Saeko Killer

Discussing fanservice always feels odd, but when a show’s subtext is being screamed out by the cast members and subsequently printed in superscript across the screen it seems churlish not to try.

What is really strange, disturbing even, about the 9th episode of Highschool of the Dead is the fact that it was a character episode. A no-fooling character episode.

The cast, especially the female cast, are stock types. And not the stock types of character-based drama either. There’s the normal girl - loves her daddy, has a nice attitude, semi-interested in the hero; the nerd girl - emotionally unstable, too clever by half, best fobbed off on the fat kid; the sex object - useless, retarded, endowed beyond the point of farce; and the strong girl - sly, dangerous, and wearing fancy underwear (a real livewire).

If there’s something nifty about Saeko, something to justify her getting treated to this episode, it’s that her sempai role is merged with the samurai-girl thing, which I kind of associate with Love Hina’s Motoko - reserve and an old-fashioned attitude. Saeko wields the prim authority of the samurai legacy with the knowingness of an upperclassman. In any case, it’s the symbolism of samurai anime which is used to detail Saeko’s moment in the sun.

When Saeko unsheathes her sword she’s taking the opposite path to the enlightened samurai of the Ruroni Kenshin school - embracing the murderous. In fact you could take the Saeko as an inversion of Kenshin idea a tad further. Where the shounen hero lost himself was as a professional killer - the ultimate embodiment of the dutiful Japanese warrior. On the other hand Saeko, as a dutiful sempai, was only ever playing at being a swordswoman. A fake in peacetime. She too escapes from her social duties, but rather than do so through pacifism she does it by unsheathing the edged weapon.

Violence is obviously equated to sexuality here, as Saeko’s victory at the end is basically about getting herself off. This is Kenshin backwards again, as he needs a bit of old fashioned loving to get away from the killing game.

What’s moderately interesting is that Saeko is temporarily, er, emasculated by her interest in Komuro. Both in the bizarre wet shirt scenes and the immediate aftermath of other Komuro-related pleasures, our glamorous young lady winds up spending a sojourn as a victim-type. Her regular sexuality is associated with her peacetime mindset, whilst killing is fetish material: Saeko accordingly gets a character conflict.

In essence these scenes are about Saeko overcoming the baggage which comes with her sempai persona. Baggage like not wanting to get aroused by killing people. To me at least those scenes of vulnerability suggest that there was at least something psychologically genuine in Saeko’s schoolgirl persona. Something strong enough to need a thorough exorcism. Duty is linked to gender-identity for Saeko, as you would expect from somebody who places such emphasis on proper masculinity.

She resolves her mental conflict by managing to both do the killing and receive the sacred johnson of protagonist prime - allowing her to finally overcome common sense and reason while getting the rewards of a more dutiful femininity thrown in for free. On the whole she’s pretty lucky that it’s the apocalypse.