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Highschool of the Dead: Drifters of the Dead
Movie

Highschool of the Dead: Drifters of the Dead

2011 • Animation, Short, Comedy

Woke Score
2
out of 10

Plot

Our team of apocalyptic survivors find themselves on a remote island. They drop their guard and the woman begin to have a much needed break while the men search for food. While waiting for ...

Overall Series Review

Highschool of the Dead: Drifters of the Dead is an Original Video Animation (OVA) that serves as a self-contained, non-plot-essential interlude for the main series' characters. The group of apocalyptic survivors takes refuge on a small, isolated island. The brief narrative focuses on the characters attempting to rest and find food, which quickly devolves into an extended sequence of highly explicit fan service involving the female characters, centered around swimsuits and suggestive camera angles. The core of the episode's conflict involves the group consuming strange mushrooms that cause vivid, highly sexualized hallucinations, leading to bizarre physical interactions among the characters. The episode is an unapologetic vehicle for gratuitous sexual content and character objectification, temporarily sidelining the main survival horror narrative.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The narrative is set entirely in Japan with a fully Japanese cast, focusing on survival against a zombie apocalypse rather than racial or ethnic conflict. Character worth is determined by skill in survival, such as resourcefulness and combat ability, which aligns with universal meritocracy.

Oikophobia1/10

The plot focuses on the immediate survival crisis of a zombie outbreak, not a critique or deconstruction of Japanese culture or Western civilization. The institutions of the group itself (e.g., leadership, defense) are valued as necessary to protect them from chaos.

Feminism4/10

The female characters, despite being established as strong and skilled fighters in the main series, are almost entirely reduced to highly sexualized objects in this OVA, prominently featuring revealing clothing and disproportionate anatomy. The male protagonist briefly expresses feelings of uselessness, with the often-underestimated male character proving vital to the group’s survival by skillfully catching food. The content is heavy on sexual objectification, which neither fits the 'Girl Boss' trope nor respectfully aligns with 'Complementarianism'.

LGBTQ+3/10

The core of the plot involves the group hallucinating after ingesting mushrooms. This leads to an accidental, sexually explicit same-sex encounter between two female characters, one of whom was hallucinating the encounter was incestuous with her mother. The content includes a brief deviation from the normative male-female structure, but it is framed as a bizarre side-effect of a mind-altering substance, not as the centering or normalization of an alternative sexual identity or a philosophical lecture on gender.

Anti-Theism1/10

Religion, faith, objective truth, or moral laws are not themes in this OVA. The short focuses entirely on a physical survival interlude and the resulting hallucinatory sexual antics, with no commentary for or against traditional religious structures.