Editor's Note: This entry contains spoilers from the series.

About

Gakkou Gurashi (Japanese: がっこうぐらし), also known as School-Live!, is a manga and anime series written by Kaihou Norimitsu and illustrated by Chiba Sadoru. The series follows the exploits of four girls who live on a school campus, being the sole survivors of a zombie apocalypse in the city.

Premise

The series focuses on Yuki Takeya, a cheerful highschool student who is a member of Megurigaoka Private High School's School Living Club, along with her friends Kurumi Ebisuzawa, Yuri Wakasa, and Miki Naoki. While she tries to engage in fun school activities her friends have to try and protect her; as they are the sole survivors of a zombie outbreak in the city, with Yuki having created an idealized delusion of her life after having a mental breakdown due the zombie attack. Slowly she realises the truth of her surroundings as the series progresses.

From left to right: Megumi Sakura, Yuuri Wakasa, Taromaru, Yuki Takeya, Kurumi Ebisuzawa, Miki Naoki.

Initially, the show is presented as a typical slice-of-life comedy, complete with cheery opening and colourful visuals, only to reveal its true nature as a psychological horror-esque series at the end of the first episode. While the comedic aspects occur within the delusional fantasies of Yuki Takeya, the true horrors of the outbreak are presented to the viewer from the viewpoint of the other characters. As the series goes on and the girls' situation grows worse, the show's opening is periodically changed to include more disturbing visuals. To help complete the slice-of-life façade, the show's trailer makes no reference to the darker themes present within the series. Similarly, the cheery visuals of Gakkou Gurashi's official website become more threatening when viewed between midnight and 4:00 am.

History

Gakkou Gurashi started its serialization in July, 2012, on the monthly seinen magazine Manga Time Kirara Forward . The anime was announced in the June, 2014 edition of the magazine, premiering on July 9th, 2015.^[8]

Reception

Though Gakkou Gurashi was a pretty obscure manga until its anime announcement, after the airing of the first episode the manga volume sales increased 10 times (shown bellow). This was reported on various anime and manga news websites, like CrunchyRoll^[9] or OtakuTale.^[10]

Online Relevance

On May, 2015, a a subreddit dedicated to the series discussion was created.^[1] On July 9th, 2015, user Shadowflix submited a thread on /r/anime to discuss about the first episode of the anime series, gaining over 1,060 points (over 98% upvoted) and over 830 comments in the following two months.^[11] During the following month, several GIFs and fanart from the series was posted on the subreddits /r/awwnime^[12] and /r/animegifs.^[13] On July 27th, 2015 a wikia about the series was created,^[7] and a MyAnimeList page for the anime series was also created after its announcement.^[6] Due to the show's use of sudden atmospheric and tone shifts, particularly at the climax of the first episode, online reaction videos of Gakkou Gurashi have become popular.

Fandom

The series gained a huge following online after the anime premiere. As September 19th, 2015 the japanese artist community pixiv leads to over 3200 results under the tag "がっこうぐらし!".^[2] The artist community DeviantART leads to over 270 results under the keyword "gakkou gurashi".^[4] Fandom presence can also be found on other communities like 4chan^[5] or Tumblr.^[3]

Related Memes

Gakkou Gurashi Opening MADs

Gakkou Gurashi Opening MADs refers to a series of remixes featuring the opening theme of the anime series with other sources.

Search Interest

External References