HIGHSCHOOL OF THE DEAD

HIGHSCHOOL OF THE DEAD

HOTD

An anime based on the manga of the same title and written by the late Daisuke Sato. The manga was never finished and there were 7 volumes of the manga that was published from 2006 to 2013. The anime came out in 2010 with 12 episode and 1 OVA.

I am one of those who followed the manga and the anime before I heard or read news that the author died back in March 22, 2017. Just to make things clear I am not one of those who has been sending messages saying or suggesting that the publisher or whoever was in charge of the HOTD series along with Daisuke Sato, to just get someone else to continue the series. For me if it does continue then so be it if not that is not a problem since I have seen anime and manga that has been left on hiatus for a long period of time already so I don’t expect HOTD will continue any time soon. That is after I have come across a Reddit post that the production who worked with Daisuke Sato have no more plans on continuing the work of the late Daisuke Sato. Link is below for more details.

I was first introduced to the anime before I got into the manga. The anime was so fluid in the animation so fluid that it felt like I was watching cinematics of one of the latest Dead or Alive video game where we get very fluid jiggly breasts which was one of selling points of the fighting game. HOTD was one heck of a fanservice series considering that it was a zombie holocaust series where we also get to see women who turned into zombies who are almost naked and still jiggly (I don’t have necrophilia just to be clear but I like the fanservice). Just like what I said the series is flooded with fanservice for those looking for various sizes of oppai this might be the series for you if you also like zombie themed series.

The series follows Takashi Komuro, Saeko Busujima, Kohta Hirano, Rei Miyamoto, Saya Takagi, Shizuka Marikawa and Alice Maresato. From Takashi to Saya they are students of the Fujimi High School and Shizuka was the school nurse who was rescued by Saeko during the zombie outbreak in their school. Alice was the young girl whom they rescued after her father was attacked by zombies and she adjusted quite well to the party since she was often being taken cared off by Saya and the rest of the party and they did not left her alone making her feel more comfortable considering that they are strangers to Alice who was just 7-years-old in the story.

For me it seemed like the author made the characters adapt so fast in the situation since they are young adults and an adult who seemed like an airhead with huge boobs. I just wondered with Alice who was fast to somehow recover and get enough strength after she witnessed her father getting stabbed by the folks who were in a house whom they thought would let them in to take shelter from the horde of zombies but instead left them for dead even the poor Alice. The good thing that happened to her other than having a caring father is that Takashi was brave enough to go and rescue her from the attacking zombies considering their number and he had to walk over the cement wall fence to cross back to where his friends are. Lucky enough they survived, yeah because he is one of the protagonists of the story.

I don’t usually watch zombie genre media unless I am in the mood to watch it. Heck I have seen Land of the Living Dead years ago and I don’t remember how old I was when I saw it or do I even remember if they censored some scenes back then in our local TV stations since there are a lot of gore in that classic film. Anime zombie series I have seen other zombie anime series and I will put a list later. I did got hook on HOTD not only because of the idea of high school students fighting off zombies in order to survive but well who am I kidding I also watched the series for the fanservice specially that OVA where they thought they got stuck in an island where they got drugged by some herb that they ate in order to kill off the hunger thinking that they have drifted off in the middle of the ocean.

Regarding the flow of the story in the series for a 12-episode series it was not bad although it made viewers wanting more and that was the bad thing. Not many fans or followers of the series nor the author outside Japan accepted the fact that the series may not have another season after it went on hiatus at first due to the health of the author and after the untimely death. In respect to the author of HOTD and other series that he has made, as far as I understood the article on Reddit, they will no longer touch HOTD or have someone take over the series. Same goes with his other works, they will stop as to where his manuscripts have finished and no more.

