Cross Days

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Let's get this out of the way: I love school days. The anime is on my favorites. Trust me, as much as you want to avoid this manga anyway, it's twice as shitty if you're actually a school days fan.

The first thing that you have to understand is that this is NOT an "addition" to the franchise. It doesn't add extra detail to the original plot or anything like that. It takes place on an alternate timeline where the school days harem ending occurred, effectively killing any drama there and creating a stupid anticlimax. This series is actually pretty big on anticlimaxes. There's at ... least 3.

There was actually a happy ending. Yeah. A happy ending. In a part of the school days franchise. The worst part is that it looked like the ending would be tragic and slightly redeeming, although the tragedy seemed kind of forced in the first place, but tragedy was somehow (it was literally physically impossible) averted and it was shit.

School Days is known for not following conventions of the industry, but this manga did just that. The two MCs were inexplicably shipped by the MC's sister for the sake of the plot. The MC dressed up like a girl after an extremely convoluted line of reasoning convinced him it would somehow help his situation. Why? For the sake of the plot. School Days was a clever deconstruction. This is a cliché shounen romance slash gender bender.

The characters were empty and dull. The main character was a pathetic loser with no redeeming qualities and the heroine was a very typical tsundere. The characters from School Days were simplified or just changed completely. Makoto became a generic villain, Taisuke became a cliché and possibly homosexual bromantic foil, which is the very archetype he originally deconstructed, Sekai became nothing but a slut, and Kotonoha was as boring as always except she never really went yandere. Setsuna was my favorite character in the anime, but here she is reduced to an unimportant plot-device. None of the characters were good, realistic, or redeemable in any way, form, or shape.

The ending of School Days is the best part for most people. Well, in this manga Makoto is an even bigger douche, and a rapist to boot, but he ends up fine. One funny thing about the original series was Makoto's flawless skill with the ladies despite being a bland loser. It was satirical and entertaining. Him losing this aspect of his character, and not being able to seduce the female lead really made him less entertaining.

I would have honestly preferred it if Makoto ended up NTRing the main character and subsequently adding the trap version of him to his harem, or just making him kill himself. The best part of this manga was the protagonist's reactions to Makoto's sexual escapades and the one of the best parts of the original series was the tragedy. This series ultimately failed to capitalize on either of these things and just ended up with wasted potential.

Really, the whole thing was nothing but wasted potential, which completely kills the enjoyment factor. The art was quite lackluster. The characters were dreadful. Overall it was a bad experience that, despite its length, I wouldn't recommend to anybody, least of all an actual fan of the franchise.

Story: 1/10
Art: 3/10
Characters: 1/10
Enjoyment: 3/10
Bonus: 2/10
Overall: 10/50 or 20%

Cross Days was a fairly interesting side story surrounding the events and leading up to the conclusion of School Days, but also one that made me think twice about Makoto as a character. While Cross Days focused on fellow classmate Yuuki Ashikaga and his series of unfortunate (and sometimes comical) misunderstandings, in a subtle way it also gave the reader a different perspective on School Days main character Makoto Itou that radically changed the way I felt about him.

The true purpose of Cross Days, I felt, was to not simply tell a related side story to School Days, but give us a different perspective or ... a greater depth to the characters we knew and loved (or hated) from School Days. Even though his story has merit and entertainment in its own right, Yuuki Ashikaga’s true purpose in Cross Days is to uncover deeper moral issues of the School Days characters and observe and judge them from the reader’s point of view. He not only acts as the reader’s moral voice in the actions of all those involved, but also, oddly enough, becomes Makoto Itou’s conscience; something Makoto severely lacks and needs.

The art work reflects the same level of creativity and flow from the original series. Moments of emotional expression are well drawn and panel flow was done in a manner that was easy enough to follow with few exceptions. My only real complaint would be the penultimate conclusion of the story in the final panel which can potentially lead to confusing the reader as the character is drawn in such a way that makes you question the identity of the person in question. This point, while still shocking once I realized who it was, frustrated me because I had to spend a few moments in complete confusion until I figured out who it was.

