I am going to start the same way every other review of School-Live! starts: watch the first episode before reading this review. The first time you watch it ends with a shock; the second time you watch it is painful throughout. The latter isn’t a product of simply knowing how it ends, but rather knowing how it sets the tone for the rest of the story. Simply knowing how the first episode goes without experiencing the entire show is a disservice to both School-Live! itself and your experience of it. So if you can, take the twenty minutes now, and then continue to read. I’ll wait.
From the first episode we are told an entire story of four high school girls named Yuki, Miki, Yuuri, and Kurumi, along with their teacher Ms. Sakura, and a dog named Taroumaru, all living a jam-packed club life at the school. Midway through an ordinary shot of the bright and cheery Yuki chatting with her classmates at the end of the episode, Miki comes in to call her out of the room, and slowly the shot begins to change shape. Broken glass appears on the floor, the midday sun slides into the red glow of sunset, and Miki’s face seems ready to cry out in pain. The shot centers on Yuki once again, and we see the world in its true form: a broken shell of a building surrounded by zombies, with bloody artifacts of Yuki’s friends strewn across the tattered floor caked in dried blood. From Miki’s face we instantly know she has been seeing this all along; from Yuki’s we know she doesn’t see a thing out of place.
School-Live! is an absolutely heartrending survival story, not because of the horror we see on screen but because of the horror we don’t see. From that episode on we mostly see the post-apocalyptic world but with a bright and cheery palate, a thin layering of reality on top of Yuki’s delusions. With all the basic school-life antics of a slice of life, complete with club activities and the moe archetypes of the characters, we sometimes fall into Yuki’s world of cheerfulness and fun, ignoring the broken windows and gashed walls as just part of the architecture. They plan field trips to the school food storage units to gather supplies, and keep quiet so that they don’t disturb the other students who are hard at work. We believe what every other zombie show leads us to believe: there is fun to be had in this world.
And then we encounter the zombies themselves, and that image is violently wrenched away. They follow the old stereotypes of zombies, lumbering slowly, being easily distracted by noise and lights, and biting their victims to infect them. The mechanics are not quite explained but are self-evident. Yet when confronted, the students have to use all their resources and strength to escape even a couple of these wandering hulks of flesh, resilient to brutal hits and relentless in their pursuit. Kurumi constantly carries a shovel around to deal with them, but it is clear that killing a zombie even with such a weapon is strenuous, physically and mentally. When Yuki sees them and thinks of them as human, we grow terrified that one day she will go talk to them and be unable to escape her death. We grow protective of Yuki as the other girls have, wanting to maintain her fanciful world for her while keeping her safe.
All the characters embody an ideal for her survival. Kurumi is strong-willed and competitive, but willingly throws herself into danger to keep her friends safe. Yuuri is organized and motherly, making sure their school life is maintained. Miki, an underclassman, brings out the best in Yuki, forcing her to be responsible and thoughtful. Ms. Sakura…Ms. Sakura acts as a friend to all of them, but behind the scenes is constantly making sure they are all protected from the terrible outside world, leading them to supplies, lending them a car, keeping Yuki completely ignorant of the terrible world. And in turn Yuki’s escapism keeps them all alive and strong in the face of absolute despair. They all see a little bit of her world every time she comes up with another crazy club activity.
Yuki’s only fear is of the coming graduation, where she and her friends will all have to say goodbye. We catch moments where she makes a plan for the future of the club, only to be reminded that she will have already graduated the school by then. Slowly she begins to internalize that eventually she will have to move on, and in turn she becomes more aware of the terrible world she is shutting out. Early on her delusions seem more like mental trauma, but as time goes on her escapism from leaving the school mirrors her escapism from reality, and we start to realize where the true emotional core of School-Live! lies, even beyond the desperate struggle to survive. In this light, we see a symbolic function of the school, a self-sustaining microcosm of the real world; the function of Ms. Sakura, a teacher in charge of keeping the children blissful and protected but slowly helping them to come into their own; the club, where like-minded students band together to make their mark on the school before inevitably parting ways.
As a zombie story, School-Live! explains little but creates a deep sense of desperation juxtaposed against a constant attempt to bring a bright atmosphere, and towards the end we see realistic matters of provisions, glimmers of conspiracy, and the hope of treatment. As a character story, everyone from the teacher to the dog serves a unique purpose and is forced to change and adapt to their surroundings, with little forced drama and real touching moments set to a minimal but incredibly evocative soundtrack. As a school story, its take on the harsh outside world, on the blissful mentality of never-ending days with friends and no responsibilities that students so often fall into, and their eventual maturation and dispersal from the school they all grow to love and revolve around, is unique and touching. At the end of School-Live!, I cried for the characters themselves, and then I cried because I missed my high school again.