Before I forget, since the series is flooded with fanservice and a lot of adult related themes I do not recommend this series to minors unless supervised. The series also has some sort of love triangle or rather uncontrolled desires that the heroes are being drawn in to due to the situation they are in. Takashi and Rei who has been having their own issues in their current relationship and later Saeko enters the mix having herself being drawn into her own issues with men and seeing Takashi being someone that she can trust, the series has implied that something happened between them in one of the scenes where they got separated from the group and in order for Takashi to get Saeko back in to the game he seemed to have gave in to what she has been wanting to do.

There are a lot of heavy implications in the series and considering that they are thinking of the big “What if” in their heads like “what if their end suddenly comes I have to do something that I have not done before” or “I should grab this opportunity to do something before I regret it later on not doing it”. Something like that, and since the series is in the gray on not having a continuation all fans are using their imaginations or looking for doujins and fanfictions as to how the series will end.

Even though I still want the series to have another season all I can do as a fan of the series is to respect the decisions of whoever was left in charge of the works of Daisuke Sato. But still who knows maybe someone might adapt the story and give it a new life sometime in the future. There are other zombie genre anime out there and just like HOTD which I recommend to viewers regardless that season 2 is close to not going to happen anymore.

Sankarea – a boy whose girlfriend became a zombie and he is looking for a way to turn her back into a human.

Kore wa Zombie Desu ka - a guy who became a zombie with the help of a loli Shinigami or Death God and he can also become a magical girl well a guy in skirts.

Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress – two half-zombies who are still human enough to protect the people who does not trust them and are trapped inside a train fortress looking for a new safe place for them live since the world is being over-run by zombies that has skins as strong as steel.

Hellsing – Alucard the strongest vampire in the world fighting to protect his master Integra Hellsing with the help of his busty apprentice Seras Victoria they take out ghouls and those who oppose their master.

Sunday Without God – a loli who lost her family and found out that she is one of those chosen people who can bury the dead before they become zombies.

School-Live – this is one hell of a series where another group of high school girls and just like HOTD are one of the survivors on Earth in the middle of a zombie holocaust. The sad part of this series is that the main character is living in a fantasy that everyone in their school are alive and well and they are living in the school as part of a school program and only her friends knows what is actually happening around them.

Gungrave – just like Hellsing the main character in the series is out to take wipe out zombie-like creatures.

Tokyo Ghoul – a young man who got turned into a ghoul as a result of some experiment done to his body after he was heavily injured and close to death when he was attacked by a ghoul who was also the girl whom he likes. Good thing Alucard of Hellsing does not exist in their world since the ghouls in this series are either good or bad but they still tend to eat human flesh.

Zombie Loan – two guys who are zombies who also hunts down other zombies. The reason for them hunting zombies is part of their agreement to Zombie Loan who brought them back to life as a form of payment.

Corpse Princess – a young girl who was brought back to life by some cult. Even though she was brought back to life against her will, she took this opportunity to take revenge on those who murdered her and her family.

Check links below for other details on the series regarding if it will continue or not

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/manga/comments/a4ktrc/high_school_of_the_dead_is_officially_cancelled/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisuke_Sat%C5%8D

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highschool_of_the_Dead

 pictures from the internet

 

HELLO WORLD

HELLO WORLD film

An anime movie that came out in Japan in Sept 20, 2019 plus a spin-off 3-episode anime which also came out in Sept 13, 2019 titled Another World. The movie was directed by Tomohiko Ito.

The story takes place in year 2027 and revolved around Katagaki Naomi and Ichigyou Ruri both first years and classmates who were both assigned to be part of the Library Committee of their school.

 KATAGAKI NAOMI

ICHIGYOU RURI

Katagaki Naomi is a rather timid looking and undecisive young man who loves to read books in most of his time. Him becoming a member of the Library Committee was a majority vote among his classmates since he was very silent and seemed he will not object to the vote.

Ichigyou Ruri is a rather opposite of Naomi who would voice out her objections as well as her being straight forward with her decisions. Although it was not shown in the movie if she volunteered to become part of the Library Committee, but I guess it is safe to assume that she volunteered herself for the position. She also has a tenacious personality making most students keep their distance from her.

