Review of School Days

I created a profile JUST to talk about School Days, one of the most misunderstood anime I've ever come across. Are the characters unlikable? Is it mean spirited? Does its tone differ greatly from its first episode to its last? Yes. But that's the point. School Days is as meta as an anime TV show can get. Its about the inherent ugliness at the heart of the love-triangle genre. Its about the ugliness at the heart of fan service anime. It starts out seeming to be both these things, about another hopeless loser whom every woman can't resist. Asit progresses the story and characterization highlights the hypocrisy, cruelty, and delusion at the heart of a lot of fanboy-baiting romance series. How many reviews do you see saying that the show starts out fine because it's a paint-by-numbers romance show and how it changes over time into something terrible? Most of the reviews I've seen echo that sentiment. But that's what the show is trying to do. It's trying to tell you how messed up the entire situation is. How distorted the fantasy is.

Watch around twenty or so episodes of something like Kimagure Orange Road and you'll see what I mean. What seems like a cute enough romance series sours quickly because the fantasy is ridiculous and the show never confronts its own internal cruelty, how two characters who clearly want to be with one another will string along a third party out of a misplaced sense of self-propriety, not giving any thought to the real damage they could be doing to someone they consider a friend.

School Days is a show that actually addresses that thoughtlessness, that cavalier disregard for others. It's about the general meanness at the core of this kind of romantic fantasy. Its not trying to be another throwaway romance anime. TNK actually took what would normally be another dime-a-dozen visual novel adaptation and did something different with it.

And in a genre that can be so predictable, that can be so afraid to take risks and potentially alienate a majority (thought not all of) audience that NEVER wants anything that goes against the prevailing fantasy, that threatens to be more than immediately forgettable fluff, School Days stands alone. It takes it all on. It doesn't pull punches. It doesn't care if you don't like it.

TL;DR: It's not a romance anime, it's not horror, it's School Days. Nothing else is like it.