This week's pick is School Days.
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| Yay spoilers! |
There will be SPOILERS in this post.
Number of Season: 1
Number of Episodes: 12
Run Time: 25 minutes per episode
Personal Rating: 6/10
You can watch School Days on crunchyroll (You can watch School Days but not Higurashi? WTF? Priorities.)
You may or may not have heard of School Days. While not quite a cult classic, it is a pretty big series among otakus and not necessarily in a good way. School Days is similar to Higurashi in that while at first glance, everything seems innocent and happy, it takes a very dark turn at a certain point and the protagonist's life is flipped upside down. The reason a lot of people talk about School Days is mostly because of the violence and the excuse for a human being protagonist. Some like the series because it is an extremely unconventional "romance" anime while some dislike it because of what happens in the show. There are others who are neutral and people like me who just enjoy it because it's so ridiculous and want to troll people with the series.
What it's about: School Days is adapted from a visual novel-esque game where players go through the days of Makoto Itou who falls in love with a girl he regularly sees on the train who happens to go to the same school as him. His friend, Sekai Saionji, finds out and helps him get closer to her and they eventually start going out. But things don't always go the way you want them to especially when you are a scum bag like Makoto.
Love at First Sight
So Makoto falls in love with the girl he sees on the train every day, Kotonoha Katsura, and takes a picture of her on his phone because there's a rumor that if you take a picture of the person you like and set that picture as your wallpaper and no one sees it for a week, your confession will be successful. (Should try it sometime, it worked for me once). After that, his friend and classmate, Sekai finds out and then decides to help him get closer to her and eventually confess. He eventually does confess to her and she accepts and they start going out. Up until then, it was a very cute romance that I could get behind. Makoto seemed like a good guy, Kotonoha was shy but endearing, and the side characters seemed interesting enough and then....
Attack of the Side Characters
So when I called Makoto a scumbag, I wasn't kidding. While he's dating Kotonoha, he finds out that the girl who helped them get together, Sekai, actually had feelings for him. So what does he do? How about a kiss. Yep that seemed right. Sex? Yep you're on the right track Makoto. So how does Kotonoha take this? Well she doesn't find out for awhile and eventually they break up and Makoto actually starts having sex with not just Sekai but other girls as well. At a certain point in the series, girls are actually just going to his apartment to have sex with him. Sometimes just one, sometimes in groups. By this point, everyone hates Makoto especially since Kotonoha who is so pure and innocent is just heart broken and doesn't know what to do. She wants to get him back but she can't because Makoto is an amorous scum bag. She almost gets raped by Makoto's friend who she went out with to make Makoto jealous and she's just ultimately left devastated and in a very horrible place.
Overall, School Days' main weakness is its characters. The only one that you might like is Kotonoha because she's the victim of everything in the show until the end. Everyone else is just unlikeable and hard to sympathize with. It's difficult to enjoy a show when you hate one of its biggest components. I only really watched the show all the way through because I was hoping Makoto would get his just desserts and he did.
Revenge
What makes School Days so famous is not just the scum bag protagonist but his retribution. In the game there are so many endings and in most of them, he dies. I think I played one good ending total where Makoto was actually a good guy. Other than that, he always cheats or is an overall dick. But the retribution for his actions is what makes School Days so famous. I would go as far as to say that sometimes there's some Higurashi level violence in this. If you haven't seen Higurashi, just imagine that it's very violent and gruesome. The revenge is not only pleasing because Makoto deserves it for the stuff he pulls, but because it's just over the top and unexpected.
Nice Boat
In the anime's ending, Makoto is killed by Sekai who can't take the fact that he's cheating on her (despite him cheating on Kotonoha with her) and is trying to get back together with Kotonoha so she stabs him to death. Kotonoha finds his body and then calls out Sekai to meet her on the roof of the school by using Makoto's cell phone. Sekai says that she's pregnant with Makoto's child but Kotonoha calls her out saying that she only said that to get Makoto's attention and says that Makoto's real girlfriend is herself and not Sekai. Sekai says that everything she did, she did for Makoto and that she's his girlfriend. Kotonoha tells her to ask Makoto directly and points to a bag. Sekai opens the bag which and sees Sekai Makoto's severed head which Kotonoha cut off after Sekai kiled him. She then slits her throat and cuts open her womb and tells her that it's empty. She then goes on a boat and gains peace as she hugs his severed head, saying that she's happy that they can be together forever now. That isn't even the worst ending, but this spawned the meme "Nice Boat" if anyone can remember that.
Should you watch it?
Maybe
I recommend School Days to people just to troll them for the most part. It wasn't that great of an anime, it's just so vastly different in the events that happen that it becomes relatively entertaining. However, it's a very difficult anime to enjoy when it's plagued with horrible side characters and an ever worse protagonist. If you like over the top violence and people getting their just desserts, School Days might be for you. If you don't like anime without happy endings then this is not for you. It has pretty good buildup for what happens in the end, but getting there is a bit painful.
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