WMG / School-Live!

As a Wild Mass Guessing subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

School-Live!! occurs in the same universe as The Walking Dead.

The Virus spreads across continents and into Japan through any of the following:

• An airborne strain which got mutated as it goes along,
• A visitor in Japan who contracted The Virus in transit, turned after death, and zombified everyone in the vicinity,
• A Japanese strain of The Virus that went out of control.

However, adult survivors in Japan are few and far in between. This calls for fanfiction.

Miki won't make it in the end.

This is based on earlier chapter when they talked that Megu-nee cannot graduate since she was a teacher. Miki also cannot graduate since she's still on the second grade. If we assumed 'graduate' means leaving the school for a safer place, then this is probably a foreshadowing.

• …Well, jossed, as Miki did manage to leave the school with everyone.

Miki's friend Kei will turn up alive... but infected

We never actually saw her die or her zombified body so it's possible she could have made it out of the mall alive, but was bit later on. When the School Life Club meets her, she will be on the throes of infection, requiring them to give her an injection of the medicine they have to keep her alive, However, by that point, they will have realized the requirement of multiple injections to keep the infectee alive. Since the medicine they have is in low supply, this will cause a rift in the School Life Club between Rin who will want to keep using the medicine for Kurumi who was bitten in Ch 18 and Miki who will want the medicine for her best friend Kei.

• Jossed. It's more or less implied that Miki spotted a now-zombiefied Kei among the crowd of zombies as everyone left the school.

Rii has not actually found her sister

(Spoilers for the end of the latest volume) Yuki couldn't hear her like she did Miki when they first searched the school, and nobody other than Rii and Yuki address Ruu directly when she reappears. And there have been moments where Rii has broken in the same way Yuki did, deluding herself everything is okay. 'Ruu' is nothing more than Yuki's "Megu-nee", and is most likely the bear Yuki left behind when they searched the school. Notably, Kurumi states she'll see what else she can find, not who. Yuki plays along because she's Yuki, whilst Miki and Kurumi roll with it because... why not? It's no different from Yuki after all.

• Confirmed in ch. 36.

The girls are living in a Shared Universe as the cast from High School Of The Dead

They were just attending a different school than Takashi and his friends were when the Zombie Apocalypse occurred. They also decided to hunker down in their school rather than attempt to make a break for it right away, which probably helped save them in the long run as they weren't caught out in the open and stuck in a traffic jam where they would be easy prey for the zombies.

The cause of the Zombie Apocalypse is Randall Flagg.

Due to the shout-outs of The Stand, and the fact that Flagg has access to other universes/dimensions, this world could be another interpretation of the events of the book where it's implied Flagg helped to cause the disaster. The girls are some of the very few people left alive in Japan, without access to Mother Abigail.

• Or perhaps there'll be expies of Randall Flagg, The Kid, Lloyd, and Trashcan Man that will appear as villainous survivors that the girls need to either avoid or face down.

Megu-nee is a ghost

She has dragged Yuki behind book stacks, has displayed knowledge that Yuki does not display, and made an exit like a spirit would in the manga, by passing through a doorway after a speech, as if she'd been a spirit/ghost, and also in the manga seemed to guide Yuki and Rii-san to the shelter to save them from the fire and zombies. Megu-nee refused to stop helping her students, even after she'd been killed by the infection and her body became a zombie. Yuki is sensitive to the spirit world, maybe because she's a little insane, and so Megu-nee is able to talk to her directly only.

The outbreak wasn't an accident or random disaster

In the manga, the emergency manual handed out to staff clearly indicated that someone expected those manuals to be needed; the Principal was very emphatic about these manuals and their uses. There's a shelter at the school with experimental drugs in it, indicating that it was designed as a safehouse as well as a school. Yet, despite these precautions and foreknowledge of what might happen, when the outbreak actually hits, the way it's handled is utter lunacy. Police fail to quarantine (or put down) dangerous infectees, and a car accident escalates to the utter devastation of a city in a day. That's quick even for a Zombie Apocalypse story. Moreover, the zombies are slow, and infection is spread through biting, so the vectors involved shouldn't be able to transfer the infection as quickly as they do (an airborne infection would make more sense, but then all the girls would have been zombified long ago, as they're living right on top of the things). Then there's one interesting little detail at the mall: there are no real staircases, only elevators and escalators. That's a fire risk: even children know not to take the elevator if there's a fire, and an escalator, running on electricity, would still pose a threat. For no other reason than standard fire safety, there should have been a staircase. As it turns out, the panicking people at the mall promptly act out the fire brigade's worst-case scenario: they panic, crush each other, apparently forget how to walk down an escalator without incident, and most of them end up dead. That makes no sense...until you remember that the school was privately built, apparently to provide a safe base in case of Zombie Apocalypse. What if the mall was privately built too — to ensure the optimum conditions for creating a zombie outbreak? The people in it are penned in, panicked by the announcements over the loudspeaker, and all exit routes are compromised because they all rely on electricity. With people trapped and not thinking straight due to fear, the zombies have more time to infect a larger number of people who, if they were able to get outside, would simply have made a run for it.

