School Live! Review

Before you go on to the review, this review assumes you've at least watched the second episode or at least know what to expect from this anime. But despite all that, I will try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible. If you haven't watched the anime, I highly suggest watching it. Anime is meant to be watched, not read.

School Live! (Gakkou Gurashi, がっこうぐらし!)is a uhmmm... slice of life school anime about a group girl's everyday life at school in their newly found club, School Life club. Our pink haired protagonist, Yuki Takeya, is enjoying every moment in the school, from studying, doing school activities or simply having fun with her club mates. Life at school has never been so much fun!

Yeah...

In reality, School Live! is a zombie apocalypse anime written by Nitro+ where our high school girl heroes have to survive in a surprisingly well barricaded and stocked school shelter. One bite from a zombie and you can kiss your sanity good bye. Sounds like one of those zombie movies you've probably watched a thousand times, huh? But here's the twist: our pink haired protagonist, Yuki is so traumatized that she constantly has to hallucinate as if the zombie outbreak had never happened. Despite her lack of danger awareness and combat skills, her club members still have to keep her alive and not to break her hallucinations because she's their only source of happiness and motivation. That being said, the story is told through both Yuki's perspective (Slice of Life) and what's actually happening (Horror). So how is this Madoka Magica, twisty direction going to be executed? Is it executed correctly? Or more specificly, what makes this anime stand out amongst most zombie video games and TV shows we've seen a thousand times? I will talk about it below.

