Review of School Days

All I can do is praise this series for its incredible power to piss the viewer off. Where do you even begin? I will just start out by saying that I have never wrote a review on here before, but after I finished this series I was so horrified and irritated by it that I couldn't help but to explain everything that is so wrong about this show. So without further introduction, Here is what i got from when i was watching school-days. I have tried my best not to include any spoilers but for a warning, it is hard not to get to theroot of the problem of this series by not addressing them.

STORY: (4/10)
School Days is passed off as a psychological anime (If you want to give it that much credit) and starts out with a cliché love triangle type harem storyline. Makoto Itou is on the train to school one day and falls for Katsura Kotonoha, later that same day, A girl who goes by the name of Sekai Saionji who sits by him in class, notices this and makes a plan so that she can get the two of them together. It all seems to be going well until at the end of the episode we see Sekai kissing Makoto, leading us to believe it could be something more than just an act of friendship. Aside from the fanservice scattered throughout the story, the idea behind it isn't so bad, and I probably wouldn't of minded it if it wasn't for its main downfall, the characters, which I will get onto later. The main thing I disliked about the story is that to me the pacing seemed very odd, In the last 3 episode there is so many betrayals it is hard to keep count of what girls Makoto hasn't been with, and the love triangle ends up evolving into a love octagon, and everything he does just seems to be there for a mixture of shock value and to annoy the audience, not to actually move the plot forward. It just left me to think ''What actually is so attractive about this guy?' because it makes no sense to me why he any of the female characters in this show would want to be with a indecisive, lying, cheating joke of a protagonist (and that's putting it nicely). Additionally, I did some research into the use of love-triangles in storylines and it seems to me that the entire plot of the show was just taken from Wikipedia, which leaves me to wonder what the director even did in the production for this anime.

One person typically ends up feeling betrayed at some point, e.g. 'Person A is jealous of person C who is having a relationship with person B who, in person A's eyes, is "his" person'. Love triangles are inherently unstable, with one sided love and jealousy as common themes. Love triangles have been known to lead to murder or suicide committed by the actual or perceived rejected lover. (Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_triangle).
School days storyline in a nutshell is basically just a butchery of this concept,
which is why I am unable to give it more than a 4 because it is neither an enjoying or original premise.

ART: (5/10)
The artwork for this series is average, I wouldn't say there is anything that was fantastic in terms of the animation but thats not to say there is anything specifically wrong with it, I didn't find a problem with the artstyle I just found the colour palette behind it a bit boring and overused, many of the girls look extremely similar. The art for the main protagonist (Makoto) in my opinion is the worst, his facial features are pretty simple and I don't really know what the animators we're thinking behind his hairstyle, I just didn't think that it suited his personality. The art redeems itself in the Introduction, which has some of the best drawings in the entire show.

SOUND: (3/10)
This isn't going to be a long section because I think I listened to the intro once or twice and then found myself skipping through it to get to the episode. It just wasn't for me. I found that as the episodes progressed it didn't really fit very well with what was happening on the show either, it seemed strange to have such an upbeat and light sounding song when the show was getting very dark. None of the music in the actual episodes stood out to me either, and was pretty forgettable.

CHARACTER: (1/10)
I don't think I have ever been so vexed by any characters from any anime series as i was with this. I wish there was a 0/10 option because the main character for the most part was beyond repulsive its hard to put into words.
None of the girls are really given a brain, and just seem to be there so that Makoto has more people to have sex with, as if they serve no other purpose.
The problem with this? You are left with a character base of 2-dimensional high school girls (no pun intended) and a fuckboy of a protagonist (excuse my french). You may be wondering what could be so bad about him? Apart from the fact that he is a cheater, Makoto simply does not take into account anybody else apart from himself, He seems to only care about satisfying himself sexually than anybody elses feelings. And when hes confronted about it? He simply denies it or blames it on somebody else. In this series, nothing ever seems to be his fault. Which seems ironic since he is the one who cheats not with one - but about 8/9 different girls. His very indecisive behaviour to just choose one girl and stay with her becomes really old really fast, and if he was a real person makes me want to physically punch him in the face. Again, the girls don't seem to notice this and instead fight with eachother over who deserves him more, quite frankly, he deserves nobody. The moment when it goes downhill is when he tells Sekai ''Having Kotonoha as a girlfriend is kind of tiring'' after they have been going out for...you guessed it! Two days! After he started a relationship with the girl hes had an eye on for a while, how does he thank her? By sleeping with Sekai who acted as her friend to get them together in the first place! No words... Even if this was a proper relationship, there is a very easy way to solve this, he could just break it off with Kotonoha, but instead, he continues lying to her and avoiding her so he can have his secret ''practice lessons'' with Sekai.

The two main female characters, Kotonoha and Sekai, end up being no better either. At first, you do feel sympathy for Kotonoha but in the end this is all lost due to the fact of how stupid she is, ofcourse you would be upset if you're boyfriend was cheating on you, but to me it makes no logical sense how she could be that attached to him after 2 days, throughout the series she constantly tries to get him back even after finding out about all the horrible things he has done, such as lying to her, blocking her number, avoiding her, trying to feel her up, cheating ect. Any normal person would run 10 miles. What does she do? Keep telling people that they are boyfriend and girlfriend. This eventually leads to her downward spiralling into insanity, which seems completely unjust and unreasonable since like i said..they we're dating for 2 days!!! If anything, the most upsetting part about this is that her so called ''friends'' we're completely fine with what Makoto was doing and went around calling her a slut and bullying her because Otome (another forgettable sex partner of Makotos) was jealous. Oh the irony.

Sekai comes in at a close second, why you might ask? Because she is Vindictive and two faced so she can get whatever she wants. So when her best friend cheats with THATS RIGHT YOU GUESSED IT, Makoto, Nobody is bothered since she did the exact same thing. She lies to Makoto to seduce him and drag him away from Kotonoha, showing that she actually has an ulterior motive for everything she does and that she is not genuinely in love or upset about what has happened, and its all just to get back at somebody or to get what she wants because she is Jealous or that she has to be in control. As you can probably guess, Both Sekai and Kotonoha end up becomind Yanderes by the end of the series, and who really can blame them.

Overall, the characters just make unrealistic and baseless decisions that are impracticable and don't really serve up any real purpose except to make it come off that the highschool they go to is full of fake lying sluts and boys who are so horny they will sleep with anything that moves if he opportunity arrises.

ENJOYMENT: (3/10)
The only reason I haven't given this a 1 is because of the ending, Even if it was a little unexpected, I feel like it is the only time in the show I actually rejoiced and was happy. If you haven't guessed what the ending is by now, well you're in for a surprise. I don't know if i could say it was worth sitting through 11 episodes of this crap though, although it was definitely satisfying for the amount of rage that I had accumulated.

OVERALL: (2/10)
The series really left me with nothing except questioning the morals and mindset behind the characters, then after i remembered that the director gave them none whatsoever, it just left me really really angry. The anime does not deserve its credit based on the ending alone. And when people tell you this is a series to be avoided, heed the warning, I wish i hadn't wasted any time and energy watching this garbage.