The HOTD crew on a beach is the entire pitch, and the OVA commits to it completely, no pretense of plot, just beautiful character animation and the kind of fanservice that knows exactly what it is. The island setup dissolves within minutes because there's no reason to pretend this is zombie fiction; what you're actually watching is character art so detailed it feels like visual novel frames come to life. If you came for the horror premise, you're in the wrong place. If you came to watch Saeko and Rei drawn at this quality level with this much attention, everything else falls away.

A break from the undead finally comes when Takashi, Saeko and the rest of their worn-out group of survivors make an unplanned stop on a deserted island near Tokonosu City. Since zombies cannot swim, the island seems safe, and the exhausted band decides to enjoy themselves for once. They find an old beach shack that supplies swimsuits and a place to sleep, then spend the day gathering food and trying to make the empty island livable. But this apparent paradise is only a calm before the storm. As the group cooks by the campfire, a strange haze starts to rise around them and makes them sick, and the island turns out to hold troubles of its own. The result is a comedic, fan-service-heavy side story in the High School of the Dead franchise, bundled with the seventh volume of the manga.