Gakkô-gurashi! watch online HD

There is a reveal at the end of episode one that make it hard to talk about this series without going into spoilers and ruining that incredible reveal. Yes, the show is a bit slow before that reveal, but trust me its worth it. I will be trying to avoid spoilers during my review, but I'd still recommend just going and watching the show before you continue reading. Its absolutely fantastic. Its so good that even I, someone who rarely cries over fictional characters, cried.

Story - Though episode one starts off somewhat bland by anime standards, it quickly redeems itself with a shocking and well-executed reveal. This reveal comes into play for the entire show, and the balance between what is shown at the beginning and what is reality is handled brilliantly. Every story beat is told nearly flawlessly and even the scenes that clearly only exist to be fan-service are pulled off well.

Animation - The art is jut wonderful with great direction and character designs. Everything down to the editing is done incredibly well. A few elements could be considered a bit generic, but overall the look of this show is stylized and aesthetically appealing. My only complaint is that no-one really looks their age. The teacher looks like a teenager, and the high schoolers look like 10-year-olds. The female characters only have boobs when the fan-service demands it. There are only a few scenes where the "teenagers" look like teenagers. Overall, this isn't so much of a bad thing, I just found it a bit inconsistent.

Audio - I watched this with the Japanese dub, and for the most part the voice actors are pretty good. The overall sound design and music is as well.

Characters - There's not much to really say other than everyone is fleshed out, interesting, and entertaining.

Theme Song - I just want to say that the theme is great. As the show goes on there are subtle changes to the visuals being shown, but the upbeat and catchy song stays the same. This is a song that I went out of my way to put on a YouTube playlist. I also want to point out that the animation for the opener is creative and fluid with a lot of imagery and I just want to acknowledge all the effort that was clearly put into it.

If you have yet to watch episode one of this series I strongly suggest you stop reading and watch it first as it is impossible to review this series without lessening the impact of the end of that episode.

As the series starts we see protagonist Yuki Takeya enjoying life at school; she does all the normal things like going to lessons and hanging around with her friends, all of whom are in the same club… this club is a little unusual as it is the 'School Living Club'; they all live in the school building and eat the food grown on the school's roof garden. As the first episode ends we realise that we have been shown the school as Yuki sees it; in reality the windows are broken, the doors are all barricaded and Yuki and her fellow club members are the sole survivors of a zombie outbreak! They live in the school because it is too dangerous to leave. The other club members know what is happening but work hard to let Yuki remain happy in her make-believe reality. Over the course of the series we learn more about them and how they came to form the club; we also learn that one of the group is long dead but we see her as she lives on in Yuki's mind.

This is a great series; I was drawn into the story in episode one and as the episode reached its end I thought it was going to be another light-hearted series about a group of school girls. The revelation that what I had seen was really just the protagonist's delusion was a real sucker punch… even though there are hints that something isn't right; for example why is there a cross in the roof garden? Once it is established that Yuki is one of a group of survivors of a zombie outbreak the tension rises and remains high for most of the series. The revelation that one main character is just part of Yuki's delusion makes us wonder if anything else is equally imagined and the more light-hearted moments only serve to emphasise their situation when the story returns to their daily predicament. The final few episodes are particularly tense and it looks as if one or more of the group might not survive. The ending is good but leaves things open for a possible second series. The small cast are all distinctive and likable and animated to a high quality. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to anybody wanting something a little different; just be warned it gets rather emotional at times.

These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.