School-Live! is a 12 episode anime that’s based on the manga series. For most of the first episode, you would be hard pressed to figure out the true nature of this anime if you didn’t already know. It’s set in high school, following Takeya Yuki, an overly cheerful and energetic girl who’s also a bit of an airheaded. She’s a part of the school living school club and has a lot of fun at school with her friends. The bright colorful animation coupled with the overly cute designs of the characters would lead you to believe that it’ll be a stock standard slice-of-life high school anime. No, that is not the case and this only shows up at the end of the first episode.
So, a word of warning, there are major spoilers right ahead, but the plot starts off really slow and while we get to see the real situation from time to time, it still focuses a lot on “normal” school life. Eventually, by the third episode, we finally find out what happened on the day when the zombie outbreak occurred, and how the band of characters made it through and met together. Now, they are living at the school. The anime takes the time to cycle through each character and shows us their life beforehand.
Due to the high focus on normal school life, this is a really unique mix where we get the overly cheerful slice of life events, mixed in with when the characters is hit with a big dose of the reality that they are in. It’s hard to say whether this works or not since it is somewhat weird and the themes clashes against each other from time to time. Yuki, avoiding everything and deluding herself, can make her seem a bit selfish considering the life or death situation that they find themselves in.
As the plot moves on, we are shown how the characters are coping and how they are surviving. We learn some traits of the zombies, and if you stop to think about it, it is actually quite scary a predicament that they find themselves in. As far as they know, everyone else has died or turned into zombies, and they are the last ones alive and are trapped at the school. While the school is well stocked in food and has plenty of facilities such as electricity generators, bathroom facilities and even a mini garden on the roof, it’s still a tough situation, mentally and physically.
By the halfway point in the season, you’ll come to realise that the overly lighthearted nature, considering the situation, is here to stay. There are some questionable choices made by the characters, as despite the danger, they would think it’s a good idea to have a leisurely outing and tagging along with them is someone who has no idea and could attract the zombies at any give time. Speaking of which, the zombies aren’t completely mindless either, they seem to act in response to some residue memories of when they were still alive and sentient.
A trend with the anime is how it likes to constantly jump back and forth in time. In doing so, it throws heavy hitting revelations at you. It’s something that you might have suspected and now confirmed. It touches upon the source of the outbreak and its true nature. Although throughout all of this, you’ll constantly wonder whether Yuki is being selfish with her refusal to face the current situation (although this is a form of mental illness) or whether she’s holding the whole team together as it gives some purpose as everyone is constantly reminded of the hopeless situation.
The build up of getting to know the characters is worth it in the end. There’s a good payoff in the second half of the season where the anime is not shy of doing certain things with the characters. It targets their individual traumatic experiences, and you can feel how much it hurts them to confront it like that. While it does dial up the fan service elements at the same time, it succeeds in painting a truly despairing scenario where you confront zombies who were previous your companions, your friends, you family. It can get dark in the final episodes, before giving us a bright spot to look forward to and push the characters forward.
Overall, School-Live! is an interesting mix of different moods. For the vast majority of the time, it is a typical overly positive high school slice-of-life. For the remainder, it is set in a hopefully post-apocalyptic world filled with dangers, and it actually tackles several darker themes, which can take you by surprise. It’s hard to say whether this mix actually works, especially when compared with the storytelling method of jumping back and forth. However, it is easy to say that by the end of the season, you’ll be attached to the characters where you genuinely care about their fates, and the things that are thrust upon them.
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