Okay.  Here we go.  The final episode of High School of the Dead's first, and to date only, season.  For those reading along at home, this takes us up through Book 4 of the manga.  Six have been released here in the US, the seventh comes out in a month or so, and then that's it.  There ain't no more, and the two Satos (Daisuke and Shouji, not related) involved in the creation of the series have sort of... well... gotten tired of it, I suppose.  In any case, there is (barely) enough source material to generate a full Season 2, so we can always hope.  But that, my true and dear readers, is in the future.  We, on the other hand, are here in the now, and we've gots ourselves the first season to finish up.  If you remember correctly, at the end of Ep11 all was chaos as nuclear missiles were flyin', Bug-Haired Rei actually stopped whining and acted kinda heroic, and the ORGYBUS had been expelled from Lothlorien... and if ever there was a sentence fragment I never expected to write, that was it right there.  Sounds like really bad Lord of the Rings-Partridge Family crossover slashfic.  As opposed to all that really good LotR-Partridge Family crossover slashfic you can find.  Do not go looking, I don't want to know.  Seriously.  Not interested.  Don't.  Just... don't.

I've never been more relieved by the sight of a nuclear missile.  Oh sure, it's a harbinger of the end of the world, but on the other hand, I won't have to deal with the thought of Galadriel and Reuben Kinkade doing... things.  In more pleasant thoughts, there are four missiles in the air, the last reflexive spasm of a Chinese leadership turned into a merrily glowing parking lot.  We later see that they're DF-21s, which have a relatively short range; they don't even cover all of Russia, and they surely can't reach Europe... but they can hit anywhere in Japan you'd like.  Say goodbye to Akihabara!  No more iDOLM@STER games.  Hello Kitty?  Melted by a heat higher than that of the sun.  Sayonara, Hatsune Miku...

...that is, if there weren't ships of both the JMSDF and the US Navy patrolling off the coast of Japan.  The USS Shiloh (CG-67), a Ticonderoga-class cruiser; the Kongo and Kirishima (DDG-173 and -174), both members of the Kongo-class of destroyers based on the US Navy's aegis destroyers, and finally the USS Curtis Wilbur, DDG-54.  All four ships have Ballistic Missile Defense capabilities due to the combination of the Aegis radar system and the RIM-161 SM-3 missile.  As you would expect, the ships go into automatic mode and engage the incoming Dong Feng-21s.  There is much rejoicing as one by one, the nukes are taken down by the defenders... all but one, Curtis Wilbur's target, and she hasn't fired yet.

It appears that the crew started reading the Meriadoc/Laurie Partridge story.  They dabbled in a realm men dare not go.  God help us all if someone finds a Danny Partridge/Eowyn slashfic... mere military might will not be enough to defend us from that monstrosity.  Oh, or the crew has been zombified, one of the two.  As the crew of the International Space Station watches on in horror, the remaining DF-21arcs over and reaches its target.

Lothlorien, the Fellowship, ORGYBUS, Humvee-kun, Zeke... all of them gone in a single blinding flash, followed by a fireball the likes of which have only rarely been seen upon this planet, and a sad tune by the Ink Spots.  Just like that, in a blink of an eye. 

Thanks for reading.

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Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:52 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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All right, so Ep10 wasn't the most sterling example of the wonderment that can be High School of the Dead.  I'll grant you that, but it was important for all that "characterization" stuff the kids talk about these days.  I'll tell ya, back in my day we didn't cotton to newfangled concepts like that, no sir.  We'd gotten along perfectly well for hundreds of years without fancy-schmancy character advancement or engrossing plots or witty repartee.  We had fanservice and episode-long powerup sequences, and that was all right with us.  But now!  Now, you can't have a show without half the cast becoming fully actualized people along the way.  Sheer folly!  That's why I appreciate shows like HSotD; it's a throwback to the days where we were lucky to have any anime at all.  Just with better art.

See?  I told you it was going to be a 747 of doomy doom!  I think it's safe to say that President Skippy Henderson is no longer amongst the living... but he may be amongst the unliving, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

If nothing else, you've got to hand it to the unnamed (and unseen) pilot of AF1.  Imagine... you're flying along, you've got a jumbo jet full of politicians, media, and the living dead (but I repeat myself), pretty much every airport in the world that's able to handle a 747 is probably full of zombies, if you even have the fuel to get to any of them.  Sooner or later, those that wish to eat your brains, as well as zombies, will be smashing at the door to the flight deck... and the one chance you've got is to put your jumbo jet on the ground.  That he was able to do so at all is pretty amazing.  That the plane is in relatively such good shape is astonishing.  I mean, the plane is still recognizable, the wings are still attached (well, mostly), it's a safe guess that the fuselage didn't break until the post-landing fire consumed much of the plane's spine... for all intents and purposes, that thing is in one piece.  Even the engines are still attached.  That's some mighty fine flyin' right there... too bad the pilot and co-pilot are surely zombiechow.

Yet this guy is still alive and kickin'.  There ain't no justice in this world.  Not that the other people on the bus would agree with me...

...'cause he's got them believing that they're the Saviors of the World, their pure spirits and bodies (particularly their bodies) will guide us all out of the dark.  He is honored just to be associated with them, and their pure spirits (and bodies) will clean the taint of his adult soul.  He's not worthy, blah blah blah.  Of course, they eat it up.  That he turns the bus into ORGYBUS during "rest time" surely has nothing to do with it, heavens no.

Yes, I said ORGYBUS.  This is HSotD we're talking about here, after all...

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Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:43 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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So last time, we pretty much had an epic episode, what with the Saeko backstory and the Saeko swordplay and the Saeko BSOD and the Saeko gets splashed by lots of water twice and the Saeko ginsuing zombies and the psycho Saeko and the Saeko Saeko Saeko Saeko Saeko.  Saeko.  I guess what I'm saying is that a Saekocentric episode is pretty much as awesome as this show can get, more or less.  So how in the world can the production staff hope to follow up such marvelousness?

Why, with fanservice, of course.  How else would HSotD deal with an issue?  And it throws it at us so quickly that I had to break my introduction formatting (two or three pictures, followed by a Title screen), otherwise The Pond would suddenly become NSFW on the front page.  We can't have that, no no no, this is a family blog.  Mostly.  More or less.  How many of you realized that I even followed my own formatting rules?  It's fine if you didn't, it's not like I advertise it or anything, but these things ain't just thrown together on a wing and a prayer, y'know.  They're keenly thought out, finely detailed, nigh-on exquisite gems of literary excess. 

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Posted by: Wonderduck at 12:13 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Some of you may remember that, last episode, everybody was about to die when the fire brigade arrived, led by Saya's mother.  The Fellowship was saved, hurray!  Except for Saeko and Takashi. 

Them, they got separated in one final suicidal attempt to distract the zombie horde from their friends, which failed miserably, then when the Cavalry came riding over the metaphorical hill, they couldn't be rescued.  Way to go, heroes!  Now they've got to make their way across zombie-filled territory without supplies or assistance, all in an attempt to make it to Saya's house.  Still, they're the two best melee fighters in The Fellowship, they should have a decent chance if they're careful.

...and then they jump off a railing.  Takashi lands wrong, sprains an ankle, and is eaten a few moments later when he can't outrun a zombie.  Saeko, having no idea where she needs to go now that her "native guide" is dead, gets lost and is trapped in a dead-end alleyway.  Her corpse later reanimates and is casually shot in the face by Hirano, who doesn't even realize who it once was.  So she's got that going for her.  Which is nice.

Still... nimble little minx, isn't she?

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Posted by: Wonderduck at 12:08 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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