Anime Review: School Days

Alright, here we go. I decided if I was to start a blog to post my opinions of various anime I would do this.

The truth is I really don't want to do this, because this is probably one of the worst shows I have ever watched. Trust me, that's saying a lot.

Oh, there are going to be spoilers in this post, but since I wouldn't recommend this steaming dump to someone I loathe it doesn't really matter.

OH GOD, the trauma.

School Days (スクールデイズ) is an anime adaptation of a visual novel originally written by a company called 0verflow. Apparently said visual novel was well received for some fucked up reason, so it earned itself a sequel, a spinoff, and adaptations of the anime and manga variety. I discovered School Days by chance, after reading the wall of text on TV Tropes defining Puella Magi Madoka Magica, where it described the show as "starting out light, but ending very dark".

When I saw that, I figured something psychological, or lovecraftian - similar to how Madoka is. I could not have been more wrong.

School Days begins with talk of a "charm" of sorts. It goes something like this: you take a picture of the person you like, and set it as your background wallpaper on your cell phone. If nobody sees it for three weeks, your feelings will be returned.

Cue our main character, Makoto Itou, who is crushing on Kotonoha Katsura, a girl who goes to his school and rides the same train as him every day. He decides one day to snap a picture of Katsura, only to have it be seen at the start of the school day by Sekai, the short-haired girl pictured above. She then tells Makoto she is in the same Gym class as Kotonoha, and will try to do some matchmaking. As to be expected from stories such as this, it works out and Makoto begins dating Kotonoha.

Seriously, if the story had ended there it probably would have been fine. Guess what? It didn't.

After spending some time dating Kotonoha, Makoto decides it's too much work and not as fun as he initally thought. He then decides it's easier to get into Sekai's pants, which he promptly does. The thing is he doesn't break up with Kotonoha. He avoids her for what feels like forever - much to her dismay. It probably doesn't help when her classmates are pointing out that the obvious has happened. When Makoto finally tells her they shouldn't be together anymore, she pretty much goes insane.

Did I mention I had marathoned this anime before sleep?

With that said, Makoto then has a short harem phase - in which he sleeps with at least four people on screen that we know of while he's dating Sekai. Eventually, however, he does end up going back to Kotonoha - happy ending, right?

Now, I'm going to explain what happens at the end, but we warned - this isn't for the faint of heart. However, a short story should be added in here, for extra content:

When I started doing my research after watching this steaming pile, I found out the "Nice Boat" meme originated here. When the final episode was due to air in Japan a 16 year old killed her father with an axe. Due to "similarities" they pulled the episode, replacing it with norwegian scenery and a rather nice boat. "Nice Boat" was a fan's rather dry remark on 4chan during this airing.

Now, for that summary of the last episode.....

I don't even know where to begin.

Well... okay, I know.

Seriously though, Sekai is so pissed off that she decides to stab him to death, screaming about how cruel he is. The scene was pretty brutal on TV, but was heavily censored - which filled the room with black blood, of course - meaning the DVD release (which is what I watched) had one hell of a shock factor.

I know, I know what you're thinking. He had it coming, right? Well, he kind of did. At the same time, teens will be teens, and they have their whole lives ahead of them. They have time to change. Sekai just decided to say "Fuck that" and off him early, presumably before anyone else could.

But it doesn't end there. Because Kotonoha finds him. And when she does, she takes his phone and texts Sekai to have her meet them at the roof of their school. Sekai, being the dumbass she is, decides it's a good idea. Kotonoha then accuses her of lying about her pregnancy, and requests that she proves it... by slicing her open and searching for a fetus.

The episode ends with Kotonoha cradling Makoto's head -- On a rather nice boat. That's it. She says something about finally being along with Makoto, and it goes to credits. If you think I'm joking, here's a video of the last eight minutes. All the blood and gore and everything in under 10 minutes. And that's the censored version.

I'm not even going to bother rating this... I just have no words. On doing more research on it, however, I did find out that the visual novel was notorious for the violent deaths that occurred in the bad endings.

Score: N/A

Reccomend: WHY WOULD  I DO THAT?

TL;DR: This show sucks, bitches be crazy, no real character development. The only good thing this show had was the animation, done by TNK.