Where School Live! shines is the storytelling. Unlike what the zombie genre has become, School Live! is a horror anime in its core; it focuses on survival horror, and it does an amazing job at it instead of going full-blown rambo like High School of the Dead did. Also, One of the most significant part of this anime is that it has a very misleading title, namely School Live!, and you would think it's your typical slice of life anime with moe girls. After the horrifying first episode spoiler, School Live! seems to play a lot with the mood dissonance trope a lot; one moment you're watching a slice of life show with funky music, sound effects and editing, and all of a sudden you see darkened faces, blood and scary music. At first I thought it was just another gimmick to gain attention (and to make feminists angry), especially for those who like Madoka Magica and Higurashi. But after going through a couple of episodes, I found this particular gimmick fits this anime just fine; Yuki's hallucination contrasts the reality in terms of atmosphere, almost like a jumpscare, and that's what makes School Live! exceptionally horrifying. What's even worse (or perhaps brilliant) about this approach? In the first episode, we see an anime with every slice of life anime stereotypes ever, but when you notice the details more carefully, you may find some rather scary, unsettling easter eggs, be it SoS, missing chair, graveyard. They all foreshadow what this show might be, or future events.  According to an interview I found, the zombies were drawn in a way that you won't see their faces so to make zombies look much more frightening and like High School of the Dead, zombies are never referred as "zombies", they just call them "them. For which I think it's an interesting approach; not only it makes the zombies creepier, but it also makes them the Unseen, as not clearly having one's picture makes one scarier... without trying to go over-the-top bloody. Of course it's a moe anime, so I can't just stop the narration part there. As mentioned in previous reviews, moe is one of those genres that makes you care about the characters more because they look more eye-catching and innocent; they will leave a smile on your face when they are having fun and will definitely give you creeps when something terrible happen to them, you can sympathize them more. I highly doubt live action or realistic animations could replicate the same effect the anime does. And I'm surprised by how intense and realistic the atmosphere is, which is not what I expected from a moe moe show like this. The other ambient sound effects are also pretty well done, all the zombie moaning sounds aside, I like it when I hear the wind ambident sound from Fallout 3 (?), it sends chills to my spine EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Of course, I can't finish this review without talking about the story. Since I haven't read the manga myself, I can only tell what I've heard from other people so far. This is one of the things I worried about when I watched the first two episodes. As mentioned I above, I thought the idea of putting a bunch of moe girls into a hellish zombie apocalypse with intense mood shift was just a gimmick to gain the audience attention, and it was just going to be a slice of life show with a few horrifying zombie moments. And to my surprise, it actually has a decent development and a lot of clever writing going on; the anime begins with a similar slice of life format we all know and love, with a few horrifying zombie walk cut-ins, almost like jumpscares. With each episodes, the opening gets more hopeless and darker (in a creepy, unsettling way) and we get less and less slice of life moments. And like any other works from Nitro+, this anime has a strong Madoka Magica or deconstruction vibe to it; a seemingly light-hearted anime with a dark twist, and an anime about harsh reality, dream and hope. Not only it tells a good zombie story with a surprisingly realistic atmosphere, but it also delivers a message: in this hopeless, harsh reality, you can either choose to fall back to your fantasy world, or accept reality and do whatever you can in this horrible world, Madoka vibe anyone? This is definitely a good example on how an old, almost dead genre that is zombie apocalypse can be innovated into something much more different, something much deeper other than an action genre. If anything can make miracles, anime can do it. See High School of the Dead? You don't need to copy western films and TV shows to make a good zombie anime. Usually anime adaptions of manga and light novels get intense criticism from angry original fans left and right for not following the original work or not giving out enough information, this particular anime doesn't seem to be bashed angry fans. For example, in the anime, the dog Taromaru is an important team pet in the School Live! crew where he serves as a evil detecting dog (He can sense bad things) and their source of happiness, even though he always runs off for some reasons. Hell, he's even got a badass moment in the last episode. But in the manga, he only appears in a flashback and gets zombified very quickly. In the manga, Yuki has never broken free of her hallucination, thus she's almost like the load of her crew, except she's also their only source of happiness. But in the anime, she has got epic moments where she's not hallucinating and she's just surprisingly calm without hallucinating. In both the manga and the anime, although the zombies are infected and hungry for flesh, they can still remember their daily routine and retain their memories as if they were still alive. For example, during non-school hours, the zombies will just walk back to their original home or during rainy days, they will find shelters. In the manga, this is merely a justification on why the zombies don't just walk in to our heroes' club and kill everyone. In the anime however, it actually uses it as a plot device, how time, weather and memories can turn the tables. Speaking of that, I won't spoil the ending much, the title of the last episode "Graduation" had me wondered what kind of ending we would be getting, are they all going to die (Graduating as in everyone graduates from the School (a)Lif (v)e club)? Or is something going to happen? But the ending is very cleverly written and holds up the title SCHOOL Live! well and of course, it's relevant to what I've just said before. Good things aside, for some reasons the girls don't seem to be aware that they are in a zombie anime thus doing illogical things. For example, Miki's friend Kei, tired of staying in a shelter forever, decides to go out and find other survivors and for whatever reasons, she doesn't even try to arm herself in a mall full of vicious zombies. And there are split up moments where Miki decides to leave Yuki in a room when the zombies come, who knows if the zombies are smart enough to get in the room and kill Yuki? And there is one other thing I worry about; judging from how the story ends, I start worrying about how the season 2 would be. Is it going to be another generic zombie apocalypse anime? Or are they going to keep surprising us with creative ideas? But these aside, this story is overall enjoyable.