The movie is tagged as sci-fi, slice of life, romance and action. The movie involved time travel, well technically it is still time travel, another character in the movie is the Katagaki Naomi who is from 10 years in the future supposedly. Future Naomi came back 10 years in his past in order to correct or rather to prevent an incident that rendered his beloved Ruri comatose for 10 years.

FUTURE KATAGAKI NAOMI

The movie is like another anime movie “The Girl who Leapt Through Time” which came out last 2006 that has a rather similar flow of events. Just like any other or most time travel sci-fi films there are those characters who wants to tamper with the flow of time changing history and most of them involves the main character changing their instead of preventing it from changing, but for some reason the intervention seemed to be part of history as well, according to their scripts.

The form of future Naomi being somewhat digital or a hologram reminds me of one American sci-fi TV series called Quantum Leap where the main character was accidentally sent back in time and he is being guided by his friend who appears before him as a hologram that only he can see but cannot touch at the same time. Which is the same with young Naomi he is the only one who can see the adult Naomi but they cannot touch each other. Quantum Leap series by the way was aired way back in 1989 which will be for another review.

QUANTUM LEAP ZIGGY

Future Naomi also reminded me of both Black and White Woz from Kamen Rider Zi-O who plays the role as the guide of the main character. But Woz is not a hologram like future Naomi but rather a physical body that travelled through time since he is somewhat an observer and one who makes sure that the flow of time is not tampered with, technically. Kamen Rider reviews coming soon as well as Sentai and other Tokusatsu series.

WHITE WOZ and BLACK WOZ

The movie is also like the Matrix film and those anime series that involves main characters playing virtual reality games and being stuck in the game or the virtual world. I got this vibe after the future Naomi mentioned that the world of the young Naomi is just a recorded data inside a huge computer that has recorded history for future references. This movie also reminded me of SSSS Gridman since the main characters living inside the virtual world as well.

 THE MATRIX

SSSS GRIDMAN

The flow of the story transition in the movie from start to finish was also quite good since it showed the character development of the characters namely Future Naomi, young Naomi and Ruri. There are some boring parts for me but in general the movie was interesting enough to watch from start to finish as well as several plot twist in the movie which will leave viewers asking themselves “How did that happen?”, “When did that happen?” and “What the heck is that?” as well as other questions. That was somewhat amazing, great movie but still there are questions left about to the viewers to figure out if they want to.

Another thing to take note of and this will be a spoiler, if you guys have read the Golden Boy manga you will see similarities as well specially the ending although this movie kept an almost friendly parental rating since the movie was clean enough with no crazy fan service.

GOLDEN BOY MANGA

Before I end this review blog. The side story Another World takes place on the world of the Future Naomi and shows his perspective of the story but don’t expect his diary is accurate.

If someone asks me for a good anime movie, “Hello World” will be one of the titles that I will give for them to watch and enjoy with some snacks as if they are in a movie house.

I don’t give ratings but in case anyone will ask 1 being to lowest and 10 the highest I will give it an 8 as my personal rating.

DARWIN'S GAME and AIR GEAR

DARWIN'S GAME (2020) and AIR GEAR (2011)

couldn't help but notice a bit of similarities

Both series is about a secret tournament held and in certain locations and only those connected to the founders or those who were invited can enter the tournament. Both have watchers or overseers that reports the result of the match between individuals or clans. Clans from both series have their own territories and leaves their marks in order for their opponents to know who rules certain territories. Winners depending on the agreement and the wager can win everything from the loosing team including the looser's territory.

For the characters:

Kaname Sudou the main male character from Darwin's Game

and

Itsuki "Ikki" Minami the main male character from Air Gear

both almost similar not because of their personalities but their character development although Kaname was a bit late in the game before he completely got used in the game. Ikki on the other hand was more aggressive.

they are similar because they were both guided by a veteran player and the main female character of the series. Shuka for Darwin's Game and Ringo for Air Gear. Both also carries an alias Queen of Thorns and both fashions twin tails except Ringo is a lot more bustier than Shuka.

both girls were key characters for the development of the main male characters of the series.

