This episode has been a weaker episode than those so far. The opening has gone through a number of changes now that we have reached over the halfway point. Megumi’s part of the opening has been replaced by a shot of her grave, the colourful transition after showing the title is now a series of zombie hands, Miki’s friend is now shown walking alone amidst zombies and pictures that were happy shots of each of the characters are now showing them depressed and worried. The fact that Taromarou is now a single bright happy shot among shots of people who are not dead or missing makes me think that dog is not going to have a bright future. There wasn’t much to the episode itself as it was mainly about the gang sending out letters by balloon and one pigeon by the name of Arnault Hatonishiki II. Thought there was Yuki noticing a discrepancy in her memory regarding Megumi which shows she’s getting even closer to snapping out of it. Megumi or her subconscious took the act of consoling her and pushing her back into the delusion. But even she seems to see that this trick is coming to its end.

So there’s a lot of hope here and a fairly lighthearted optimism which can mean only one thing. Everything is about to go to hell. The night is always darkest before the dawn but in tragedy the light is always brightest before it burns out. The new ending is proof of that as we have the girls disappearing and being replaced with Yuki’s hat, a broken CD player, shovel, shredded teddy bear and a knife all of which is bloodstained. Along with the text on the chalkboard saying “We’ve Graduated!” Which likely means what you think it means. Something is going to break this all down and my mind is preoccupied with what is going to be the trigger. Yuki is the obvious choice as she’s already in a delicate state that could collapse at any moment but my money’s on Miki. Miki is the one most uncomfortable with the situation and could set off Yuki easily with how she is unwilling to go along. She has friction with Yuuri as she is generally the one to argue against her when the topic of the situation comes up. But most importantly, Miki has something which could set her off and cause her to go berserk. The friend that left her in the Mall is without doubt, most certainly dead. But Miki still believes she’s out there. If her friends corpse happens to walk up to the school and Miki sees it, there’s no telling what she could do.

Well the story continues on from the flashback, showing Miki first joining the club. Right off the bat the episode pushes to answer the question of Megumi’s existence. It’s a answer that was pretty obvious by this point as the foreshadowing was pretty heavy on this particular detail but this episode makes it crystal clear. Megumi is dead and has been dead right from the beginning, with her grave on the rooftop being shown in the background in episode one. The Megumi Yuki has been talking to is just another of her delusions and the ending goes as far as to show scenes where Yuki and Megumi were together and slowly faded her out to show what the scene really was. As I said this revelation is hardly shocking for anyone who was paying attention. But the execution remains immensely solid. The scene where Miki asks Yuki who Megumi was when she was supposed to be in the room was just great. The music getting distorted and fading with Yuki staring at her with those black eyes, it was just an excellent reveal scene. So much so that I wish it hadn’t been made so obvious that it wasn’t shocked by it. The little things were great too like Yuki “handing” Megumi a bottle of water and if you listen you can hear it hit the ground.

Another thing that was confirmed is that the girls really do rely on Yuki’s mental state to keep their spirits up. In some ways this is good as in a zombie apocalypse it’s not the zombies which are the most dangerous thing. It’s the people who mess things up. Yuki acts as a good meditator to prevent the other girls from doing anything too rash or stupid. But it’s a perilous balance as when Yuki goes down, they all go down. Yuki’s mental state is already a pretty fragile thing as shown here she could break down just from someone asking a honest question. Yuki herself seems pretty comfortable in her safe zone and even when Miki questioned her it honestly felt like she was trying to get Miki to play along rather than deny her. It’s possible that Yuki is slowly slipping out of her delusions and doesn’t really want to let go of them, so she attempts to continue the farce even when she is becoming aware of it. Really that is the best option as despite how it could be broken at any second, this may be one of the most functional survivors of a zombie Apocalypse that I have seen. Everyone gets along, there’s no petty fights over supplies, people are honestly trying to enjoy themselves and no liabilities to make a huge mistake that ends up screwing everyone over. Well for now at least, one thing that I think will come to a head later is Miki’s reluctance to play along with Yuki’s delusions. Even in the first episodes she still only half heartedly plays along to keep her happy. It’s clear that while Miki understands the situation, she’s not keen on keeping Yuki contained in her happy place. I think that if a really bad situation comes Miki may just force the truth on her out of frustration. This would really put her at odds with Yuuri, who by the looks of it, is the one most determined to keep things as they are.

