Review of School Days

I'm going to do something a bit controversial. I'm not going to claim this show is horrific and disgusting - nor am I going to tell you that this show is a hilarious harem and has a bunch of good fanservice. I'm not even going to say that I enjoy this show because of a satisfactory ending. I think School Days is a good and worthy anime because it can provoke you on a level that surpasses the shallow mediocrities that proliferate our screens today. Not only that, School Days will convince you that everything you witness is completely and utterly normal - to thepoint where you realise that this fiction is not so far from reality.

Before I begin, I would like to point out that this review is a deconstruction of the part of the show, as I feel it is necessary to explain why I believe this show deserves credit. If you have not seen the show, I recommend you watch it first and read later, though I will avoid spoilers where possible.
School Days is not without flaws - if anything, the first thing to note about School Days is that it feels awkwardly pieced together. There is very little pacing for the majority of the anime, as time comes and goes as it pleases, and very few scene changes occur without upheaval. The story almost feels broken, incoherent, or amateur. And thus, the first theme of the anime is revealed - inexperience. The first three or so episodes revolve around Itou's lack of experience with girls, and both the story and his adventures feel somewhat jarred and incomplete. This sets up Itou as a well standing and innocent main character, an idea that will not be around for long. It is the way in which this show pretends to simply be a bad high school anime that makes the cliff hangers and plot twists so much more evident. Even though I knew the outcome of the show before watching it, I was still fooled after a few episodes into actually liking the main character. Boy was I in for a surprise.

The show itself rapidly begins to pick up quality after the first quarter, as the story begins to solidify and we start to see the true character behind Itou emerging. As he grows to understand his desires and motivations, we are left in wake of a bulldozer of pain as the completely innocent and dear Katsura is unwittingly exposed to one of the worst feelings of all - betrayal. This is the second theme of the show that undeniably affects us all. To be betrayed is to no longer know the world around you, as your past dismantles and fear wells up inside. As the onlookers, we are of course given sight of the whole picture, which makes it all the more disturbing when we are exposed to the broken lives that collapse before our very eyes. Was this show not a jolly slice of life two seconds ago? But there was fanservice, and a bunch of girls! It must be a harem. Sadly, you have been mislead.

Speaking of misleading, there is one final aspect of this show that really tears a hole in the lens we view the fictional world. The world of School Days is, we come to discover, a world built entirely upon lies. Even after betrayal, even before the betrayal occurs, someone somewhere is deceiving someone else. A certain incident planned by three particularly mean girls gives them a cheap laugh at the cost of revealing the shallow nature of human beings. Katsura herself foreshadows herself when she makes a mistake with her knitting and has to pull everything apart - a world built upon lies will eventually crumble down in some way or another.

So why do such depressing, horrible themes make this a good anime? Because you relate to the characters, and it does not feel like fiction. People act selfishly, mistakes are made, and someone gets hurt - this is the real world, and someone just put it into an anime. It helps you to stop and remember that outside of our incredible fantasies, there are real consequences to real people. Being real is what this anime does best, and for that I deem it worthy of appraisal.