I totally overlooked this show during the Summer 2015 season. If I saw anything about it, I must have dismissed it as just another cute school life show.
Until yesterday, when I noticed that a youtuber was going to do a halloween special regarding the show and I thought "what? what has that cute looking show got to do with Halloween?"
So I just watched the first episode.
~WARNING, SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT~
So it starts, and it is super cute as I was expecting, the main character seems kinda ditzy and the OP is bright and happy. She keeps going on about school and how much she loves school. Her and the rest of the "Living Club" seem like good friends and they all have pretty easily discernable personalities, like the bookish one reading a "Steppen King" novel and the big boobed one doing the cooking. ect. One girl carries around a shovel for some reason, that's weird.
So she heads to class and meets up with some classmates, but has to leave early when her friend shows up to get her attention, so she tells the teacher she needs to go to the nurses office, she gets up to leave and... what's that on the blackboard?
Urm, that's kinda weird. But okay, lets just carry on.
So it turns out her dog has gone missing and they have to find him, I'm sure much hijinks will ensue. They chase down the dog who mischievously keeps running away and then... wait
Urm, that's also weird. why is that corridor blocked off? is this some Hogwarts "stay away from the third floor" thing going on here?
They chase the dog upstairs onto the school roof where they meet the other 2 members of their club, who are helping the horticulture club with some gardening (which is the reason given why the girl is carrying a shovel)
A chase ensues, while down below on the school ground you can see some people playing sports.
Here we find out what the School Living club is, they actually live IN the school, as a way of being closer to the whole school experience and to be helpful around the school, okay that's kinda cute and unique.
They finally manage to capture the dog, but he gets away again and the girls head back into the school leaving the 2 other club members to continue gardening, we also see the rest of the horticulture club in silhouette waving to the the girls, we didn't see them during that whole sequence, but whatever.
After they leave chasing after the dog, the remaining 2 girls... suddenly grow very sombre and the music dies down, leaving just silence and the sound of the wind. This is a weird shift in tone, you can no longer hear the sounds of the children playing down below either. One of the girls heads to the fence to look out over the school grounds with a sad look on her face, and behind her..
Okay, that's a grave. Is that why she had a shovel? Something is definitely going on here.
They finally capture the dog after chasing him through several classrooms, before it cuts back to the School Living club in their clubroom, when the main character realizes she left her backpack in the classroom earlier, and heads off on her own to retrieve it. One of the other girls wonders if it is okay for her to go on her own and decides to go after her.
In the classroom her classmates are still there and she starts to talk to them when her friend enters the classroom behind her. The camera pans behind her as we see that the classroom she is in is actually very dark, and there is a large crack in the window
The camera then zooms out, and we see that there is actually nobody in the class, the windows are smashed and covered in blood and that she has been talking to nobody all along
We then see various shots of the classroom covered in blood, stuff left behind by the children who once studied there, as she continues to talk to a bloodstain on a desk. Her friend looks incredibly distressed by this and continues to be upset as they head back to the clubroom, as they do, the camera pans out over the school grounds, showing the world for what it actually is, as the zombified students wander the grounds and feast on corpses.
And thus ends the first episode of what I imagine is going to be a very submersive series.
I love the small hints leading up to the eventual reveal, though I feel it would have worked better over a few episodes rather than blowing its load in the first episode.
If done well though, this could end up being a great series with its blend of hyper-cuteness and gory zombie goodness, as opposed to High School of The Dead which was Tits'n'Ass'n'Zombies.
Happy Halloween folks!
