YMMV / Highschool of the Dead

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • In the scene where Shizuka tries to stop Saeko from putting Ishii out of his misery, Saeko hastily cuts Shizuka off and says she's determined to give him "an honorable death". But immediately after she administers the blow, she grins and chuckles to herself. Was she really concerned with ending his suffering, or simply eager for a chance to kill?
  • Seconds before her death, was Misuzu's look as she was Backing Away Slowly from the zombies one of terror or regret for pushing her friend to the zombies?
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Alice witnessed her father's murder, and is stuck in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse. Considering this◊ is her default expression, she's taking it very well.
  • The same can be said of Shizuka, who was nearly raped by Shimada. Yet, from the next chapter onwards, she's back to her usual self as though it never happened. In fact, the only one bothered by it was Rei, having nearly been raped, herself.
• Awesome Music:
  • The main theme, "Highschool of the Dead" by Kisida Kyodan & the Akebosi Rockets.
  • A Suspiciously Similar Song of "In the House, In a Heartbeat" plays at the end of the first episode.
  • Hell, every episode has a unique ending theme that perfectly fits the mood of each one! And they're all sung by Maon Kurosaki.
• Base-Breaking Character: Rei, depending on which camp you're in. To her fans, she's a badass who pulls her weight within the group. The other side hates her for being a Clingy Jealous Girl and believe she's exploiting Takashi's feelings for attention.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: It's about a group of teenagers, who're trying to find their missing families in the midst of a sudden (and unexplained) zombie outbreak. But you'll be seeing so much cleavage, ass crack, and camel toe, that it makes really easy to forget about the plot.
• Bizarro Episode: The "Drifters of the Dead" OVA special.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Accidentally shooting an infected woman in the breasts? Fan Disservice. Accidentally shooting an infected woman in the breasts, and then accusing the offending bullet of sexism? Hilarious!
• Designated Hero: Takashi can come across as self-serving and extremely callous at times.
  • Such as when he admitted to killing his best friend Hisashi without remorse (chapter 1) because he was jealous that Hisashi was dating Rei. Takashi even yells at her hours later for bringing him up even though he'd only been dead a short while and she was still mourning him.
  • Takashi was also going to let Alice die, until Hirano insisted on saving her and opened fire. A decision that came back to haunt Hirano 20 chapters later when Takashi forced him to abandon Asami to be eaten alive by zombies, purely to conserve their ammo. Hirano opts to fire a single shot regardless so Asami wouldn't have to suffer.
• Die for Our Ship: Rei. Clingy Jealous Girl, occasional Damsel in Distress and in the wrong corner of a Love Triangle that involves the fan favorite: Saeko.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Shidou, for some. It also doesn't help matters that he does have a Freudian Excuse backstory where his father's adulterous and emotionally abusive ways caused his mother's eventual death, thus paving the way for Shidou to become the kind of man he is today.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Surprisingly, "BFFs" Misuzu and Toshimi appear in quite a few fanfics that shows them being saved by someone and journeying with the main cast.
  • Also applies to Kyoko Hayashi, despite being one of the first to be killed in the series.
• Fan Nickname: The animation is airing on Nico Nico Douga. Nicknames are inevitable.
  • "Kazuki" for Takashi and "Papillon" for Mr. Shidou, from their resemblances to characters in Buso Renkin.
  • "Bitch" for Rei, which has been taken up even by her fans ("Bitch is cute~", "Nice, bitch"). Also "Roach" for her hair style.
  • "King of Braves" for Hirano. Also "Hirako" (平コウ)).
  • "Excalibar" for the crowbar Takashi uses at the end of Act 5.
  • Generally, "Awakening" (覚醒) (a Mobile Suit Gundam reference) whenever anyone gets their first moment of heroism/craziness.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Takashi is shipped with Saeko, mainly because she's hot and she's a fan favorite character.
  • Saya and Hirano also have a respectable fanbase, due to all the Ship Tease and UST between them.
  • Rei/Saeko has also garnered its own share of fans, mostly due to the "Drifters of the Dead" OVA.
• Fandom Rivalry: A slight one exists with fans of The House of the Dead, due to this series having "HOTD" as its official acronym.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • A lot of fics focus on Americans being stuck in post-apocalypse Japan, often meeting Takashi's team and joining forces.
  • Writers who prefer pairing Saeko with Takashi often focus/elaborate on the time when they were stuck in a shrine together.
