School Days Review

I know what you're thinking, "But Steph, there's no vespas in School Days!" I'm well aware of that. I just had to shelve my FLCL review for now, so this is what you're getting!

School Days is a Drama/Romance anime based on the Visual Novel by Overflow back in 2005. A manga adaptation was released in 2006, and the anime from the little known TNK was released in 2007 with 12 episode. Two OVA’s: Valentine Days and School Days: Magical Heart Kokoro-chan were released in 2008.

Makoto Ito is a young Japanese high school student beginning his second term at the fictional Sakakino Academy. During his daily train rides to and from school, he becomes infatuated with fellow student Kotonoha Katsura; a girl that also commutes. When a new classmate acquaintance of his, Sekai Saionji, discovers his secret crush on Kotonoha, she helps introduce both of them to each other and over time they grow closer and agree to date. However in spite of her proud and triumphant matchmaking efforts, Sekai inadvertently becomes jealous of the new couple, having also developed feelings toward Makoto.

Normally I have a system where, from here on, I talk about the animation, the story, the characters, and then the voice acting. However, I’m not gonna do that this time. Why? Well, cause this time we’re going to talk about what’s WRONG WITH THIS DAMN SERIES!!

Wanna know what’s wrong with this series? It’s not the animation, it’s actually pretty decent. It’s not the story, it’s just hard to get into unless you’re effected personally by a (maybe) similar situation. It’s not the voice acting, god forbid that they weren’t doing anything bad with it. It’s the characters! At the start, they are really decent, realistic characters in high school and having high school problems. But as the series goes on, the characters become more and more unlikeable to the point of really REALLY wanting certain ones to die.... Thanks Sekai. The biggest nice guy turned asshole is Makoto. The character we are suppose to get behind and support throughout the series, is a complete and utter waste of space.

And this is what it means to be a dick.

Makoto really likes Kotonoha and starts to date her, after some help from Sekai. However, it becomes tiring to him and he then starts sleeping with Sekai. Doesn’t help much that Sekai was giving Makoto “lessons” on a girl’s feelings. Does Makoto break up with Kotonoha? Hell no! That comes so much later! Now, at this point in the series, I’m not having much problem with this. Cheating happens, there’s no way to stop it. School Days is just a high school drama about cheating...... Until Makoto sleeps with SIX other girls while dating Sekai AND Kotonoha. Suddenly Sekai finds out she’s pregnant and tells Makoto. Makoto freaks and then decides to go crawling back to Kotonoha and leaves Sekai. And then..... This happens.....

THANK YOU!!!!

Yeah..... The end isn’t realistic, given the situation, but it makes the viewer VERY happy it’s happened. Plus the logic behind some of it doesn’t make much sense. Sekai’s reason for killing Makoto is reasonable enough. She’s pissed that Makoto is going back to Kotonoha after getting her pregnant. Makes sense..... But then what reason does Kotonoha have for killing Sekai besides to see if she lied about being pregnant? You would think it’s a revenge thing, but she clearly wants to know more about Sekai’s pregnancy rather then Makoto. And then, once she’s dead, Kotonoha digs through Sekai’s stomach and checks to see if there’s a baby....... EWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!! This series just doesn’t make sense by the end and really irritates the living daylights out of me!

But what about everything else that I passed over? The best I can do is give you the short list:

Animation: Pretty average. TNK picked a bad series to start with.
Story: Good start, but goes all to hell by the end.
Voice Acting: THANK GOD THIS ISN’T LICENSED!!!

Ok..... I’m done ranting....... Honestly, it was an ok series. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t hate it like most people do. The first half of School Days takes the topic of infidelity and makes it as serious as it can, regardless of the most douchiest male lead in anime history. The only reason I would recommend this series to anyone is if you really like jerk-derp characters and the big “twist” ending. Otherwise then that..... DON’T WATCH IT!! Save yourself the trouble and just skip it. Once it has been seen it cannot be unseen.

Next time, we consume all the sugar and men we can possibly have! Until then, otaku on my friends!

Final Rating - 2/10 When visual novels are bad anime adaptations....