Sadly a passing of the fanservice variety has happened as the writer of the boob bobbing zombie apocalypse series “High School of the Dead”, Daisuke Satou has passed away at the age of 52 on March 22, 2017, from Ischemic Heart Disease.
Now before I continue I know someone will likely make this mistake so to make things clear the one who passed away here is the WRITER of the series and not the ARTIST, Shoji Satou, who is also known as the artist for Triage X and other manga series Fire Fire Fire and is also know by his pen name as INAZUMA and runs a hentai genre manga artist group(Doujins) called Digital Accel Works.
As per the norm for many Japanese writers/artist, not much is known about Daisuke apart from what is posted online and of the many projects he took part in during his career which spans from doing novels, writing scripts for games, and since the mid-1980s manga. He was known for the publication of the alternate history novels Seito (Divided Japan like Korea), Red Sun Black Cross (Japan fights against Germany) and so on, and the manga series Imperial Guards (Koukoku no Shugosha). It wasn’t until 2006 when, from what I can tell, he started doing his 1st fanservice project with turns out to be High School of the Dead. Now during it’s monthly publication run from September 2006 – May 2013 the series faced many challenges with many mini-hiatus in-between releases from the typical 1 to 2 months breaks per year mangaska have for rest and research with many going on for months even one that went on for nearly 2 years(2008-2010) and again for the last time from 2011 to 2013. But even with all these hiatus happening the manga still continue to gain popularity not only in Japan but in the entire Earth, getting published in Spain by Glénat España,[16] in Germany by Carlsen, in Italy, Brazil and Mexico by Panini Comics, in Canada and France for French-language publication by Pika Édition, in Poland by Waneko,[17] , in Taiwan by Kadokawa Media, and Yen Press in the United States. The series even reach the point of getting a re-release in Japan in 2011 with a Full-Color Edition set for all 7 volume.
Now here is the main question many people have been asking since the manga took it’s 2nd long hiatus in 2011: Why did the series get another hiatus?
While the true answer to this question will probably be never known, many factors that happen around this time have been rumored/news released to lead to be the ultimate fate for HoTD. Now the biggest reason the manga initially went on the break was the 2011 Earthquake/Tsunami that hit the northeastern providences of Japan where the death toll was over 16,000 people and 2,000 missing since a 2015 report on the matter. Being a book on an apocalypse event probably wasn’t the best thing at the moment to be publishing and was given a time-out while the disaster this event cause could be worked out. As the break was getting longer and longer, rumors began to spread that the manga wasn’t going to come back, that Shoji was too engrossed in his other projects, eroge, and Idolmaster that there was no time HoTD. Then in 2012, Shoji at the AnimagiC convention was asked directly what was the delay and at the time he placed it all on himself as he was doing research on military weapons and other material to bring the highest quality/accurate artwork to showcase in the future chapters.
Then on April 9, 2013, the long awaited 30th chapter was released worldwide to much fanfare continuing the story where it last left off, introducing new characters and setting up the long-awaited meeting of father and daughter since the 2nd chapter of the series. But just as everyone was happy that a new chapter was released, the all too familiar image of the “To Be Continued” with no release date for the next chapter gave every fan that pain in the stomach feeling with that “here we go again” moment with “now how long this is going to take” .
The last thing that I could find on this matter was in July 2013 when a Facebook fan of the series posted a lengthy report/opinion on material he found online and off the last Full-Colored Edition with an interview with Daisuke himself. Now the report wasn’t an official post by anyone as it was just a mish-mash of material put together and given a lot of thought but in a way confirm some of the rumors going around at the time and shared on the scanlation team of the time for HoTD for thought on the matter as no new signs were being given for the next release date. Note: The original post on Facebook has since been deleted but you can get the gist of what was said on the scanlation site from the comments posted by the author of the post and the commenters, posted here.
Lol Still UNDER CONSTRUCTION…
Links to past post here featuring compilations from the anime and manga of HoTD:
Anime post – http://fapservice.com/high-school-dead-nudity-compilation/
Manga post – http://fapservice.com/high-school-of-the-dead-manga-fanservice-compilation/
Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisuke_Sat%C5%8D
Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/daisuke-sato-3392a158 – Yup he had one.