As these episodes go on it really is something to wonder about the matter of Yuki being a hindrance or a help. I have said previously that she does push the group in the right direction but it is still a case where her mentality is dangerous. The group need to come up with excuses to keep her from nearly getting them killed but even then she is being rather loud in an area where zombies could rip them apart at any moment. But she also saved Miki and pushed them to take the risk to go to the mall to collect supplies. As the group tries to keep her in her delusions it also pushes them to take risks to ensure their survival. That said, there were moments that made me want her to get with the program and stop endangering the group. Despite the group’s efforts it does seem that Yuki’s dream world is slowly crumbling as in this episode she at least had some clarity to the situation. She clearly knew that Miki was in danger and seeing the zombies again did shake her so much to the point where she got a fever. It shows that eventually her dream is going to collapse and when it does it’s not going to be pretty. Would I be considered sadistic if I actually was looking forward to that moment that does happen? As a side note, I found an article noting a potential reason as to why Yuki’s uniform is a different colour from the others. If you invert the colours of Yuki’s uniform then it matches the same colour as the other heroines uniforms and likewise. It could be a really clever symbolism on Yuki’s flawed perception of reality.

Undoubtedly this is the moment the group was in the most danger, so they are lucky that these zombies happened to be be of the more classic slow moving variety rather than the running kind. Thus allowing our girls to shop for clothes and for Taromarou to form a bond with Yuki. These moments remain a double edged sword as they are light hearted fluff but undeniably strengthen the darker moments of the show. At points it’s even fairly enjoyable however still the mood is starting to clash a small bit. I think the girls trying out clothes with no worries is a little out of place considering that a zombie could be in ait  at any corner and the last thing you want is them catching you with your pants down. Or in this case, in a swimsuit. Good luck going to the beach in that girls, and was Yuuri’s boob bounce really necessary? Still the small things like Yuuri worried that Kurimi might not make it back from her solo food run or discovering a legion of zombies in a theater room. As well as the rather dark implication that the Theater room was barred from the outside to keep them in and maybe not all the people in the room were zombies at that point. Yuuri making use of the alarm to disorientate the zombies was a pretty clever play on her part as by all accounts Miki looked like she was doomed once pulled off the piano. I don’t know whether the next episode will continue to follow Miki first joining the group or go back to the point before the flashback but admittedly I would be interested in just how she reacts to it.

In 2004’s zombie spoof film “Shaun of the Dead”, Simon Peggs master plan for surviving the zombie apocalypse was to ” Go to the Winchester, have a pint and waiting for all this to blow over.” The funny thing about this is that barring the Winchester pub part this is likely the best method of survival. A common misunderstanding of many zombie film protagonists is that they assume that zombies are there forever more but when you think about it logically they will all be dead again in very little time. Zombies are essentially rotting corpse’s so if you just hole up in a place with a few months of food and water then when you come out the zombies brains would have rotted and they would all be dead. Unless there’s some kind of supernatural rejuvenation that keeps them from rotting, once you find a place to wait it out then you have won. The reason I bring this up is that in this episode despite how wrong they made it appear, Miki had the right idea by staying where they were and waiting it out. Where as her friends idea was just idiocy but to be fair to her, it was likely an idea born out of boredom and desperation. If I was stuck in a room with my only source of entertainment being a CD player then I would likely try to get out anyway I could. But its one hundred percent certain that she’s now dead and wandering the mall to give Miki an unpleasant surprise next episode. One thing this episode showed was just why Taromaru hates Miki so much and how she joined the school survival group.