I however, is kind of 50/50 on the characters, but first, I will start with the better characters first. Yuki is indeed the spotlight of the show and she has plenty of development throughout the show. In the first episode we see the world through her eyes, and she's becoming more mature throughout the show and eventually, she's graduated. Despite the fact she doesn't have much combat skills, she's very fun to watch when she makes all these goofy jokes and damn you will get pumped when she finally does something brave and awesome. While not a very original idea, she is a very relatable character; like some of the people (likely some of the target audience as well), you might have experienced horrible experience in our world, and you decided to fall back and hide. But no matter how long and well you hide, one day you have to get out and fight again, so would you rather stay in your world forever? Or go outside and do whatever you can in this dreaded world? And we have Miki Naoki, a white haired girl who seems to be rather patient and quiet, and later we found that she has a pretty tragic or perhaps traumatizing past, in which she lost her dearest one in a mall. Miki also hates the way Kurumi and Yuri deals with Yuki's little situation, claiming that "One day, she has to realize what situation she's in.", which echoes the message this anime wants to deliver: "You can either choose to fall back to your fantasy world, or accept reality and do whatever you can in this horrible world.", and I really like shows echoing hidden messages like that, it just keeps making you think over this. Taromaru is a rather cute dog our club members found when rescuing Miki, while he might always seem to be the burden of the crew because he constantly runs off, he did do something good in some ways, like keeping their spirits up, or does something really epic and badass in the later episodes. Yuri Wakasa and Kurumi Ebisuzawa however, are not as developed as those two other girls. Yuri Wakasa is the president of the School Life Club, despite her usually nice, humble look, she can get really scary once provoked. But that's kind of it, as she doesn't get a lot of story later on. Kurumi Ebisuzawa, despite being the most popular character of the anime for her really cute look, doesn't seem to have a lot of development for me to love her. She's the only girl in the club who has excellent combat skills with her shovel. Her story however seems to be so unfinished. She was once forced to kill her boy she loved because her boyfriend became a zombie, and it's implied that she's got a little bit nuts after that. During combat sequences, the screen will turn a little bit red when she enters combat, which may imply that her traumatizing experience actually gives her a combat trance or what not. But I'm a little bit disappointed by how she behaves, instead of behaving just like a traumatized person, if a little bit, she is just like another energetic high school girl outside combat. I actually imagined things could be done to Kurumi since I think she's just smoking cute and badass; if Yuki could hallucinate since she's so mentally disturbed, I think Kurumi may sometimes hallucinate her boyfriend being around with her, manifesting her survival instinct, that would make her look more like a broken person. But nah why am I kidding? That's just my personal desire. And how could I forget the young, kind hearted but inexperienced teacher Megumi Sakura? Megumi or better known as Megu-ne sensei is a young teacher. Despite her principal doesn't want her to get too close to her students much, she still wants to get to know her students more by being friends with them, especially to our club members. Her kindness is so strong that it doesn't stop her one bit in the later part of the anime, but despite that, she seems to get ignored (あかり~). And again, while not a very original character, she still makes for a relatable character especially for some teachers who want to be nice to everyone, but the reality ensures they shouldn't because it will only make weak students.

And finally we have the soundtracks. Unlike my Kancolle review, this anime doesn't seem to have a lot of memorable instrumental song. The only memorable one I could remember is the music box theme played on the piano, and its slow paced, lonely but also lovely notes never fail to bring tears to my eyes. The opening song is a very happy and catchy song about having fun at school, with an equally cheerful opening cinematic as well. But the opening cinematic gets progressively darker and creepier each episode, which is very unsettling considering the opening song never changes. There are three ending songs for this anime, the first one is about leaving school and a farewell to your best friends at school, which sounds like one of those songs you listen to when you're walking home, and looking at the beautiful dusky sky. The second one, which only played in Episode 4, is a slow J-pop song about losing your best friend. Considering this song played right after Miki losing her best friend in a mall, it leaves you a tremendous sense of sadness and lost, great job Nitro+. The third song is a song about the end of a wonderful journey and chasing hope, it almost sounds like an epic closure to an adventure, and a song we sing in the end of a graduation camp and let me tell ya, it brings feels to everyone. It really is that powerful.

After everything I've rambled about, my final verdict of School Live! is 9/10, an absolutely phenomenal zombie apocalypse show, not just as in anime, as in all media, as it brings this dying genre into a new direction. The only thing falls short is the amount of characterization is not quite balanced, the same problem Madoka Magica suffered. If you're one of those zombie fans, but you wish there were something new to the genre, or you just like seeing cute moe girls doing cute things and going on scary adventures (and perhaps a little bit of cute girl suffering) at the same time, you must watch this show, now. If you're into dark plot twists, sad moments and eventually a satisfying closure, something Urobuchi fetishizes about, you should still watch this show. If you're afraid of seeing girls being dumped into a horrifying wasteland and suffering, you might want to think before watching it, but I would say it's worth it if you do. But if you're one of those crazy feminists or anti-moes who think girls shouldn't be this cute, why are you even in my page lol?

And a special thanks to www.lyrical-nonsense.com for the lyrics for me to finish this review.