Watch your back, senpai
Creative Staff:
Story: Morimitsu Kaihou (Nitroplus)
Art: Sadoru Chiba
Translation: Leighann Harvey
Lettering: Alexis Eckerman
What They Say:
With Ruu-chan as their new companion, the rest of the School Living Club are at St. Isidore University. As Yuki’s and the rest search for the Randall Corporation, the Militants decide that the moderate members of the Circle are the source of the continuing crisis and begin their assault. Meanwhile, Kurumi’s symptoms grow worse. What will become of her…?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Having the cast relocate to St. Isidore College has added two very distinct changes to the cast dynamic that haven’t really kicked in fully until this volume.
For one, the sheer size of the cast has increased significantly since the series’ start. Seeing a full page spread of just how many surviving humans are within such close vicinity of each other is interesting not just in terms of messing with the dynamic of loneliness that’s so played up in zombie stories, but also in terms of variety. You would assume that senpai characters would lean towards being older equivalents of preexisting characters, and yet every new character serves some kind of purpose. And interestingly enough, they dynamic feels like something out of a videogame in that each new character tends to stick to a particular area of the immediate world around them—Rise sticks to the library, Touko plays in her room, Hika keeps preoccupied with machines. The younger cast is almost incentivized to explore a la a survival horror game, and yet the environment itself still sticks to its exterior of a college, and the two ideas blend surprisingly well.
The second major change the series has finally settled into is its sense of who its villains are. Humans being the true villains in zombie stories isn’t exactly new to the genre, and yet School Live! pulls it off so well that I don’t care. Finally having some time to spend with the The Militants, we’re given a sense of just how twisted their logic is. They despise the school, are self-serving and arrogant, plus are constantly under the delusion that the world is created only to benefit themselves—they are the complete antithesis of what the original cast represents and yet instead of coming off as cartoonishly over-the-top, their logic and mentality comes off as incredibly fitting for the world they inhabit.
That’s not to say that the volume sticks solely to world-building this time around. In addition to Miki’s standard snooping around, we’re finally given something more substantial with Kurumi and her clear semi-zombification. Seeing these two characters interact with the new cast has become quite the treat, as we’re seeing them actually grow as characters rather than sticking to their standard moe archetypes that one would have assumed from the series’ earlier volumes. And while other core members of Yuuri and Yuki are left on the sidelines this time around, we have more than enough characters being cycled in and out of the story to make up for it. Significant conflict has finally made its way into the series, and it’s all the better for it.
In Summary:
School Live continues to be a page-turning survival horror story that messes with the tropes of a zombie story just enough to keep things interesting and unexpected. Seeing the world of The Militants in such stark opposition to the living style of The Circle gives you no choice but to despise them, and given how the volume ends in their favor, I’m left with no other choice but to heavily anticipate the next volume’s release.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Older Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: September 19, 2017
MSRP: $13.00
