High School of the Dead vol. 1

The anime series that was adapted from this manga was trash of the highest caliber.  A violent and gory romp about highschool kids trying to survive against the hordes of the living dead, it featured lots of fanservice in the form of well-rendered guns and gunplay, scenes of its female cast jiggling away in various states of undress, and the cast driving around in an EMP-hardened humvee.  You have to admire the laser-guided precision to which the tastes of male otaku are targeted.  What made it “of the highest caliber” is the fact that it zipped through the usual zombie movie benchmarks with surprising efficiency and speed (seeing your friend turn into a zombie and then killing him — that and more were done in the first episode), had a remarkable self-awareness regarding certain genre standards (the female lead advocates leaving the creepy teacher, that we know is going to cause trouble later, to die), and features the novelty of being the only zombie story I can think of that shows the apocalypse through the eyes of teenagers (seriously, I can’t think of another one).

This is all true of the first volume of the “Highschool of the Dead” manga by writer Daisuke Sato and artist Shouji Sato.  If you’re like me and have already seen the anime, then there won’t be anything here that surprises you.  They pretty much followed it panel-for-panel; and, at the rate they’re going here, it probably won’t be until vol. 5 that we see any of the story beyond what we saw in the anime.  For those of you who haven’t seen it, if my description of things in the paragraph above sounds like your idea of a good time — then order a copy now.