Having the series finally conclude from a regretful viewing, it’s failed to alter our opinions in any way – making no sense whatsoever from the beginning, just delving further into a realm of nonsensical idiocy.
The current episode starts off akin to a cheap imitation of Hollywood B-list movies. Missiles were being fired off and it causes magnetic fields to fluctuate. Our poor protagonists are the victims of this attack who are left unable to drive some of the cars. Yes, it totally makes sense that cars are affected by EMP – a fact they didn’t even understand and decided to come up with the excuse “only the newer models are affected”. It’s great to know the series had a rocket scientist on hand to clear up that one.
On the brighter side, miss Shizuka’s brains started to work after many episodes of idling – suddenly remembering the phone number of her friend out of the blue. Just when luck’s on their side, the terrible fascist EMP breaks the connection.
Saya then decides to become the smart-ass of the group and succeeds due to zero competition.
Another zombie meat dies when the crowd rushes in to the mansion. For some reason, he couldn’t run faster than the zombies and ended up getting devoured. All hell breaks loose and the gates are shut. From this time forth, bullets are being fired and heads explode. Even Saya’s mom adapts her clothing accordingly and joins the party.
Don’t underestimate the zombies. They decide to not to show up for a whole day, but just when the missiles were fired, they use their brilliant tactics to attack in times of mayhem. Simply genius. They can also break metal gates without any problem whatsoever, it seems they have excelled far beyond the human race in physical and mental ability. There seems to be no hope for the human kind, but luckily, we’ve got ourselves some random high school students who are even more reliable than the military.
These capable students leave the parents of Saya behind, because she was slapped across the face by her mom. Serious business.
At the car, a voyeur suddenly pops out and lets us look through his eyes to see the panties of his mistress. He’s fully aware that you need to be attractive with large breasts to survive this apocalypse and wisely stays behind in the garage to act cool in front of the teenagers and zombies. While escaping, Saiko thought it was a great idea to put her head out of the car, because it’s really fun to fall out and have your oppai used as a gun holder. Takashi quickly notices her foolish behavior and does the most heroic pull ever in slow-motion epic style.
After the credits are over leading us to believe this horrid work of garbage had finally concluded, Takashi has this cheesy monologue and states that it’s the beginning of the end of his world. We’re pretty fortunate, because that means it’s finally the end for this show, and our eye torturing. May we hope that the hint for the continuation really is the last thing we see from this show.
Aug 12, 2011 @ 16:13 CDT
I liked HOTD for what it was: zombies and fanservice. However, if you hated the series then do not watch the OVA. Now that was absolutely terrible.
Aug 12, 2011 @ 16:17 CDT
Straightforward response – you sum it up all to well. If anyone out there likes zombies and fanservice the series is certainly not bad in that respect, although if you don’t like either, you won’t enjoy it much.
Aug 12, 2011 @ 17:05 CDT
It’s a bit two-sided for me. I know I was being sarcastic for the most of the time in this review, but I do understand why people would love this series.
I don’t mind tits and zombies, 2 things I really like a lot. But when it comes to a series about survival, they really tend to do a lot of illogical things. I know it’s not their intention to add a serious tone to it, but when you have the balls to insert technological terms like “emp”, then at least do it properly. Also trying to be smart (Saya in this case) doesn’t help me to take this series lightly…
If you really want to make a pulp-series, then do it consistently (for example Bokusatsu Tenshi really hit the spot).
Aug 12, 2011 @ 22:19 CDT
I don’t dislike HOTD so much as a series rather than that it just didn’t have enough time to develop its story and characters to my appeal.
World destruction. Zombies. High school kids on the run. All these things and more take time to fully exploit. Twelve episodes simply isn’t enough to do that, not by a long shot. I believe anyone who’s kept pace with the manga will agree with me.
Jun 28, 2012 @ 16:50 CDT
I think your disappointment stems from not understanding the background of how and why this anime/manga was conceived.
Daisuke Satō created an homage to George Romero’s Dead films.
Anyone who has seen Romero’s films would instantly fill in any story, plot, character development as HOTD could be considered almost plagiarizing specific scenes from Romero’s Dead series.
You simply can’t understand a film genre by just immersing yourself in one movie. It’s like saying Akira Kurosawa doesn’t make good kung fu movies because the plot is too slow.
Jun 28, 2012 @ 17:01 CDT
Either way, doesn’t change the fact that this animation fails.
There’s no glaring red lights with a warning sign saying that to understand this series, you need to be familiar with “George Romero’s Dead films” – and this series as it stands isn’t even average. It’s an apple which looks spittle compared to other apples.