If, Then, Or: Highschool of the Dead
by Gia Manry,
Title: Saya Takagi realizes that her brains and wealth may not be enough to save her life. At first glance, Highschool of the Dead looks like little more than a Angel Beats! (hey, don't forget, that whole school is an afterlife). Whether you're interested in how the teens maintain (or destroy) their relationships in the face of the zombie threat or you're just in it for some guns and tits, you could do worse than to spend five hours watching the 13-episode series. |
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Title: Dean Wonderland Genre: Action Season: Spring 2011 Summary: Ganta Igarashi is wrongfully convicted of slaughtering his entire middle school class and sent to Dean Wonderland, a combination prison-amusement park where the prisoners work or entertain the park's visitors in order to earn funds to purchase the things they need to stay alive. In prison he meets a strange young woman named Shiro, an albino woman with mysterious powers. She helps him get by in prison, where to get the funds to survive he must participate in gladiator-style battles, each more gruesome than the last. But then Ganta discovers that he, too, has a mysterious power. If blood is what you're looking for, it's pretty much guaranteed that Dean Wonderland will out-do just about any other show for sheer volume: blood is a primary weapon throughout the series. Fans of Highschool of the Dead's strongly-animated fight scenes will likely appreciate Dean Wonderland's battles— like in most Romi Park), but the cutely oblivious Shiro and friend-slash-spy Yoh make for some entertaining relationships. The show's first antagonist, Assistant Warden Tamaki, views the prisoners as his playthings and is particularly fascinated by Ganta. A creepy fanatic with toys in his office, Tamaki successfully creeps the audience out when he swears to help Ganta defend his innocence in the first episode of the series. However, a second antagonist, Chief Guard Makina, is at odds with both Ganta and occasionally Tamaki: the former because he causes trouble in the prison, and the latter because he keeps secrets from her. With all its conspiracies and mysteries, Dean Wonderland can be a bit more involved than the simplicity of Highschool of the Dead, but ultimately the investment may be worth it for action fans. |
Title: Shiki Genre: Horror Season: Summer 2010 Summary: Disaster strikes a rural Japanese village during the 1990s as a series of mysterious deaths take place, starting with an elderly woman and a teenage girl named Megumi. The victims seem to suffer from a strange form of anemia. As the death numbers rise, the strange circumstances take a toll on the villagers, including the doctor Toshio, who investigates the deaths, and teenager Natsuno, who begins to sense that Megumi is not as dead as everyone thinks. The villagers of Sotoba, a rural town far from Japan's glittering cities, are everything you would expect from such a place: a tight-knit community which prizes conformity and local gossip. But the most interesting part of Shiki is watching them dissolve into fear, anger, hatred, and the rest of the dark side tropes. As with Highschool of the Dead's teenagers, parents, and teachers, Shiki focuses heavily on the interactions between those not struck dead (or undead) by the show's titular predators. Where Shiki builds on HSotD is in the monsters themselves. You won't find any brainless, ugly zombies to be mowed down by the score, or (even worse) the sexy, seductive vampires that have littered supernatural dramas from Interview with a Vampire through Twilight and beyond. Instead, Shiki's vampire-like creatures are as much human as monster, with opinions, desires, and interactions that go far beyond fiction's traditional view of a vampiric society (a council of elders, rule by seniority, and so on). Or, to put all that in short form: both Highschool of the Dead and Shiki show that humans can be monsters. Shiki takes the extra step of showing that monsters can be human, as depicted by the relationship between Sunako, one of the mysterious Kirishiki clan whose appearance predated the rash of deaths in Sotoba, and Seishin Muroi, a priest and author who specializes in fiction about the supernatural. Another excellent, if less charming, example is the character of Megumi, who starts out as a human desperate to abandon her small-town heritage and move to the big city where people can appreciate her wild sense of fashion. Without spoiling too much, Megumi retains her desires (and disdain for her countrymen) even as a member of the undead. All told, Shiki is both creepy and, in the end, human. |
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