• There actually is a normal staircase in the mall. The girls are seen walking it in Ch. 10.

• As for the airborne infection, it could be a dormant strain of The Virus like in The Walking Dead, which only fully activates when the host dies, therefore, the host will turn into a zombie after death.
  • Unlikely. In Fear the Walking Dead, even with said airborne/dormant-until-death theory put in place, the walkers took days to ruin everything, while this outbreak zone fell in a matter of hours. It's also very unlikely that the dormant theory is true, because of Kurumi finding a dead man who committed suicide in the School's Basement by hanging himself and didn't end up becoming a zombie.
• As of the Randall Corp. HQ chapter, we have some new evidence against this, but first we find out what's causing the infection: It's bacterial, and not only is this bacteria causing this endemic to the area that the city is in, there's records indicating previous outbreaks in the past that were swiftly dealt with. What made this current outbreak as bad is it is now was due to Randall Corp's experimentation with the bacteria, and all it took was a bit of carelessness by someone on the team responsible on the research of this bacteria to become patient zero.

The Randall Corporation tainted the town's supplies with The Virus.

The corporation could have deliberately contaminated at least a third of the city's supply. Perfectly innocuous things like breakfast cereals, chocolate bars and other such products would have served as a perfect Trojan Horse for Randall Corp to sneak the virus into the city. People would be unwittingly infecting themselves left right and center, allowing the resulting infected to subsume the city very, very quickly. The main characters didn't get infected by this because they had fortunately managed to pick at the food not tainted by said bioweapon. It would also explain why the infection got out of hand as quickly as it did. People who bought the tainted products would eat their breakfast in the morning, not knowing said material was contaminated with said plague, then all at once getting sick, dying, reanimating and slaughtering each other in the space of a few hours later at least. Up to 2/3rds of the city infected within several hours alone, with the resulting necropolis forcing the remaining survivors into hiding.

The outbreak isn't an attack by a hostile power, either — it's a test run

It seems safe to say that the owner of this particular weapon is a company in the general area — not a rival nation. The town is set up almost like a video game level. Certain areas are "safe zones", like the school, with facilities and supplies to ensure some survivors. Other areas, like the mall, are set up to favour the infection, crowding people together and minimising opportunities to escape. The town is also built by the company that made the weapon, to the point that the company gets a major say in how the school is run. That would suggest the company has set up the city like a real-life simulator, with optimum conditions for their weapon and possible counters included, to make sure that they had two "teams" (zombies and survivors) for their test run. Presumably, they have some way of monitoring the results, given the number of high-tech features the town has. That would add an extra layer of horror to the girls' situation: the whole time they lived in the town, they were at the mercy of people who saw them as disposable, and had every intention of killing them (or enforcing a Fate Worse than Death) just to see how their product worked. Basically, the pharmaceutical company is playing The Sims or SimCity...but with real people.

• The manual in the school adds more credence to the theory. In the manga, the manual explicitly states that each safehouse has only enough supplies for fifteen people, despite the rest of the manual indicating that "many" lives can be saved by the right course of action. True, stockpiling is an inexact science, and the task of sustaining a whole school, for example, for over a month would be near-nigh impossible. Assuming that you will only have to provide for a maximum of fifteen people, however, indicates that you don't expect many survivors: there are five safehouses, not counting the Randall Corporation itself, for a total of 75 planned survivors maximum in the whole area, assuming the other four safehouses have the same amount of supplies. Why would the corporation provide such a limited amount of emergency provision in a school, where there are hundreds of children and staff? Because they were deliberately setting up conditions to minimize the number of survivors, while still ensuring that there were a few to use as lab rats. Also, by including this information in a manual, they were almost guaranteeing that infighting among survivors would thin out the numbers once the document was discovered, in the unlikely event that a larger number of people escaped — the Melee Fight Crew demonstrate as much, descending into brutality and treachery once supplies get low.

