I’m a big fan of the anime and manga High School of the Dead, a story about a group of high school students who find themselves in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. One aspect of the story I like is the way the different characters come together, essentially forming a D&D style party of characters who must support each other with different skills, e.g. fighters (main character Komuro plus the uber-cool Saeko and kawaii Rei), a cleric (the teacher, who “heals” viewers with her fan service scenes), and so on. At one point the series jokes that the intelligent rich girl Saya is the mage of the group, I think the team’s “gun otaku” Kohta serves that role better — his extensive knowledge of the various weapons they come across and ability to support the others with missile attacks seems more wizard-like to me. Furthering the RPG-like elements of the show, experience is quite important. and when a characters picks up gun they’ve never fired before they’ll have trouble using it effectively, just like in classic role-playing.
High School of the Dead is similar to a classic RPG party.