Both characters also chose the bird crow or raven a black bird.

Sunset Ravens chosen by Kaname

Kogarasu Maru or translated into English as Little Crows chosen by Ikki

Too bad Darwin's Game only had 11 episodes, they could have pushed for more but I guess they might be planning on making a second season for the series.

Might as well wait and see if there will be a second season for the Darwin's Game which was quite hinted in the last episode of the series. With that Air Gear is another that also made me feel that it needed a second season and not an OVA, but it is still something to wait and see since a long interval for a sequel or a new season for an anime series is quite common in anime.

THE TERMINATOR

THE TERMINATOR

The Terminator 1984 trailer

With another Terminator movie coming out this 2019, I figured making a quickie review on the past movie series of The Terminator. The Terminator is one of my favorite movies that I got to watch. Although I have not followed any other media of the Terminator story other than the Sarah Connor Chronicles which came out as a TV series that came out in 2008 and 2009 for two seasons.

The movie first came out in 1984 directed by James Cameron and features the now famous Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as T-800 model 101 or otherwise known as the titular character The Terminator. His character was also the one that used the famous tag lines "Hasta La Vista, Baby" and "I'll Be Back". If there are some of you waiting for me to say the other tag line "You Ugly MF" that is on another movie and another review.

The movie came out with several movies but the famous movies that came out was the first batch for the trilogy. The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machine (2003). These were the famous movies that came out that starred Arnold with him.

The second batch of trilogy for the movie series are Terminator Salvation (2009), Terminator Genesys (2015) and the upcoming movie Terminator Dark Fate (2019). In Terminator Salvation Arnold was a no show for the movie but a CGI of him was made for the sake of having the iconic actor making an appearance in the movie but in his younger self. In Terminator Genesys and Dark Fate, Arnold once again reprise his role as the Terminator. In the upcoming movie Dark Fate Arnold is not the only original actor to reprise their role from the original movie, Linda Hamilton also returns to reprise her role as Sarah Connor and this time they team up to protect another target that the new breed of Terminators is coming to kill.

The movie is about a time travelling humanoid machine that went back in time to kill the biggest obstacle of their master, Skynet, the human John Connor. In the first movie Skynet sent back in time one of the Terminators it had created to kill the mother of John Connor, Sarah Connor, who at that time was just an ordinary office worker who has no affiliations with any military ranks. John Connor in order to have his mother protected from Skynet he sent back one soldier named Kyle Reese, who in turn was also his father. He sent back Kyle Reese without telling him that they are father and son in order to preserve the flow of time and in order for him to be born.

1991 scene

The story was rather confusing since in the second movie Arnold or T-800 is no longer the bad guy of the story but rather the good guy sent back by also John Connor to protect his younger self from the T-1000 Terminator which this time Skynet sent back in time so that Judgment Day will go as scheduled, but it was stopped by T-800 and protected John Connor as well as preventing Judgment Day from happening, or rather postponed. Third movie Rise of the Machine is the third movie where Arnold portrayed his role as the Terminator again. Just like in the second movie T-800 is once again sent back in time to protect but not only John Connor but also Kate Brewster his future wife, in this movie it was not John Connor who sent back the new T-800 but it was his wife. John Connor according to the new T-800 was already dead and killed by his hands, caught by the resistance and reprogrammed in order to be sent back in time to protect both John Connor and Kate Brewster with the directive to send the couple to the supposed resistance base once Skynet starts its human extermination. This time around the antagonist is a female terminator T-X which seemed to be a combination of the endoskeleton of T-800 and the liquid metal properties of T-1000.