The Vice-Principal of the school was one of the people who were aware of its true nature, and, while he didn't disclose the exact purpose of the school, he advised/conditioned the teachers accordingly

(Credit to one of the commenters on this video). In episode 3, Megumi is lectured on her conduct, and warned not to get too close to the students. That's fairly innocuous: most new teachers, especially teachers who aren't much older than the students themselves, will encounter a similar warning about crossing the line from "trustworthy and approachable adult I can confide in" to "friend." Megumi takes it personally; given her mother's incessant nagging and undermining of her confidence in her abilities as a teacher, she probably assumed that the VP had noticed that she was prone to being overly-familiar. However, a colleague tells her not to take it so hard, because the VP gives the exact same lecture to all new teachers, not just the tender-hearted ones. Again, that's not a huge red flag in itself — many authority figures have a pet topic that they drone on about relentlessly, to the point that the people around them know what they're going to say before they say it. But...what if it wasn't just a rant about appropriate teacher/student boundaries? What if this is a tailored speech...or one someone has scripted for him, and that he's required to give? The emergency manual warns that compassion and mercy become weaknesses in case of outbreak, which means that teachers, the presumed survivors and leaders in such an event, would be called upon to act ruthlessly, quarantining or killing their own students. It's much more difficult to Mercy Kill someone you care about (or even view as a person), as poor Kurumi keeps being reminded. Thus, the VP fosters a certain coldness in the teachers, so that they can take decisive action when the siutation arises. He just didn't bank on the teachers being on the wrong end of the outbreak, and taken out of the game completely. This makes the speech much Harsher in Hindsight: he's not giving sound advice on professionalism, he's obeying orders from higher up that require people trained to care about and educate children to turn into cold-hearted crisis-management SocialDarwinists, because some shady company has decided to do a test run. Even worse, the teachers are given no training to this effect — they're not even supposed to look at the manual until a crisis is underway.

Ruu is actually real.

If the twist with Megu-nee was that she wasn't really there, the twist with Ruu might be that she is really there. Everyone assumed that she was a teddy bear from the second she appeared, after all. And while it's safe to assume that Yuki, Miki and Kurumi would play along with the dellusion, nobody at Saint-Isidore seems to find it strange when the girls talk to Ruu. Not even a pause or a dubious look. The author may deliberately throws innuendos that Ruu is a teddy bear, only to reveal that she isn't. (And yes, I know it's unlikely, I'm throwing this theory just because.)

• Ever since her introduction, there have been multiple wrenches thrown into this WMG. First, read the spoilered WMG that has since been confirmed that throws the wrench into this theory. Next, go back to the last page of Chapter 38 where we see Touko standing across from Yuuri and Ruu. Note that Ruu is NOT in the reflection of Touko's glasses. The third wrench thrown into the works so far would be page 16 of Chapter 42. Note how we see a stuffed bear's ear in the reflection of Touko's glasses as she turns away from Yuuri.
  • Also in Chapter 42, look at the university students' expressions. Hika looks concerned and a little pitying. Aki's expression is a cross between confused and worried, and she has a small sweatdrop. Touko looks like she doesn't know what to say — or is holding herself back from saying something. They've definitely noticed that something is amiss. And you'd think that they'd have interacted with the youngest survivor if she was really there. Perhaps the only reason they let it slide was because Yuuri acts less obsessed with Ruu when she's around the university students, while it's become all she talks about with her own club. Perhaps, like Yuki, she's aware of reality on some level, and she knows that demonstrating herself to be delusional among a survivor group she doesn't know so well could be dangerous (it makes her seem more vulnerable and less trustworthy, which could be exploited). However, when faced with a potentially dangerous but productive mission, she opts out to protect "Ruu." From the university students' point of view, she just told them that she wouldn't help them in case her stuffed toy was injured — if Ruu was real, they'd probably be the first to suggest that Ruu doesn't go. It'd be a great double bluff, but real-life-Ruu looks unlikely.
  • I don't think we'll ever run out of wrenches, because Chapter 43 just introduced another one. Yuki's submission into the Crew's scrapbook includes her drawings of each of School Life Club's members' faces, along with the face of the teddy bear. Yuki knows that Yuuri thinks the teddy bear is Ruu, but Yuki doesn't know what "Ruu" looks like.
  • Chapter 48 puts the final nail in the coffin and confirms that "Ruu" is the teddy bear.