This episode clearly takes place before the previous episodes as only there girls are at the school and they look to be running out of food considering the food portions. I think it’s fairly safe to say that Megumi is dead, after all the amount of foreshadowing makes that pretty obvious, and from the looks of things her dead body is in the staff room. Considering that Yuki went to the staff room with a dark look and came back with her car keys. Megumi’s death is probably the main trigger for Yuki’s mental instability as she is the person closest to her in the main cast. Yuki’s mentality does present some rather interesting scenarios as a means of helping the group. In this case proposing a school trip as a guise of venturing out to search for food. However it does make me wonder whether she is somewhat conscious of the situation or whether this is her mind molding the situation to fit her delusion. It does seem like she’s going out of her way to keep herself from breaking out out her delusion. Though the group also goes out of their way to help her keep it. In many ways Yuki is a bright light for the group with her boundless optimism and silly antics. A mentally broken girl is the one thing keeping the group from falling into despair. When put that way, it’s quite messed up.

What’s messed up in a different way is that Mikis been lying around in her underwear which happens to be a garterbelt. Now I am not going to call myself a man highly educated in matters of teenager girl lingerie choice but I don’t think it’s common for young girls to choose such adult underwear for a normal day of school and hanging out with friends. So it leaves me the question of whether this is a part of her character to go for adult underwear or whether the animators figured they would put in some more sex appeal in the anime. Chances are it’s number two but if it wasn’t it does bring up some more questions. Does she wear it because it’s her personal taste or was it to appeal to her friend whom she was with? Saying Miki is a lesbian wouldn’t be farfetched as she does have a rather close relationship with her friend and she does seem to be rather nervous when around Yuki. The heavy blush when Yuki was hugging her could be a sign but baiting like this is common in any female relationship in anime. The show continues to avoid directly showing gore as in any time Miki encountered something horrifying they anime would just blackout and jump ahead. We never really see how the two managed to barricade themselves in a storeroom. It works as this does seem to be Miki recalling her memory of the event and naturally when it comes to the more traumatizing moments her memory black’s it out. Again with gore or any kind of horror, its what you don’t see that truly scares you. Well next time Miki looks to be joining up with the group and while we know she survives this, how well her mind survived it is still a concern.

Here it is, a flashback to the beginning of the outbreak. In a market as over saturated with zombie media as ours it’s rather hard to do this kind of story without treading on old ground. The start of the outbreak is the focal point of every beginning for a zombie movie. Rarely is it explained and always during an unsuspecting day. In this case a day in the life of Megumi, a teacher at the school. But I think this stands out in how it was presented, namely this episode focused on Megumi’s day. We see her go to work and teach as well as help out students all the while waiting for hell to be unleashed. The thing is that this is likely the way anyone would act in a zombie outbreak. Going about the usual routine while ignoring the likes of Sirens and news reports cause you got your own things to deal with and it’s not as if those things affect you. It’s only when it hits you headfirst that everything comes crashing down. This episode gives good insight into just what our characters were like before the outbreak and from the looks of things Yuki’s pre-apocalypse life wasn’t quite as rosy as her delusions made it out to be. She’s certainly more depressed and from the looks of things, bullied. It’s rather depressingly morbid to see that Yuki is happier after the tragedy and after going insane than she ever was before it all happened.

We didn’t see her go insane yet but it looks like its beginning with her freakout on the roof. We did see however how Kurumi got her shovel and how her killing of the zombified senpai really went down. Some people say this show is censored but from the way I see it these cuts to black are more a stylish choice and they are much better presentation that simply showing gore. In these kinds of things less is more. This show isn’t about going around kicking zombie ass, it’s about these girls running away from a harsh reality. So cutting to black and reaction shots to Kurumi beating her crushes skull in with a shovel does so much more than simply showing it. In the end imagination fills in the blanks better than visuals ever could. One thing I might say is a flaw is when the series moves to portray the Moe side of things such as here where the girls camp together inside the building. Unlike other shows the Moe does have a point which makes it at least tolerable but even so it is fairly standard drivel to put up with.