One of the iconic scenes in the movie was the time travelling scene in almost every movie (except Salvation) where characters from the future appear out of nowhere inside a ball of energy and naked. Arnold as the T-800 taking clothes that will fit him from others. In the first movie he sported what seemed to be a brown trench coat and armed with a shotgun. The trench coat later becomes what I suppose is the signature outfit of his character, an all-black outfit of leather jacket unzipped with an under shirt and black leather pants which he got from big bike riders and black shades, also the shotgun is still there which is also I think the signature side arm of T-800 in every movie.

Edward Furlong (1991)

Nick Stahl (2003)

Christian Bale (2009)

Jason Clarke (2015)

Both in movies 2 and 3 they kept the same appearance of the T-800 making it look like that it never age and got to hand it to Arnold for being the professional that he is for keeping his body fit for each movie of the Terminator that he came out to reprise his role. Except in Terminator Salvation he was given a homage where a CGI of his younger self from the first movie was used in the battle against John Connor and his companion Marcus Wright, a human experimented by Skynet by making him a human-terminator hybrid which failed and kept his humanity and fought alongside humans and later sacrificing himself to save the life of John Connor.

In the movies Genesys reprised his role once again as T-800 but this time the timeline is being altered since this time around Kyle Reese who was supposed to come back in time to protect Sarah Connor ends up being saved by Sarah Connor who was later revealed to have been trained by the T-800 who was sent back in time to protect Sarah Connors since she was 9 years old. The Genesys serves as a reboot of the first Terminator movie altering the course of action as well. This movie has given viewers some sort of confusion as to how will the story go this time since in this new timeline Kyle Reese is alive along with Sarah Connor who has just started to become lovers and John Connor is to be conceived in this new timeline. But that remains to be seen as of yet.

In the new upcoming movie Dark Fate is said to be a direct sequel to The Terminator 2 Judgment Day movie. According to the wiki the movies Rise of the Machines, Salvation and Genesys are all alternate timelines which might explain why John Connor was no where to be seen between movie 2 and 3 as described by T-800, forcing Skynet to target other characters that will help build the resistance. T-800 said that John Connor could not be detected in any timeline after the Judgment Day incident, he was “off the grid”.

 T-1000

 T-X

 T-1000 Genesys Version

T-Rev 9 Dark Fate

It seems like in this new movie it is like a reunion of the main casts of the movie series which will I believe will be the hype of the movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong the stars of The Terminator and Terminator 2 Judgment Day are said to be reprising their roles T-800, Sarah Connor and John Connor respectively. Another rumor has been going around is that Michael Biehn was said to reprise his role as Kyle Reese but according to Biehn he will not be in the movie. So, things are still yet to be seen once the movie comes out and as well what role does the two new characters have in the new Terminator movie other than being a new target to be terminated by Skynet.

It would also seem regardless that the spin-off series Sarah Connor Chronicles follows the move Judgment Day it seems like this new movie has a timeline of its own. There are different charts as to how the Terminator timeline goes and how it follows the story from the first movie to the current one. But since this movie involves too many time travelling and some alterations in the story, the movie has created many possible timelines for itself.

Considering the age of Arnold Schwarzenegger who is always seen in tip top shape having to see Linda Hamilton back to reprise her role and seemed ripped as well for her character Sarah Connor are both very impressive. The movie also showcase Arnold’s character the T-800 to be a model that age through time ever since it was sent back in time to kill John Connor, just like in the movie Genesys, his character which mission was to protect the young Sarah Connor and to train her also age as time goes by making it look like more human except for the endoskeleton.

Another thing to take notice of in these movie series are the special effects and animatronics used for the film. Imagine since 1984 they have been using puppets and animatronics for the moving endoskeleton of the T-800 and slowly evolve to modern special effects in each film continuity. CGI or Computer Generated Images and Chromawall effects were later used for most scenes for adding more effects and explosive effects in some scenes. 

I have to wait for the movie to come out in order for me to see if Arnold’s T-800 character is the same as the T-800 in the movie Genesys who waited for the arrival of Sarah and Kyle who time travelled from 1984 to 2017, but as I have said it is something to wait for since it was said in a wiki that this T-800 is just one of the T-800 models that was sent back in time by Skynet and these models can have aging feature to make them look like more human.