There never was a "Ruu" in the first place.

Pre-breakdown, Yuuri was the most dependable girl in the group...and, arguably, the one most responsible for the girls' survival (as she maintains the necessities they need to survive, and co-ordinates the activities of the other three girls). However, after her breakdown, the "reveal" of Ruu comes out of nowhere. The organised and logical Yuuri maintains that she had totally forgotten her younger sister - that Ruu was absolutely erased from her memory while she was still relatively sane, not simply a memory she couldn't afford to dwell on. That's not much of a stretch: delusions are powerful things in this series, and all of the girls are extremely reticent when talking about their families — Megumi, the one adult, is the only one with any concrete mention of her parents . Yuuri's breakdown after the crash could well have destroyed the carefully constructed coping mechanism of her selective amnesia. However, there's still something really odd about the scene in which she suddenly remembers the existence of her younger sister, panicking over how she could have forgotten. Perhaps she didn't forget: Ruu's whole existence is a delusion, acting as a Replacement Goldfish for everything and everyone that Yuuri lost to the Zombie Apocalypse, or a manifestation of Yuuri's own guilt about not being ables to save what she loved.

We haven't seen the last of the infected Megu-nee.

We all know that Miki isn't as hard-hitting with the shovel than Kurumi is, and after supposedly killing the zombie Megu-nee, the body's gone when they come back through the same area. The possibility being brought to light here is that Miki didn't hit her hard enough to put her down and instead simply stun her, so she could have gotten up and walked off. And it's known that the zombies are partially motivated and drawn by memories of their former lives, and even after full reanimation Megumi has shown subtle signs of It Can Think. So there's a possibility that she may tail the rest of the club, and considering how stamina isn't much of a problem with the zombies, be quite tenacious about it too.

Those infected are placed in a mental Lotus-Eater Machine when they reanimate.

It makes sense regarding their demeanour, anyway. They seem to be off their heads and more focused with whatever the hell they themselves are doing instead of interested in survivors, and their hostility seems to mostly come when their attention wavers (which doesn't take much) thanks to a survivor distracting them. It also explains why they repeatedly try to ape their former lives.

Either Kurumi, Yuuri or both of them will wind up dead by the end of the University arc

These two have gotten major death flags recently, what with Kurumi's infection appearing to have not entirely been cured and Yuuri's increasingly delusional insanity that's almost gotten her killed at least once beforehand. For the former, She will likely succumb to her infection and become a full-blown zombie, although it is entirely possible that she might get a Dying Moment of Awesome where she takes down the entire Melee Fight Crew right before her death. For the latter, As said before, her insanity has almost gotten her killed once before when she wouldn't put down "Ruu" and almost took a crossbow to the head. It's entirely possible that her refusal to leave without Ruu will get her killed by either the MFC or the zombies, or she'll attempt to get revenge on Ayaka for "Killing Ruu", which will result in her death.

Alternatively, They both survive and recover from the infection and insanity respectivly

Given that Red Herring is very popular trope, it is entirely possible that the author is delibritly misleading us into thinking that Kurumi and Yuuri will die, and instead A permenant or at least far more longer-lasting cure for Kurumi will be found, while Yuuri is snapped out of her delusions in one form or another. On the other hand, this could lead to a twist involving a really unexpected death that no one saw coming......

Ayaka will end up betraying and killing Takato

We know that she is very mentally unstable and enjoys killing other people way too much. If Takato ends up doing something she doesn't like, or if she decides that she wants to be in charge now, she will very likely kill him. Or they'll find themselves up against many zombies, and she'll injure him to use him as bait so that she can get away from the zombies.

• Partially confirmed as of Chapter 50. While he isn't dead yet, Takahito is discovered to be infected, which causes Ayaka and Shino to instantly turn against him, and Ayaka looks disturbingly happy at the prospect of killing him and being in charge of the MFC.
• As of Chapter 54, confirmed. Ayaka sends Takahito falling to his death in the "Zombie Graveyard" and then lights his corpse on fire.

