List of Highschool of The Dead Characters - Conception

Conception

Daisuke Sato, who has previously worked on various military genre games and manga, which include Imperial Guards, wrote the story which uses the perspective of Japanese high school students and refers to classic zombie apocalypse movies such as Dawn of the Dead. Character design was done by manga artist Shōji Satō whose previous work was mostly self-published titles in the adult genre, and this was his first major non-hentai title. Character Kohta Hirano was named after and visually resembles Kouta Hirano, the creator of the Hellsing manga.

Masayoshi Tanaka, who also did Ano Hana, Toradora and later Waiting in the Summer, served as the Chief Animation Director and Character Designer for the anime adaptation. Series Director Tetsurō Araki, who previously directed Death Note and Black Lagoon, mentioned in an 2010 Dragon Age interview, that he wanted to fill in the anime with many jiggling breast scenes, and that he was aiming for something he would have bought himself in middle school. Zac Bertschy of Anime News Network agrees with the intent: "turns out this show has decided that the one thing the zombie genre was missing were anime boobs." The anime also had a character break the fourth wall: when asked why she is so ditzy, she responds that she was designed that way. Director Steven Foster, in his English dub adaptation, changed Takashi Komuro's character to use more profanity, as well as adding modern references to people such as Sarah Palin.