  • Many have Misuzu and Toshimi Spared by the Adaptation and join Takashi's survival party.
• Fetish Retardant: The constant chest bouncing can head into creepy territory at times.
• Genius Bonus: Zeke is known as Zero in the official English dub. The Mitsubishi A6M Reisen fighter plane had the official reporting name of "Zeke" among the Allies, but it is far, far better known as the Zero.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Illich Guardiola is the English voice actor for Kouchi, a teacher who engages in inappropriate relations with his underage female students. In 2014, Guardiola, who is also an acting teacher, was caught engaging in a sexual relationship with one of his underage female students. What's worse, though the incident ruined both his careers charges were dropped and the two went on to get married.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of the mall survivors wears a jacket with the words "Bad End" printed on the back, and he gets one.
  • Miyuki Sawashiro voices Saeko, a busty, purple-haired doting Action Girl. Then she went on to voice Camilla years later, who also has these traits.
• Les Yay: Given that the series has a prominent female cast with the main male leads being in the minority, this was inevitable.
  • Such as the bath scene between Rei and Shizuka in episode 6, which is so risque, that it's a wonder how they got away with it. Later in that same episode, we see Rei groping Saeko’s breasts while Saeko moans in pleasure.
  • And near the end of "Drifters of the Dead" OVA, Rei ends up frenching Saeko on the beach, while both are in the nude^note both of them were hallucinating that the other was Takashi, with the heavy implication they had lesbian sex.
  • From the same OVA, Shizuka and Saya hallucinate about having implied sex with the women they admire: Shizuka with her BFF, Rika and Saya with her mom. The morning after reveals that "Rika" was Saya and "Saya's mom" was Shizuka. Saya awakes to find herself flush on top of Shizuka, while both are stark naked.
• Memetic Molester: Likely intentional on the writer's part, given how inappropriately Shidou was caressing his female students along with the creeptastic manner in which he kept licking his lips, in episode 5. Which Saya lampshades while whispering to Hirano:
  Hirano: (arms nail-gun) Shall I... "interrupt" them?
  Saya: (sighing) Forget the pervy teacher and 'Slutty McSally' over there, we've got bigger things to worry about.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • ORGYBUS!!!
  • Boobs Dodge Bullet!
  • Matrix Boobs
  • I'M GETTING WET had spawned a new Memetic Mutation in 2ch, as noted here. NSFW.
  • Takashi slapping Rei in Chapter/Episode 1, due to her scrappy status.
• Mis-blamed:
  • Fans commonly hold Rei to be solely responsible for her breakup with Takashi, while turning a blind eye to his part in it. They also gloss over the fact that she only began dating Hisashi because she believed Takashi had abandoned her.
  • Some people who watched the anime but haven't read the manga complained that Madhouse inserted sexual fanservice, but some of it was taken directly from the manga. Though some of the more infamous instances of fanservice (such as Saeko's "Matrix Boobs" scene) are exclusive to the anime.
• Moe:
  • Alice/Arisu Maresato.
  • Asami Nakaoka: Initially seemed completely helpless, but even when she's pointing a gun at someone, she's so moe that it hurts.
• Moral Event Horizon: A given due to the setting. Among them:
  • As the High School is overrun by zombies, two BFFs proclaim their everlasting friendship right before one gets grabbed and the other turns on her and kicks her to her death, right before getting chomped on herself.
  • The household that kills Alice's father and ignores her.
  • When Rei says that Shidou isn't to be trusted, you wonder why, until a couple pages later when he kicks a student in the face when he twists his ankle and asks for help.
    • Shidou's father himself crosses the MEH when he deliberately has all evidence of his corruption destroyed or otherwise disposed of during an investigation into his activities, as Rei implies when she states that her father found absolutely nothing incriminating about the bastard.
    • Oh, and as if Shidou's willingness to harm his own students (and even murder them) wasn't bad enough, he had to go and get Rei's mother ostracized. Yes, his family finally shamed Rei's entire family. And That's Terrible. Perhaps Rei should've crossed the MEH (see below); it's a wonder the main party found Mrs. Miyamoto alive and not infected after being shut out by her own neighbors following a simple shopping trip.