Just by watching all the movies itself, a viewer will have to piece everything out to connect which continuity to follow, even though there are those who has made timeline charts, there are too many of it made by fans and movie reviewers but I want to see a timeline released by the producers, writers and directors themselves for a much more accurate chronology. This is because aside from the movies and the spin-off tv series, there is an online series that came out on YouTube and comics that came out.

Dark Fate Trailer

So right now, it is a waiting game for the new movie to come out to see what story it has for the fans, considering that the plot is almost all the same since the first movie. Main character is being hunted down by a time travelling humanoid robot and is being protected by a time travelling soldier or a reprogrammed Terminator T-800 from the future turned good. Whatever this new movie has in store for the fans is something to be seen specially that Edward Furlong is to reprise his 1991 character in this movie so that is another thing to wait and see how he will appear in this movie since the trailer has only shown Linda and Arnold reprising their respective roles in the new movie along with the two new characters and the new terminator enemy that also has a new feature which is to be seen.

Will be making another review for each movie on another date.

Pics from the internet

Videos credits to the owners on Youtube 

OZ WORLD

OZ WORLD

Found this while cleaning up so I figured sharing it.

The game was released in 1999 in other countries, developer is UBIport (not Ubisoft) and published by OnGamePort as a Real Life RPG.

OZ World was released by Level-Up Games in 2002 as the very first Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) here in the Philippines. So this was released a year before the release of the first Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) and later on ROSE Online and RF Online under their trademark here in the Philippines.

OZ World was more like the current Minecraft, Second Life, VR Chat (Steam) and other similar online VR World where users mostly just chat and do VR Jobs to earn their online money (well except for those games which have been said that they can exchange their online money for real world money like Second Life check google to find out who earned tons of real life cash just playing Second Life). So just to put it plainly OZ World is a VR Dating Chat back in the days.

Unlike today's VR Worlds, before I forget, this game never required VR Goggles. The game runs with the traditional monitor, keyboard and mouse to play the game and the system requirements to run the game was not that high as well.

OS: Windows XP/98/2000/Vista

Processor: Pentium 166 Mhz

RAM: 32 MB

Hard Disk Space: 50 MB (at least)

Video Card: Direct X compatible

So yeah does not require much to run this game compared for today's games.

Graphics were OK for its time and much like the game The Sims.The game also includes environment control which includes changes for day and night. Cannot remember if they have weather control in the game. The game also includes getting players to mingle with each other thru VR but just like any other online games the players can choose the gender that they wish to use, hey it is a free fantasy world where players go to just to blow some steam or entertain themselves.

I never got to experience playing this game very long since I got bored with it after hearing that the game will not be free to go online anymore and I have to purchase game time prepaid cards which costs Php. 50.00 up. So I forgot to mention the game was released as free then later on I have to buy the game time, I don’t have that much budget for playing paid games at home or at computer shops since back then I was using prepaid internet and dial up modems which Internet was only a tad faster after 12 midnight up to 4 or 5 early morning (was that a word?).  So in short I stopped playing after playing a few games after buying game cards. I don’t blame the company for making that decision they have to make money, but it took me some years before I realized that.

As for my experience in playing the game itself it was more like a chat world than playing a game, the game itself was more like just to earn the online money and ranking up for online social status to brag about with other players. Much like buying skins for today’s game which shows how long a player has been playing or for others skins show how good you are at playing the game, I don’t ever understand that logic it is just a skin and nothing more for me considering other games have online quests where getting skins will give a player points or online credits to spend online. The game also has quests to earn points and stuff as well as to level up the avatar and rank up as well.

So just making this short the OZ World was back then the talk of the town when it comes to online games for its short-lived popularity until the rise of Ragnarok Online and other games that came after it. Even so the game still got a place for other gamers which I think they still remember the game and played it for as long as they could.

Pics from the Internet