Highschool of the Dead - Episode 8

Never mind our hardy bunch of high school students, surely there is little hope of survival for them when even the President of the United States is doomed, with Air Force One over-ridden with zombies and the President himself bitten. Add to that the talk of nuclear weapons and things don't look too pretty at all.

By contrast, our group of heroes and heroines are in high spirits as we join them the morning after the night before (what, no hangovers girls?), even finding the time to change clothes after crossing the river courtesy of that oh-so handy Humvee. Even better, there doesn't appear to be a zombie in sight as they make their way towards the first port of call, that being Takagi's house. With the sun shining and the cherry blossom falling, it seems like a beautiful, quiet day out on the streets... until they run into the inevitable massed horde of zombies that is.


From this point onwards things go from bad to worse, with some unexpected wire fencing putting an end to the Humvee's journey and unceremoniously spilling Rei onto the asphalt, leaving her at the mercy of said zombies. Takashi is quick to step up to the task of protecting her, complete with shotgun, but when the bullets run out it's up to the rest of the crew to do their bit - Hirano is naturally well prepared while Saeko always seems happy to lend a hand (not to mention a wooden sword), and even Takagi has a part to play. This all seems to be in vein however as their enemies are simply too numerous to count, leaving Takashi and Saeko to take desperate measures before another rescuer appears out of the blue to do the job for them - not before they find themselves stranded from safety and the rest of the group however...

While the previous episode of Highschool of the Dead mismatched its blend of action and fan service in my mind, this episode managed to restore the balance largely by making the entire second half of the episode a slug-fest of gunning down zombies in a way that held plenty of tension and impending doom while still finding time for feats of impossible fan service (breasts can't do that Saeko, they just can't). Yes, it's utterly ridiculous (not to mention a decade too late) in its use of bullet time before throwing in a last moment saviour out of the blue, but it's fun and it's tense which is exactly what the series is aiming for. Given that it achieves those goals, this time around I was quite happy to give the bouncing, rolling, rippling breasts a free pass again despite their physically impossible feats.