Preview: High School of the Dead (HOTD)

I hate horror. I really do hate horror.
So when I "discovered" this anime, I really didn't pay much attention to it. But then I saw the image on the left and thought "Wow, those are some big ....err... breasts", and figured that it would be a mixture of horror and ecchi. Now, we have here two things, one I like, and another that I do like. It seemed that the idea could end up badly, forcing the two genres together, two genres that try to cause opposite feelings/sensations in the viewer. But as you can't judge a book by its cover, I became curious and decided to watch it, having already watched the 3 first episodes. The drawing was nice, the opening was good, and it ended grabbing my attention. However what "hooked" me was not the ecchi's parts, which could and should be way more subtle (for example I doubt most of the people are interested in the pants of female zombies...), but the relation between characters because, altough some are sterotypes, it can come a nice character evolution form there, specially from the "main couple". It also pleased me that the creators haven't focused too musch on the gore, and made the characters find belivable yet good solutions for the problems they face, showing also the interactions between emotions and thoughts, in which the bad ideas are caused by the interference of the first in the secound, and not by incredible lack of intelligence.
Summing up, I believe this anime has "legs to walk", specially because the authors used the zombie theme effectively, protruding the thrill instead of the disgust, making it more of an action thriller with ecchi nuances, which recall "Black Lagoon" (but with fanatasy and some ecchi), and "Ikkitousen" (with thrilling atmosphere).