The deaths of the remaining MFC members will involve them all turning against each other

Given that the Melee Fight Crew is very paranoid and have been shown killing their own members, as well as how they have a big amount of distrust and don't seem to actually care about each other, it is entirely possible that something will cause Takato, Ayaka and Shinou to all turn against each other and result in the deaths of at least 2 of them, if not the entire group.

The aftermath of the anime plays out differently then the 2nd half of the manga, and possibly for the better

It's very unlikely that the anime will end up getting a 2nd Season due to it's Acclaimed Flop status, so it's really up to the viewer's imagination on what happens to the anime's version of the girls after it's ending. However unlike the manga, the anime doesn't have any indication that the cure used on Kurumi isn't permenant and requires multiple doses, and Yuuri also doesn't have a massive mental breakdown that leads to her going insane and believing that Yuki's Teddy Bear is her dead little sister Ruu. Plus while we know that the University exists in the anime's continuity, the only character from the current manga arc that we know for sure exists here is Touko due to her making a cameo at the very end of the anime, so it's unknown if the Melee Fight Crew exists in the anime or not. So maybe somewhere down the line the girls either get a case of Earn Your Happy Ending or at least a relativly happy Bittersweet Ending sometime after the anime ended.

Takashige's actions in Chapter 46 were at least partially motivated by vengence

It's very easy to view Takashige of the MFC as a complete moron for still continuing to chase Kurumi even after she leaves the university and runs out into the zombie-infested streets, which get ends up getting him killed. However, it is subtly implied that he and Kougami might have been good friends, as they're seen interacting often in the flashbacks and Takashige looks quite sad when the MFC are discussing Kougami's mysterious demise. His idiotic actions could be explained as him despeatly wanting revenge on the people who might have caused the death of his friend, without thinking of the consequences of mindlessly persuing said revenge.

Not all members of the School Living Club and/or The Fallen Club will survive the current arc

The possibility of Yuuri and/or Kurumi dying has already been noted, but on top of that it's possible that at least one of the Fallen Girls will die too. For one thing, the university is currently swarming with zombies thanks to the combined actions of Takahito and Ayaka. Secondly, it's been possibly confirmed that the virus is airborne, which explains how Takahito and Kougami suddenly got infected. With both of these dangerous hazards being around, it's highly unlikely all 4 of the Fallen Girls will survive. As for which one may die, it'll likely be either Touko or Rise, since they're gotten quite a bit of development and characterization and thus their deaths will be more tragic, while we know barely anything about Akai and Hikako.

Yuki will end up succumbing due to Megu-nee

Referencing the earlier WMG about Megu-nee coming back, I see Yuki's infection, if it does happen, being due to reuniting with Megu-nee, literally or figuratively, and being completely blind to the fact Megu-nee is the real one, hidden by her inability to see her as a zombie, or her seeing Megu-nee is a pre-cursor to her own, hidden, infection starting to take over and that she wants to see her one last time.

Takahito will be killed off before the girls leave the university

He's not exactly in the best condition right now to begin with, due to the airborne virus infected him. He's also shown sweating heavily and has pulsating veins all over his face and neck, which are both symptoms showing that the infected victim doesn't have much time to live. There's also the possibility that he injured himself badly when he crashed his car into the wall while trying to run over Miki and doesn't feel his injuries to being on the verge of turning into a zombie, and him moving around would only make this even worse. Chances are he will likely die in the next chapter either from the virus, the possible injuries he sustained in the car crash or being killed by another character for attempting to kill Miki.

• Confirmed, as Takahito finally meets his demise in Chapter 54 at the hands of Ayaka, who pretty much kills him just for fun.

The infection will return with a more letal strain

Despite at the end of the manga the society is rebuilding after the school living club finded a cure There is no guarantee that it will last forever, Shiiko said that the bacteria is always constantly mutating so in the future, the bacteria would be more powerful and humanity will be doomed At least...

Yuki's students and Siino and Renya's son are inmune

in reference to the previous WMG If it is assumed that the majority of her students were street children and during those years they were not infected, that means that perhaps they have better resistance and Siino andd Renya's son is part from the new gen, so it is probably that he are inmune

There is a strain of the infection that increases the intelligence of animals

Something similar with the simian flu from the Planeet of the Apes reboot, while the infection kills humans (And thurn them into zombies), there is a strain that gives animals intelligence comparable to a human being. It was already seen in Taroumaru that he has been able to understand what others say and can even open doors. even the characters said the he is very intelligent to be a dog