Editor’s note: The original August 2021 version of this article was lost. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the sources cited below, and added what happened afterward. The original version said the anime first came out in 2011; it premiered in July 2010. It also suggested a new writer or a U.S. studio could pick the series up and floated a late-2021 or early-2022 premiere. No studio or publisher announced anything of the kind, so those predictions are not repeated here.
More than a decade after “Highschool of the Dead” left the air, the question of a second season remains open. As of August 2021, we found no announcement of one, and the manga the anime was built on stalled after seven collected volumes and has not been continued.
One season, one bonus episode
The TV series ran for 12 episodes from July 5 to Sept. 20, 2010, according to the Anime News Network encyclopedia. Madhouse handled the animation, Tetsurō Araki directed, and Yōsuke Kuroda oversaw the series composition. ANN’s synopsis follows high school student Takashi Komuro, who, with his friends and the school nurse, fights his way out after an infection turns people into zombie-like creatures.
One more piece of animation followed. A single bonus episode, “Highschool of the Dead: Drifters of the Dead,” came out on April 26, 2011, with the same director and studio, ANN’s listing shows. CBR later described the series as dormant since that special.
The manga stopped before the story did
The anime adapted a manga written by Daisuke Satō and drawn by Shōji Satō, which began serialization in Fujimi Shobo’s Monthly Dragon Age in 2006, according to ANN. The anime adapted the first four collected volumes, and three more were produced afterward, according to a CBR article published Sept. 1, 2021. CBR also said Yen Press handled the English release.
The manga stalled early. It had been effectively on extended hiatus since March 2011, although a new chapter did debut in April 2013, Anime News Network reported.
Daisuke Satō died of ischemic heart disease on March 22, 2017. He was 52. ANN, citing the Mainichi Shimbun via Hachima Kikō, said his immediate family had already held a funeral service. In 2018, ANN reported that his illness had been the cause of the manga’s hiatus.
The artist’s answer
The clearest word on a continuation came from the artist. In an interview with the Japanese site Comic Natalie, reported in December 2018, Shōji Satō said it is “not easy” to draw more “Highschool of the Dead,” ANN reported. He drew the series but did not write it. He said overseas fans often tell him to continue the series, but that thinking about Daisuke Satō makes him feel he cannot carelessly get involved in it. He said he would like to channel some of the series’ appeal into his current manga, “Triage X.”
An editor on “Triage X,” whom ANN identified only by a pseudonym, added that realistically no one could inherit Daisuke Satō’s vision and continue the story he would have wanted to tell.
Where that leaves a second season
We found no announcement of a second season from Madhouse, the production committee or the publisher. The anime adapted four of the seven collected volumes, the writer has died, and the artist has said a continuation is not easy for him. CBR calculated that the three remaining volumes hold roughly enough material for one more season, but it still judged a return unlikely.
Viewers who want to know what comes after the anime can turn to those three later manga volumes.
What happened next
That CBR article weighed the same evidence and concluded that the series most likely will not return, as an anime or a manga. It pointed to the thin remaining material, the writer’s death, and the fact that the original artist and Madhouse had moved on.
The franchise resurfaced in a different form in 2025. On Sept. 5, 2025, Dengeki Online reported that pre-registration had opened for “Highschool of the Dead DAY 0,” a free-to-play survival tower defense game from CTW Inc. under its G123 label, with newly drawn artwork. We found no announcement of a second anime season or new manga chapters.
