Highschool of the Dead vol. 5

As the last volume finally caught up to what was covered in the anime, this one should be completely AWESOME since I’m finally reading all-new content!  Or at least, that’s what I think it would’ve been if pages weren’t wasted on pointless sidequests or rehashing “Dawn of the Dead.”  I was afraid that rehashing George Romero’s definitive zombie movie was going to be the order of the day after reading the description on the back cover, but that’s only true up to a point.  Though they are in a mall and the societal order does start breaking down, the kids wind up providing a stabilizing influence on the panicking adults in the mall.  Then they go off to raid a nearby clinic to save an elderly woman who needs a blood transfusion, dither some more about what to do next and that’s it.

The majority of this volume is actually given over to making overweight otaku Kouta look like a badass in front of new character Asami, a police officer deeply lacking in confidence who also feels the need to constantly refer to herself in the third person.  Glamorizing Kouta doesn’t come off as annoying as you’d think since everything he does here is really an extension of what we’ve already seen him do in previous volumes.  It does seem curious that after trying to build up his relationship with Asami so much that the creators would tear it all down in the end instead of having him be the first cast member to actually get some.  Apparently they’re convinced that constant sexual titillation only works without providing any kind of release.  Even so, while the energy that has driven the series is still present to an extent here, this is easily the weakest volume released to date.