Highschool of the Dead Vol 2

Highschool of the dead Vol 2 by Daisuke Satao, 166 pages


Unsurprisingly this second volume picks up were Highschool of the Dead left off. If you missed my previous review, go read that first and then come back here... Now that everyone knows that this is about a group of high school students who witness a zombie outbreak happening at their school and decide to band together and find their families, you can continue reading this review.

What started out as a mostly cliché zombie manga series, where everyone strangely knows how to fight and have no morals about killing once fellow classmates, continues to stay in that niche and does nothing to impress. Volume 2 brings us the cliché fellow survivor held captive by rioting/out of control person and the big overused, main character risking their life, and ultimately everyone's life trying to save a child/loved one. There is even the classic government has sealed off all of the bridges to contain the zombies. The only thing that separates this most of the zombie works out there is the slightly younger age group this focuses on. But that is offset by everyone being mature beyond their years.

There was one thing that surprised me about Highschool of the Dead Volume 2 the pointless nudity. I am not talking about just random zombies in the background shuffling around, but a multipage drunken bath scene where even the characters involved are worried that they are crossing into porno. I know some of you may argue that pointless nudity is a classic cliché of modern zombie movies and to a degree I agree. But when the characters are all supposedly high school students it is nothing but inappropriate and obviously there to sell more issues. Though in all fairness this might just be a cultural thing that doesn't translate well across the Pacific Ocean.

This is likely where my reading of the series will end, namely because for some reason the library did not continue to buy this manga.(sarc) And to be quite honest I am not sure I want to risk ending up on some governmental or police watch list by trying to find and continue reading this online. I would say that maybe this is appropriate for teenagers, though the books are stored in the adult area.

Note: for everyone else that thinks highschool should be two words and not combined in the title, I entirely agree with you. But this is how it is written on the book and in the catalog.