Book Review: School-Live! Volume 5

School Live! Volume 5 cover

I hope that everyone is doing well, and beginning to think
of how they will spend their weekend.

Things have been going fairly well, aside from there being
too much noise, and my schedule still allows me to do something that enjoy.

A few days ago, I got some books from Amazon, and, even
though I did have to temporarily stop to cover a new release, it is time to
continue plowing through the remaining five books.

Today, I will be reviewing one of those five, which is
called School-Live! Volume 5 by
Norimitsu Kaihou.

As I have given a series synopsis in an earlier
post
, I will not go over it again.

Kurumi, who had been infected by a zombified teacher, has
now seemed to stabilize and the girls start trying to do a radio broadcast, in
order to find other survivors, and think that they struck gold when they see a
helicopter fly overhead.

However, when that same chopper crashed into the ground, the
girls finally decide that it is time to leave the school and must now find a
way to leave and determine their destination, under the guise of graduation.

While the previous
volume
was kind of interesting, that does not mean that the series will
improve from then on, and after reading this, I think that it was okay.

From the moment that I opened up and started reading this
volume, I was pulled right back into the world and did not feel like putting it
down for any reason, at least when this volume was exciting.

Now, I was not expecting anything amazing from Norimitsu, as
he or she was not able to impress me as much as Jun Mochizuki, but even though
quite a bit did happen, the only things that I really found interesting were the
events that happened after the helicopter crash.

Yes, the exciting stuff needs to be interesting, but
compared with what happened in the previous volume, this was nothing really
that different from the overdone zombie flick, and I can only call this
passable.

Many people desire to get into the creative fields, but
delivering a work that can only deliver the bare minimums expected from the
kind of work it is will not give it any kind of prestige.

Still, that does not mean that writers should not be praised
for doing something right, otherwise they do not know where they need to
improve.

I also liked how there were a few things that made me laugh.

Even though this series does not always deliver too well on
the premise of a zombie apocalypse, and this volume was one of the better ones
in delivering what is expected, the thing that this series does pretty well is
provide some bit of humor.

In the case of this volume, I think that I had a few more
laughs than in the others, and it really helped to save the volume from joining
a list of titles that I consider to be the worst books published, though some
might not be as bad as what others consider horrible books, such Fifty
Shades of Grey
and one book that I
heard was far worse, both of which I am glad that I never read, since the
summary and blurbs alone for the latter sounds far worse than all the fan
service I have ever seen in anime and manga, though I do steer clear of the
clearly pornographic stuff.

This series has been known more for its comedy than a decent
zombie apocalypse story, and I am glad that things have not grown stale, even
though much of the volume still took place inside the school or on school
grounds.

If this aspect of the series was not present in this volume,
I doubt that I would be willing to continue on with this series past the sixth
volume, which was the last volume of the series that I purchased this week.

Fortunately, Norimitsu did not forget about it, and I can
finally give him or her the first round of applause that I felt like giving for
this volume. Nice job, Norimitsu.

The thing that I liked the most though was how this volume
ended right where the anime adaptation from Lerche, and is available to watch
on Crunchyroll.

On the Internet, the anime and manga community gets
inundated by questions from those in the community about where the various
anime adaptations leave off in the original and for some series, such as Detective
Conan
, that gets kind of difficult because there are events covered in the
episodes people have access to that chronologically occurred after the events
that have not seen or the last event to occur in the anime happened in the
middle of a particular volume, so it is not quite that easy to pick up right
where one left off, even if important details or events were not cut from the
anime adaptation like they were in the episodes of Detective Conan that
FUNimation dubbed over here.

However, the people over in Japan decided to end this volume
in a similar fashion as the anime, though this volume was released before the
anime adaptation, as Norimitsu asks fans to have high hopes for the anime adaptation
and future volumes towards the end.

As a result those that want to transition from the anime
over to the manga could either just read this volume as a refresher or go on to
the next, which will supposedly be all new content, and I think fans will be
happier than those have to reread content just to get to the manga exclusive
stuff.

Seriously, if ending manga this way was more prevalent over
in Japan, telling people who already saw the anime where to start reading would
be so much easier.

Unfortunately, like movie studios in Hollywood, Japanese
anime studios seem to have free reign over how they handle their adaptations,
according to Yoshihiro Togashi's foreword in Yu
Yu Hakusho Volume 10
, so adaptations will have to become completely
faithful to the original, which is not always something that is desirable,
considering that there are anime out there that are considered superior to the
original work for a reason.

So, I guess that the real credit for this positive aspect
belongs to Lerche for deciding to end the anime where did.

Outside of those things, I cannot think of anything else
that I particularly liked, at least that could stand out as much as those that
I have already mentioned.

Because my interest was captured and held during the
important moments, the comedic moments were still present and had not grown
stale, as well as the fact that this volume ends at the same place the anime
did, though that had more to do with the studio that made the adaptation than
those that put this volume together, this volume was fairly decent.

Although there were things to like, there are some issues.

However, aside from things too minor to talk about and the
things that I already mentioned that did not exactly meet my expectations, nothing
really bothered me too much.

As a result, I will have to say that there is nothing worth
mentioning.

Despite the fact that there was nothing majorly wrong, the
good did not exactly impress in more than one area that was important and makes
it only good enough to kill time.

I recommend this to fans of Norimitsu Kaihou and School-Live!,
as they will enjoy this the most and fans of the anime could easily read this
as a refresher.

As for everyone else, this might be worth checking out, but
it is not really the most impressive entries in the series.

If you liked this review and would like to see more, please
consider supporting me on Patreon,
and doing whatever you do when you find something that impresses you.

Copyright © 2017 Bryce Campbell. All Rights Reserved.