Review of School Days

There will be spoilers ahead, not that you should care. This isn't an anime anyone should waste their time watching to begin with. If a man is willing to cheat on his girlfriend with you, you can be certain he'll one day cheat on you with someone else. After finishing this series I was left with two main questions; first and foremost, why do any of these girls, let alone every single one of them (yes, the entire on screen cast except one girl) have affection for the protagonist ranging from simple romantic interest, to psychotic obsession? There's a single flashback sequence showing him try tocheer up one of the girls after a bad encounter with two other students left her in tears, but in every other scene at the beginning of the series hes shown to be quiet, awkward, and not all that interesting, and towards the end hes shown to be pushy, easily aggravated by slight inconveniences, and most of all he's become an egomaniac who all the girls are fully aware is sleeping with half the school, as shown by Hikari commenting that just because his girlfriend isn't around, he's contacting every girl he can think of for "company". She even goes as far as looking through his recent phone calls to reveal he's called roughly 24 different girls, all of who's names don't appear in the series at any other time. We're meant to believe hes got girls lining up just to spend time with him, and not one of them cares that he has a girlfriend? Or that he's also already seeing every other girl you can think of? The funniest part of this is that the breaking point for every one of them, when they all finally decide to cut ties with him, is when they find out one of them got pregnant, and suddenly he's now damaged goods. If even one girl clearly stated her reasons for being so passionate about him apart from "he's my boyfriend" or "I've known him since middle school, he was nice back then", I wouldn't have had such an issue with the "romance" in this series, but it all just felt so shallow and random the entire time, not to mention that the protagonist seemingly only thinks with his lower brain, and not a single girl can resist him when he immediately gropes them.

The second question, why oh why would he not break up with his original girlfriend Kotonoha? I could care less if he wants to whore around with every girl in his school, he's already shown how trashy and inconsiderate he is of any of the girls feelings over and over, but at a stretch I can rationalise why he chooses each girl, at least at the start. He isn't getting physical intimacy from Kotonoha, so he jumps to Sekai. Sekai is mad at him and he sees an easy opportunity when approached by Otome, so he jumps to Otome. Kiyoura, who is supposed to be Sekais best friend, offers herself up to convince him to stop seeing other girls and be faithful to Sekai (look how that worked out), so he takes advantage of that situation too. But all the while poor Kotonoha is under the impression that they're still dating? He avoids her every chance he gets, but when he sees her he acts like nothings wrong, so what exactly is the benefit of stringing her along like this for so long, if he gains nothing from her romantically or physically? I find it hard to understand why every single character mistreats her so much, or how no teachers or her parents seem to pick up on it at all, even when shes shown to be in an almost catatonic state in the final two episodes. I also just want to add that I had high hopes that Taisuke, the only other male character, would be the one to liberate her from this insane obsession for the protagonist, but instead he goes on to assault her, in a ridiculous and entirely distasteful scene that, while short and not all that graphic, was entirely unnecessary, and was followed up by him asking Kotonoha out for dinner, since they "had such a great time together". She never mentions this to anyone, and there's absolutely no repercussions for his actions. The scene simply serves as yet more shock factor that falls entirely flat.

Those were my primary two issues with this series that I really needed to address, but there was literally nothing else I enjoyed about it either. None of the music or sound stood out at all, the art was bland and in parts choppy, with a handful of noticeable errors here and there such as faces distorting, and the voice acting was flat, with Kotonoha and Makoto in particular being the worst of the cast. I've read the manga before, and while it was far from good, it was short, mildly entertaining for a quick read, and above all it was leaps and bounds more believable than the anime adaption. I specifically chose to watch this because I knew the story panned out differently to the manga, but I never thought it was going to be almost the exact same story, except now Makoto is a massive playboy who's cheating with the whole school instead of just Sekai. It all felt so incoherent and random through every episode, as if shock factor was all they had in mind. Even the final scene, where the protagonist finally gets his comeuppance, felt so unsatisfying after all that waiting. No final words, no dragging it out after all the chaos he's reveled in, it was just over like that. The only shock factor in the scene was how terrible the blood effects were. I will admit, the one scene that would've gotten a laugh out of me if I wasn't already expecting such random nonsense to happen was when the writers clearly gave up since the final episode was almost over, and they had Kotonoha and Makoto proclaim their "love" in front of the pregnant Sekai, before groping each other and playing a game of tongue twister as she screams like she never expected the serial cheater to cheat on her.

There wasn't a single moment in this series where I could truly relate to any of the characters choices or motivations, and a lot of the time I could barely even understand them. As shown above they're all made out to be completely driven by an inexplicable lust for the protagonist, in some cases so uncontrollable they'd even kill him, or kill for him. Some of them were at least tolerable towards the beginning, but every single one of them managed to make themselves unbearable by the end. This is the first time I've ever given a series 1/10, and I didn't really expect to ever do this as a 1/10 series to me is something so unbearable you can't find a single redeeming factor, one genuinely likable character, any impressive scenes, or a simple reason to sit through it, even if just to point and laugh at it, but this series had me shaking my head and saying "Why though?" in almost every single scene. This isn't a series I'd recommend to anyone, for any reason, and I see now why the MAL score was so ridiculously low.

This was my first review, I just really felt the need to write this after sitting through 12 episodes of this garbage.