I was a little disappointed with the role of the Isamu High students. It was very underwhelming, sure Romero's powers accidentally went off too much but I was still expecting more. For example, maybe Romero could've been able to control the people he zombified. However, that doesn't happen, instead zombified Bakugo bites Romero turning him into a zombie as well. I won't even get into how practical Romero's quirk could even be useful for a hero. I did think it was a nice touch for Romero Fujimi to have that quirk as a shout out to George Romero. Again, I liked the action scenes with Bakugo soloing 8 of the characters by himself, but thought is was a bit of a missed opportunity to maybe show off other characters. The parts with Bakugo were probably the best parts of the OVA considering those were the only real action scenes. Not saying the rest of the episode was bad, it's just aside from that the remaining characters were just running away from the Zombies trying not to get captured. Seeing One For All Full Cowl animated for the first time gives a lot of hope that when it hits the main series anime it will be nothing less than satisfying to see Izuku further master One For All. Other than that, it was pretty standard for studio Bones.
2 Reviews
Very strange, but not really very good
Horst_In_Translation28 December 2019
Warning: Spoilers
"Boku no hîrô akademia: Training of the Dead" is an animated short film from the "My Hero Academy Universe", so it is directly linked to the television series that started in 2016. This one here was released in summer 2017. The two directors Nagasaki and Satô are far from rookies, but the really by far more experienced crew member here was writer Yôsuke Kuroda. This short film runs for slightly over 20 minutes and includes a pretty long sequence of closing credits. It is a bit of a teen movie, a bit of a fantasy movie, a bit of a comedy you could say. Horror I don't think really, even if there are zombies in it. It's all rather light and at the end everybody is back to his normal (more or less human) form. The film begins basically with one female character introducing her family to us, but the family is never really in the center of this film here. We only get to know them to understand her frog background perhaps. I mean her dad basically is a frog, but as for the kids I struggled to see they are frog creatures too. They do look more human, admittedly not as human as the 100% human characters, but hadn't they told us early on, maybe I would not even have thought of her as a frog. But she is a bit of a social outcast, so we find out immediately after how she makes friends with a lizard girl. Now that one really does not look human at all and I am pretty sure a creature like this you won't find anywhere outside anime. We find out next that the two had to split-up and then go to different schools, but for a survival game between two academies they are reunited, even if they are not in the same team. I mean actually they could have gone to the same school and nothing would have changed story-wise, but I don't know maybe this idea was because of the series it is linked to.
Now as for the actual survival game, it felt almost more funny than dramatic. First of all everybody sits still because they say if they don't move they also won't be found, partially because one character has pretty good skills when it comes to recognizing everything that movies. But when they finally move and some characters are defeated, a strange pink fog comes into play and turns almost everybody into zombies. Had a bit of Walking Dead to it at that point. But this is again where I want to reference the friendship between these two girls because in any American movie one (or both) would have won the game and it was their friendship that led them to victory and maybe even to manage that everybody is human again. But here, one of them is a zombie already and when the two are hugging, the other is turned into one as well. Now that was unexpected. Instead characters stay human from beginning to end that I am not familiar with at all. This was maybe my biggest criticism with this film. There were justg so many characters in here and we hardly know about anybody's backgrounds and a statement like "watch the show and you will" does not seem good enough for me. Also this friendship idea went against the premise of how the zombies' brains are deactivated as we hear earlier. Just one thing that seemed illogical to me and it is crucial in a negative sense because it is really that central in the movie. As for the comedy I also mentioned already, let me say that I did smile on some occasions. The comedy is as awkward as the rest of the film, frequently exaggerations, sometimes even sexual references, but it works better than the rest. One example would be when the frog and lizard girl hug early on, one character says something like "these should not breed" or when the pink fog shows up, one character says something like "it looks erotic". So even from this perspective, it is really an anime that is more for grown-ups, but I think teenagers can watch it too. It is never really serious. Like even at the end the two girls say something like "oh we got turned into zombies", but it's alright. What did nothing for me was really the constant arguing between two male alpha characters, but I guess not everything can be a success here. Finally, really last but not least, what the heck was up with this Donald Trump parody. That was really too bizarre to be true and initially I wasn't sure if it was meant that way, but when we constantly see the colors red, white and blue behind him, it is pretty obvious it was. That was funny no denying, at least until the point when he is slim all of a sudden near the end and the zombies think he is one of them. Come on show some respect for PotUS. All in all, it's not a bad movie, but also not good enough for a positive recommendation and it does not get me curious about the series. I give it a thumbs-down. Watch something else instead.
Now as for the actual survival game, it felt almost more funny than dramatic. First of all everybody sits still because they say if they don't move they also won't be found, partially because one character has pretty good skills when it comes to recognizing everything that movies. But when they finally move and some characters are defeated, a strange pink fog comes into play and turns almost everybody into zombies. Had a bit of Walking Dead to it at that point. But this is again where I want to reference the friendship between these two girls because in any American movie one (or both) would have won the game and it was their friendship that led them to victory and maybe even to manage that everybody is human again. But here, one of them is a zombie already and when the two are hugging, the other is turned into one as well. Now that was unexpected. Instead characters stay human from beginning to end that I am not familiar with at all. This was maybe my biggest criticism with this film. There were justg so many characters in here and we hardly know about anybody's backgrounds and a statement like "watch the show and you will" does not seem good enough for me. Also this friendship idea went against the premise of how the zombies' brains are deactivated as we hear earlier. Just one thing that seemed illogical to me and it is crucial in a negative sense because it is really that central in the movie. As for the comedy I also mentioned already, let me say that I did smile on some occasions. The comedy is as awkward as the rest of the film, frequently exaggerations, sometimes even sexual references, but it works better than the rest. One example would be when the frog and lizard girl hug early on, one character says something like "these should not breed" or when the pink fog shows up, one character says something like "it looks erotic". So even from this perspective, it is really an anime that is more for grown-ups, but I think teenagers can watch it too. It is never really serious. Like even at the end the two girls say something like "oh we got turned into zombies", but it's alright. What did nothing for me was really the constant arguing between two male alpha characters, but I guess not everything can be a success here. Finally, really last but not least, what the heck was up with this Donald Trump parody. That was really too bizarre to be true and initially I wasn't sure if it was meant that way, but when we constantly see the colors red, white and blue behind him, it is pretty obvious it was. That was funny no denying, at least until the point when he is slim all of a sudden near the end and the zombies think he is one of them. Come on show some respect for PotUS. All in all, it's not a bad movie, but also not good enough for a positive recommendation and it does not get me curious about the series. I give it a thumbs-down. Watch something else instead.
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