Review of School Days
"A swing and a miss. For starters, the protagonist doesn't have any personality at all. He is average to the point of being bland. Despite this, every girl miraculously falls in love with him for no reason whatsoever. The plot was boring, the drama repetitive, and the comic relief fell painfully flat. Not even the fan service felt good. Don't waste your time with this one." - is something you could expect to read about any harem anime. Even respected works can be reduced to "unspecial guy receives mountains of sexually-charged female attention". This is because harem is transparent wish fulfillment. Of course, that isn't atall why people watch these anime. They care about the plot and characters. They care if it's a good story. Sure, more often than not, women are reduced (generously) to archetypes or (bluntly) sex objects, but that's just the bad ones. And sure, even the good ones maintain a sense of humor that's very sexually forward. But, come on, he had to grope her due to the hilarious circumstances. Besides, she likes him anyways, so its no big deal. Ultimately, anime is from another culture, so these things are easy to overlook. It's easy to overlook the empty protagonist. It's easy to overlook the mindless comedy. It's easy to overlook the portrayal and treatment of women.
School Days employs all of the classic harem tropes but presents them as they actually are: disgusting. Itou Makoto, the protagonist, is irredeemable. He alternates between stuttering as he plays the victim, and touching women without their consent. As Makoto follows his libido like a compass pointing to true north, the women he interacts with suffer the consequences. Unlike most harem, infidelity inflicts genuine trauma in School Days. Women withdraw as they resent themselves and their actions, but never place any blame on Makoto.
In many instances, this would be enough. Giving depth to the "objects of desire" would sufficiently flip the script and force people to think about what they consume. But this isn't what School Days is getting at. The issue isn't flat characters, or a predictable plot. The issue is that people are watching. Harem is inherently predatory. No matter how developed the plot and characters may be, it remains pornographic by nature. Because of this, it isn't enough that the characters on screen suffer, you should be made to suffer too. You may not be a forgettable protagonist who sexualizes every woman around you, but you seem awfully comfortable consuming that. In this way, it isn't a genre deconstruction, rather a genre evisceration.
There is not a single episode, scene, or second in School Days that is remotely palatable. Every shot is flat and lingering. Precisely awful and determined to demoralize its audience. The comedic relief is insulting. Flippant towards the dreadful atmosphere and wholly unfunny. The facile intro disrupts each episode to spit directly in the face of the viewer. Fan service is ludicrously exaggerated to the point of being accusatory. Taunting the audience. The overall feelings of agony become inescapable and suffocating. An immense weight, crushing your chest and making you sick to your stomach. You will wish you were watching something else. Something light. Something easy to overlook.
School Days is the most hateful and upsetting piece of art I have ever seen. The only thing worse than watching it is thinking it could, or should, be fixed.