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Yeah, very true stuff. The ecchi is out of place (I don't read it for that), plus I don't like the "roundness" of everything (same way I don't enjoy Code Geass ecchi, lol), and the action isn't interesting of course, it's typical zombie fights where there's moments of random heroism and a feeling of desperation accompanied by resourceful resolution but it's not at all gripping or enthusing. When you break it down HSotD is in fact a typical zombie story, featuring the chronicles of the desparate endeavors of a group of people, with some characters more central than others, as they struggle against an enemy whose greatest threat is its ability to turn mankind and the human individual, against himself.
But I do disagree with Question's statement "and the obligatory asshole character that you KNOW will end up dying horribly later on". Often when you know it's a zombie story you start trying to think, "Okay, who has a character flaw where they have to die?" because that's the way it usually works, but not here. Nobody we've had more than a brief introduction to has died yet, and I don't get the sense at all they will. This isn't a story where all the characters with character flaws slowly die off due to their character flaw except the one or two main protagonists who don't have any obvious character flaws. You can tell from the characterization that nobody has a "character flaw", they just have their "quirky traits", if you know what I mean. The wall of text I posted earlier was basically to say that the lack of this is in fact the strength of the series, that is, the characters are the strength of the series. They all have unique personalities (in the context of zombie stories--as far as manga is concerned, of course they're somewhat cliched, but the manga characters in a zombie story is what the point is). What we have so far from these characters is pretty unique, and there's also interesting potential in the lead characters like I also mentioned earlier.
Definitely don't read this if you can't stand zombie stories, since fundamentally it is one, but if you do enjoy a good one, this could qualify since it operates untraditionally by having a manga feel to it. Read it for the characters, you should be able to tell by the third or fourth chapter if you'll like the characters, and maybe also for the plot but we don't know much about that yet. IMO.
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