Review of School Days
I never actually thought I'd enjoy a harem anime so much until I watched School days. There were so many things I liked and enjoyed so let me get right into it. The thing that I liked, no loved the most in School days was the story. School days has a very dark and mature story-line, meaning, if you're not an adult or at least in your late teens, or if you haven't at least seen anime similar to this than you probably won't understand most of the story. That aside, the story was an amazing blend of all things drama. Tragedy, love & hate, bondsformed and broken, heartbreak, friendship etc. The staff did a very good job writing the story. Something that I noticed, too is that the show has a really slow pacing, so don't expect things to happen right then and there. Although most of the times certain things like sex, or betrayal do happen before the end of an episode.
The characters were not the best or well let me be honest Makoto wasn't. I do strongly believe that this was done on purpose of course because you know, how else are we going to get a good story. It was interesting to see Makoto go from nice guy that every one respected and liked to sex craved idiot & jerk.
In fact, during the point in which Makoto started to betray someone who was close to him, his lover, was the moment that I immedialey lost respect for him, in fact it gets a lot worst however I'd much rather not spoil anything. In my opinion, the writers did a good job on making such a detestable main character.
Aside from the main male, the majority of the women in the cast were like your common female harem archetype. So things you'd normally expect to see, the big boobs, the jealous one with tiny boobs, the mature girl who looks like a loli etc.
You'll read it from me, and you'll most likely see it from the rest, however school days doesn't have the best cast of characters.
The artwork done in this show is terrible, it looks like very little was done in terms of background, crowd settings etc. If you look at things in either Makoto's room or just anywhere really, you'll noticed that they look horribly painted, and a majority of the time the chracters just look like they were just inserted into a some sort of watercolor paint texture.. the character designs are pretty awful too, especially for the anime's release. Overall it's bad, nothing really special.
The soundtrack, was okay, it didn't leave a big impact on how certain events went down in the anime. However I did like opening and ending songs, and some of the songs played before the ending of an episode. Overall the soundtrack was okay not too bad and not too good.
Another thing that I didn't like and yet admired about School days was the character relationships, like I previously said before, I hated Makoto. I sure by now everyone does, in both the VN and the anime he is just detestable. His relationships with the other characters seemed really forced. It seemed like the staff either got really lazy towards the end of the anime and just said "we don't feel like writing anything else, let's just add lots of sex between the MC and others." Or maybe they were just trying to stick with the shows roots and have him try to get with every other female character that he can. That way it feels like the VN. Either way it was acceptable to me only up until the point where he's banging chicks left and right without even knowing them. Even towards the end of the series things just got a bit ridiculous.
Lastly, "there's no one inside." School days had one of the most infamously well known endings in anime history. There are so many parody's, homage's etc of one of the most shocking finishes to an anime and it's just such a... "joy" or "pleasure" to see.
Overall, although it wouldn't be my first choice, I would recommend it to anyone who loves shocking moments or huge twist in anime. If you're okay with mature dialogues, settings, in a school situation then go for School days.. 9/10 overall for exciting drama and great tragedies.