Review of School Days

I never thought that a fictional work could leave me this disturbed. I will start by saying that I did not enjoy watching School Days, yet I would not say it was a bad anime, and I do not regret watching it. It managed to make me angry at almost every character involved since I felt like almost every relevant character was either dumb, despicable, or both. The way it is set up however still made me feel somewhat sorry for many of them. There's some things that School Days does really, really well. It shows the development of the main character, Makoto Itou, froma pretty average, slightly perverted high school boy to someone much more despicable. This does not happen in a sudden conversion, rather it is a slow development that does not happen without reason.

It also manages to show that life can be cruel, and what it can lead to if you can not accept that sometimes you just lose, even though you might have done everything right.

As I mentioned in the introduction, it also is really good at making the viewer angry. Whether this is positive or negative, you decide.

However, it did also have its problems. The first 4-5 episodes were rather boring, cringy, and felt dragged out too long, in my opinion they could have fit them into 2-3 eps. I was close to dropping it after the 4th episode because nothing interesting seemed to happen (and only didn't because I had the ending spoiled for me and knew that it would have to take a different direction soon). The end of episode 5, however, marks the start of the good part of this series.

The girls' love also felt exaggerated. Sure, they know him for quite some time and got to like him eariler in their lives, but after finding out about what he has done it is hard to believe that they would all still try to be his girlfriend. Love might make you blind, but not like that. At least not everyone.

Would I recommend you to watch it? If you like psychological dramas then yes, absolutely, but be prepared to still hate every second of it. I was relieved when I finally watched the final episode because I did not want to be this angry, and towards the end partially sad, anymore, but it certainly was an experience that I like to have made. I feel like I can not properly rate this anime with a number, it was great yet at the same time terrible, I did not enjoy it yet I like the fact that I watched it. I'll go with a 6/10 because of the awful awful early episodes and the fact that I did not enjoy it at all, yet it left a lasting impression and I think it's a decent anime overall. Seriously though, just ignore the number and make up your mind based on the review.