The fighter will use any tactics necessary to clear a quest; while the thief has ideas about what a proper adventure looks like and is keeping an ever increasing list of tactics that the fighter is banned from using again. One of the running jokes of the series is how the fighter keeps finding new creative ways to get around this list.

Case in point: Creative use of a spell with the gate scroll to “a high place”, thus creating a vacuum force due to the difference in air pressure...

My initial reaction upon finishing Highschool of the Dead was "What was the POINT of all of this?" However, because I like torturing myself, I immediately set to re-watching HotD -- in Japanese instead of English this time -- to see if there's ANYTHING I may have missed.

I think I learned a bit more about Attack on Titan from this, which I'll get to in a bit, but first I want to get into the minor details skip to my conclusion↓ if you want.

If the subtitles are to be believed, there's only one difference in the dub worth mentioning, and I'd almost chalk it up to a matter of personal taste: whether a character is righteously indignant over being stifled and not being taken seriously as a continuation of their life from before the zombie apocalypse (dub), or whether they're righteously indignant that their family managed to carve out a little safe haven without going to rescue their child (sub). The dubbed version actually fits in with the themes the show is exploring at the time -- the group of main characters not being taken seriously by the larger group of adults they join up with -- but the subbed version makes more sense as a human reaction. Considering how little the show cares about sticking with a theme other than painting "GRIMDARK" in 20-foot tall letters of blood-soaked panties, I'm grateful for a little attempt at sticking with a theme.

Now, there are some TINY touches that, only on a subsequent watch I picked up on, like the pink-haired bitch girl thinking to herself about not being with thin boy when the zombie apocalypse first begins (hinting at her later interest in him), but of course that's largely overshadowed by all the ways the story subsequently ignores its own lore in order to move the story along.

And there's just SO. MANY. CONTRIVANCES.

As an example, when the harem protagonist and his crush get separated from the rest of the group, they need a way to get around, so they're attacked by a motorcyclist-turned-zombie who still has a helmet on. Somehow, they bash in the back of the helmet with... something flat (it looks like a baking sheet and is never seen before or again). It's a freaking crash helmet, pretty much specifically designed for such things, but the story needed them to have a bike to get around, and they needed to not die by zombie, so they manage it despite all logic.

This comes just after some inconsequential boy they saved from the school nearly picks a fight with the harem protagonist for no stated reason, just so that there can be a reason for the scumbag teacher that came with them can step in and say that a leader is needed to maintain order. That boy never get any further development whatsoever, other than the ten seconds of screen time he had nearly picking a fight with the harem protagonist.

There's just as many if not more instances of contrivances for the sake of T&A, but I feel it's not worth getting into it since that much is obvious even to those who haven't watched it. I think the most egregious is when it has two of the girls act drunk but seems to go out of its way to say they're just "tired" and not have the usual signs that are added for comedy's sake. Partly, I think it's the worst because of that, but also because it doesn't even stick to that excuse because one of the girls, who is seeing double, goes on to have a long heart-to-heart with the harem protagonist before hell breaks loose again and they rouse to action (meaning she never falls asleep). Actually, there's a lot of "not sleeping" that I noticed throughout the show.

I do want to mention that there are a handful of... convenient camera cutaways during or at the end of certain scenes that would almost imply a sex scene starts off-camera, except that the scene usually then continues without there being any time for such a sex scene. I'm not sure what the point of it was except for an invitation for (at the very least) the audience's imagination to fantasize something more than was shown.

There's actually a couple of scenes that, in a similar manner, seem to invite the audience to imagine more than is shown, because I found myself thinking multiple times how much it felt like I was watching a video game adaptation. I can understand that there are really only so many ways you can depict a zombie apocalypse, but there are also just several scenes that are just blatantly designed to put you in the "action seat" with first-person perspective through guns or on cars, etc.

Then there's all the extra scattered elements. I'm actually reminded of some of my past poorly-written attempts at long-form stories, where each chapter included a new angle or conceit such as being in found-document form without sticking to one thing.

One of the first things that goes ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE is the harem protagonist repeating in his narration "on the night before the world ended, I stayed up late." I thought maybe it might mean something; that maybe there was something lost in translation about his character, but as far as I can tell, no, it's just pointlessly in there. It's not even phrased in such a way as to say anything about his character; he is never stated to be a night owl or an irresponsible person or even given an explanation as to why he might stay up late that night.

Similarly, episode 4 is broken into little sections by a timer (Z-day +1 5:05am, for instance), but it takes until episode 4 to even show up, and then it's never seen again.

This is on top of all the obvious ways it isn't self-consistent from shot to shot or with its own lore. Talking or even yelling doesn't bring zombie's attention unless it's convenient, and often characters standing next to each other will very conveniently vanish in order for the camera to focus on only one of them (typically one of the impossibly-clothed girls).

Individually I think I'd be able to forgive these problems, but taken together it all adds up to nothing of value.

I do feel it's unfair not to reiterate that I've finally reached the point where I'm willing to forgive this show for just being what it is, instead of of what it could be. Even all the (IMO unnecessary) sexual tension that leads to the thin boy becoming the harem protagonist is understandable when you consider they're teenagers (to an extent; being together through life-and-death situations tends to make people close and teenagers are generally ruled by their hormones, though that doesn't explain or excuse the nurse being a cougar).

I recognize that HotD speaks in several languages that I do not, such as cinematography, sound design, references to zombie and thriller movies, et cetera. There may well be something worthwhile there that I'm not capable of seeing, but I can only judge it by its story and the presentation thereof (like most people). In a vacuum, I'd call it awful, because it is simply so unilaterally not for me.



One thing I've been thinking about recently is this kind of "emotional" storytelling, and I don't think it's for me. I want consistency in presentation (and, preferably, lore), rather than simple appeals to emotion and aesthetics. To be clear, while HotD does go way too far into the grimdark direction, what I mean here is where the drama comes from easy-to-manufacture emotional situations, that can be set up within a few scenes instead of having the real emotional weight of putting a character whom you already know well into a situation that will test them -- I usually compare it to the Kick the Dog trope, where such animal abuse is simply done to prey on our natural connections towards pets.

HotD seems to be tailor-made to the same group of teenage boys that think "dark is deep" that all the hard-boiled comics of the 90s dark ages were geared to; it tries to feign depth with sex & violence, and just comes off as cheap and pathetic in my eyes. It's only realizing this that I started making connections to AoT, realizing that I could levy that exact same complaint towards AoT, and that that is probably why it got so popular. AoT is better at keeping with its themes and lore, and doesn't have as much sex as HotD, but boy howdy is it trying to masquerade as something more philosophical than it is by having everything be as grimdark as possible at all times.