  • The protagonists themselves have acknowledged they may cross the line as far as old human society is concerned. So far, two of them think they already have crossed the line: Takashi believes he crossed the MEH by killing his best friend partly out of jealousy over Rei and doesn't regret leaving someone (a violent nutjob, granted, but still a living human) as live bait for the zombies for attempting to kill him and take Rei, and Saeko claims to have crossed the line long ago, when a man attempted to rape her and she defended herself, but enjoyed it and continued hitting him even after he was no longer a threat. Rei comes very close to the Moral Event Horizon when she's given an opportunity to kill Shidou as revenge for rigging her grades over her father's involvement in the investigation of Shidou's father's corruption (an act that can be considered Shidou's earliest candidate for Moral Event Horizon, by the way—both Rei and Mr. Takagi definitely think it's bad enough to warrant a summary execution). However, she decides he's Not Worth Killing, thus averting this trope. Perhaps she should've killed him (and potentially crossed the MEH) then and there, considering what almost happened to her mother shortly after Shidou recovered from the subsequent ambush on his lot by "them".
• Narm: The fanservice reaches ridiculous levels at times.
  • Takashi grabbing Saeko's boob during his rousing speech at the end of Episode 9 becomes this, which seems strange since there was no apparent reason for it. Not to mention, he was damn near crushing it. It's a wonder Saeko wasn't in pain. Instead, she seemed to get off on it.
• One-Scene Wonder: The unnamed sniper implied to be Rei's father that appeared in Chapter 30 before the series went on indefinite hiatus.
• Periphery Demographic: HOTD has a surprisingly large amount of female followers. In fact, if this poll is anything to go by, HOTD might actually be more popular with females than males. This is likely due to the majority of the female characters being Action Girls, or at least having good moments and averting The Smurfette Principle. And Takashi is pretty easy on the eyes.
• Ron the Death Eater: The Saeko fandom really hates Rei, to the point of creating threads specifically to bash her. To them, she's a shallow, manipulative bitch, who's only clinging to Takashi because she's got no one else to turn to now that her "real" boyfriend's dead.
• The Scrappy:
  • Saya's anime portrayal is generally disliked for being a condescending know-it-all and her tsundere-ness, with strong emphasis on tsun-tsun; especially towards Hirano. Though the manga cast her in a much better light.
  • For a minor character, the unnamed kid from the mall arc gets a lot of hate, since he was responsible for letting the zombies into the mall, while trying to save himself. Which lead to the deaths of several of the others he'd abandoned, as well as Asami and Shimada^note the mall survivor who had tried to rape Shizuka, who both died saving him.
• Signature Scene: The "Matrix Boobs" scene is the most-remembered part of the anime, especially in memes.
• Squick:
  • Any fanservice having to do with the brainwashed kids or the zombies.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The anime's first episode features a track mimicking "In the house, in a heartbeat" from 28 Days Later. Episode 4 features another track mimicking "Abide by Me" from the same movie.
• Values Dissonance: Operating motor vehicles without a license, generally showing independence may not seem so bad, but consider that the series takes place in Japan.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: All the fanservice, gorn, and craziness seems to be a Seinen series, right? WRONG. It's a Shonen series. Let that go into your head for a while.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • Saya's family and their supporters are a group of uyoku dantai — militant, traditionalist Japanese ultra-nationalists with an eye on reclaiming lost territory and historical revisionism. It's considered politically incorrect in Japan to forward ideas like that, much less on a Fanservice show. Simultaneously, anyone displaying leftist views such as the protestors and survivors in the camp are depicted as straw cowards, idiots, and/or hypocrites. It's not clear if this is the author's personal opinion or dramatic embellishment, but his older works like USA vs. Japan 2025 and an alternate history where Japan is divided Korea-style after World War II clearly state that he is more sympathetic to the Japanese right, even though not necessarily belonging to them. The ultra-nationalists are censored in the anime as their views are considered politically incorrect.
  • What complicates it further is that series using a ton of fanservice and plots involving the characters violating social norms that would upset many of Japan's Right, giving a second interpretation as an anti-establishment work of youth rebellion. Whether this is the case of the author appealing to both sides or if one were to Take a Third Option, using its ludicrous story beats to promote a nationalist message remains unclear.
• The Woobie: Asami gets belittled and ignored by the mall survivors, found that her instructor got zombified while looking for help, has a Heroic BSoD, and is later Mercy Killed after being trapped while rescuing the person that necessitated escape.
• Woolseyism: When the gang shacks up at Shizuka's friend's apartment (who is not there), they find entire closets full of guns. Takashi mutters "Who is this chick, Sarah fucking Palin?"

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