Speaking of direction, it remains fantastic. I am not sure whether I should attribute that to the director, Masaomi Ando, or to the script/series composer, Norimitsu Kaihou, who just so happens to be the creator of the manga series. That may be just why this series is turning out so well, as we have the original creator on the team to make his story work within a new medium.  A lot of anime suffer from being too constrained to the source material which normally has to use different methods of showcasing action or visuals. The most common case is in Shounen anime where you have characters describing how a attack works during a fight instead of just showing it. But by giving the author creative control over the anime it allows him to better change the story for a visual medium. After all, he created it so naturally he would know the best way to present it, instead of an unrelated director attempted to place their own creative filter over someone else’s work. It’s the little touches in the episode that really rewards those who keep a close eye, one such example being a point on the roof were Megumi just realized that something was wrong and there’s a perfect shot showing the shadow cast from the building covering Megumi while the two other girls remain in the light. This series remains solid though the real turning point will be when Yuki’s imaginary world is broken. I complain that the moe drivel of this series is something bothersome but it’s undeniable the factor that heightens the dark side and prevents this from being just another zombie show. It shall be a dangerous act of juggling two opposites in perfect harmony and keeping that act interesting is something that I truly hope this anime succeeds with.

 

So despite saying I would cover Chaos Dragon in my summer preview, I have decided to cover this instead. The reasons for this is simple, the obvious one being that Chaos Dragon is a poorly written, badly animated and jarring mess of an anime. But the main reason is that after the second episode I tried to seek out the source material to see why Chaos Dragon was such a mess. I actually managed to find it and to my relief its actually pretty good. But I also found out that the anime doesn’t resemble it in the slightest. The difference between the anime and source is night and day. I found out that none of the writers in the game have creative control over it and it was intended to be loosely based. Though loosely based is an understatement, from the looks of things the anime writer took the character designs and the setting and that’s it. So who decided they could twist this collaborative project into their own little script? The answer is Shou Aikawa. Shou Aikawa happens to have the strangest portfolio of work that ranges from really good(Fullmetal alchemist, twelve kingdoms,RahXephon) to horrendously awful(Angel Cop, Eureka Seven Ao, Violence Jack) and unfortunately for us Chaos Dragon fell in the latter category. I don’t know what he’s really thinking by taking this interesting project and turning it into a poor man’s Akame no Kill, especially seeing as Akame no Kill is a downright embarrassing plodding mess of an anime. The fact of the matter is this anime is now destined for failure as when someone attempts to take someone’s idea and twist it into their own, the result is rarely successful. My second choice for covering this season, Ranpo, also put me on the fence with its second episode as the mystery left no room to be solved by the audience and there is odd placement of comedy. And with Kishi at the helm my expectations for this show have dropped. So with that I plan on covering this anime.

The combination of light hearted moe antics and grim apocalyptic horror remains strong with this series. In many ways stronger than the manga and this anime has some truly fantastic direction so far. In particular the way the camera never truly puts a zombie in clear view does heighten the effect of them. This episode only has the girls dealing with one zombie at a time yet the tension is thick throughout the scene. Perhaps because our group of survivors are not the likes of the fully armed, big breasted combat specialists of High School of the Dead, but instead four little girls with a shovel. That is effective horror gentlemen, when your protagonist is at a great disadvantage against a huge threat. Also was lots of little subtext with heavy hints that the teacher is dead and nothing more than a part of Yuki’s delusion and that shovel girl may have killed the zombified girlfriend of her school crush who was lurking outside the barricade. In particular the teacher honestly acts like a part of Yuki’s subconscious, warning her and giving her ideas on how to help the group without breaking her delusion.

The animation at the beginning was very good as well with the peachy flowing movement  as she talked about her crush on her senpai. And proceeded to darken when her senpai was zombified and she had to kill him with a shovel. If you look closely there’s a frame where the boys hard reaches outside of the blacked barred frame giving the impression it’s reaching for you. The opening remains peppy but slight changes have been made and from the looks of it the opening will slowly get more and more demented as the show goes on. Even the meaning of the cheery lyrics have an alternative dark way of being read. Truly I am surprised at just how well this anime is turning out.