Anime is popular partly because of its ability and tendency to have themes and subject matter of all kinds, whereas typical American cartoons are much more restricted towards children's shows or crude-humor shows for teenagers. While this does allow anime to be much more mature and "artsy," it also allows anime to be made as porn. Yes, fanservice is a well-known anime trait, with some shows revolving around it entirely instead of focusing on content or characters. On the surface, "Highschool of the Dead" is such a show, and yet the content is does contain is compelling enough to keep most viewers engaged.Basically, the show is your typical zombie story. All is normal until a zombie is seen outside the school gates, and not knowing what it is, school officials start to get bitten and infected. Soon, the entire school is overrun, and a band of survivors must escape the school, and find sanctuary elsewhere, even though the entire world seems to be infected with the plague. It's all very stereotypical of most zombie films, and many of the characters explicitly state this in the dialogue. And yet, it is very compelling stuff. I credit the series director, Tetsuro Araki, for the brilliance of the show, if you would call it brilliance. The show looks at themes and questions that make the series more interesting, such as "what would you do in a outbreak?" or "what if your friend was infected?" or "how would you feel after killing hundreds of people you once knew as neighbors?" These aren't exactly groundbreaking themes, but mix it in with the characters' quest for survival, and add some cool action scenes to mix it up, add great camera work and character expressions for effect, and you get a fun experience. Tetsuro Araki is best known for "Death Note," and more recently "Attack on Titan," and is known by now to be a very entertaining director no matter the subject. The result is something that feels like a typical American blockbuster, which is high praise for a Japanese anime.The surviving characters aren't bad either, although somewhat stereotypical. There's the main character, a dude who isn't special but tries to keep cool and ends up showing the most courage. There's a military otaku, who was picked on in school but sees this as a calling to put his knowledge of guns to good use. The rest consist of female hotties that make up every turn-on fantasy you can think of: the old girlfriend who wants to get back together, the quiet dark-haired vixen with little homicidal tendencies, the pink-haired nerd with glasses who is somewhat of a tsundere, and a ditsy blonde school nurse. Of course, all of them are gorgeous, as required by anime standards, and all have boobs bigger than their heads. Just in case, they also add a young girl whose father was infected, and a hot mother also gets a little screen time, you know, just in case you might be into that sort of thing. While most of the characters are there purely for the fanservice, the writers still attempt to make them more interesting through dialogue, back-stories and relationships, and sometimes this is pulled off really well (although it does also make some characters a little unlikable).
Oh yes, the fanservice. We must talk about that. Not only do all the girls have slender figures and large boobs, those body parts bounce and jiggle like jello (but not always, so you get not just unrealistic boob-physics, but INCONSISTANT boob-physics, which might annoy people). There are also plentiful panty shots, up-skirt shots, wet-clothes shots, cleavage shots, and a episode that revolves around the girls taking a bath together. They do change outfits often as well, each outfit sexier then the last. And if you haven't seen it yet, look up the infamous "matrix-boobs" action scene, you'll fall over laughing. So sexy anime characters is one of its main selling points. It does the fanservice very well, if you are looking for fanservice to begin with. But for a show about a zombie apocalypse that's actually good, the fanservice can get very distracting, and can turn a few people off. If you don't mind, it will likely turn you "on" to the show even more.The audio is darn good. The opening theme gets you in the mood for some awesome action, and the ending songs and transitions to those songs actually change often, a smart choice on editing. The background music can get cheesy I suppose, but it reminds you that this serious show shouldn't be taken too seriously. The English dub is surprisingly good, although the main hero gets unusually excited a couple times, which seems out of character considering the setting. The English writing feels modern and throws in some smart cultural references, adding minor changes that strengthen it from the original Japanese script, although I'm sure some of it will seem terrible and outdated a few years from now. Animation and visuals are arguably Madhouse at its best for a television show, although much of that effort is put into the fanservice scenes of course, and much of the visual strength relies on the strong character designs from the original manga artist Shoji Sato.The show would be a really good, if somewhat unoriginal, zombie show, if not for the excessive fanservice. And yet, I don't know if that actually reduces my opinion as much as I thought it would... in fact, the show really wouldn't be the same without it. I guess a comparison is how most American horror films always have teenagers having sex right before being killed, which really isn't too different. All I can recommend is that you watch the first episode: if you don't mind what you see, the rest maintains the quality and content throughout, both good and bad, and may be worth your time.And for those curious, yes, this show was based off of a manga, and the disappointing ending of the show only reaches about two-thirds the way into the manga's story. There is enough material to potentially add a full second season... however, the manga still doesn't really have a proper ending, and the writer Daisuke Sato tragically passed away in 2017 before finishing it. The manga is otherwise worth reading if you want a follow-up.