Review of School Days

Upon going through my extensive backlog of shows I eventually want to watch, School Days finally arrived on my monitor, and oh boy did it live up to its reputation. As much as I hate to say it, the first half of this show was actually kind of fun. Now, I’m not about to say that the characters are amazing, or that the writing is out of this world (I find that most of it is kinda shit actually), but goddamn this show somehow managed to really keep me intrigued. There’s just something about these stupid kids, repeatedly ruining their stupid relationships, while also doingother increasingly stupid things that’s more entertaining than I care to admit.

I really couldn’t tell you how the show so effectively invested me, in any other situation I would’ve absolutely hated its guts. Maybe it’s just my monkey brain feeling sad for the shy and cute love interest whenever her war criminal of a boyfriend does anything inappropriate.

Now, of course, this innocent fun doesn’t last for long, as somewhere along the line, the show completely jumps the gun and turns into a harem-fest devoid of anything that I might’ve enjoyed before. I have nothing against a fictional title portraying teenagers exploring their sexuality for the first time, but like, this is officially too much. By the time the notorious ending (which I miraculously hadn’t spoiled for myself until now) came around, nothing really mattered anymore, the show went insane long before the climax.

But it really has many of the individual pieces that you would find in an acceptable show, hadn’t it been too caught up in being the kind of story that it is. Staying on the path it laid for itself in the first half could’ve made for a potentially fine story, but it’s so adamant on having a shocking ending and delivering more than it initially promises that it entirely fumbles and turns into the meme that it is today… for better or for worse.

In short, there are much worse shows out there that don't bring anything to the table, and I’d much rather have something like this, that actually makes me feel something.

5.0, definitely delivers, just in all the wrong senses of the word.