Cross Days offers the reader a chance to see a side of Makoto they did not see in School Days. Yuuki’s comedy/tragedy of timing and misunderstandings is a pretext to a part of Makoto’s personality we did not witness from the main story line. While the primary love triangle story revolves around Yuuki Ashikaga, Kotonoha Katsura, and Roka Kitsuregawa the true purpose of Cross Days appears to provide the reader an opportunity to reexamine character personalities in School Days that were not fully explored in the primary story arc.

"Oh Bullucks" was the first thing that popped up in my mind when I looked at this .When I first saw the picture of Cross Days, I immediately noticed something familiar. It was the girl. Kotonoha. The psychopath in the series School Days. I began to gain the bad memories from her picture and needed an hour to cool myself off. On the first page, I also noticed the picture of the three main characters from School Days and almost punched my monitor. After giving the first chapter a go, I realized that this was just like the happy start of School Days (Until ... the cheating, f***ing, and pregnancy crap kicked in). And so, I tried to read the first chapter again and tried to forget ever reading and watching School Days. After doing so, I realized that this was a completely other story without Makoto (THE CUNT), Sekai (the CHEATING BITCH), and Kotonoha (THE INSANE TRAMP). This included Yuuki Ashikaga (a wimp), and Roka, who might be the heroine (not sure). The story was the normal fan-service, romance story I read almost every day. Nothing really stuck out except for the art. The art was somewhat childish and was fun to look at. The characters were quite bland except for Yuuki's sister. I only read this because I wanted to get it out of my way. Overall, I think this could be School Days 2.0 made with an even crazier ending, or a half decent one.

Cross days is a cute manga up to the part where you find out Itou's true colors and then it kinda just made me mad after that.It Gives us guys a bad name, but over all it was storyline and had good art but just a little dark.

Warning: You really need to watch School Days before reading this, and so slight spoilers from the show will be alluded to. School Days is the most spoiled anime ever though, so you probably already know all of this.

School Days. The infamous harem deconstruction that everyone either loves or hate, me being part of the love side of things. School Days, as most know, is based off of a visual novel. That visual novel also has two spinoffs without anime adaptions but manga ones, Summer Days and the one right here, Cross Days.

Cross Days is a side story to School Days. It takes ... place at the same time as the original story, albeit with a few changes. It tells the story of a boy named Yuuki who has a crush on a girl called Kotonoha. Kotonoha happens to be dating Makoto. Another girl named Kitsuregawa likes Yuuki. Out of jealously, she claims to Yuuki that she is dating Makoto. Yuuki investigates and learns Makoto is dating another girl, Sekai. Yuuki is your typical motivated harem protagonist, and so he decides to show the truth about Makoto to these girls by some sort of convoluted plan involving cross-dressing. As you can tell, these teenagers days at school is anything but simple.

I'll like to get right into the characters. Now, Makoto is not the main character but Yuuki is, and he's generally a likable guy. He's typically very smart and tries his best through this crazy plan to prove to the girls the evils of our Makoto. He wants to help everyone and be a hero basically. Then we have Kitsuregawa, who is a tsundere. Not really much more I can say about her. She's not very memorable as a character. Then there's of course the sweet little Kotonoha who is the same from her role in School Days. Then there's Makoto. Now, I am one of the 9 people who really liked Makoto in the original. I think he's one of the more fleshed out harem protagonists, and before he went and had sex with everyone, I enjoyed his likable idiot personality. However, my little hormone-driven Makoto does not exist in this manga. Instead, we have an evil Makoto, who is obsessed with sex to the point he doesn't care at all about the other girls feelings. And it's not like the second-to-last episode of School Days where Makoto was just emotionless, no. He's plain evil, right down to his laugh. While I do love my original Makoto and all, something about Evil Makoto was just really amusing so I still like him. Most of the other characters from the anime don't really get fleshed out at all. Not even Sekai, who actually plays a rather big role in this manga.

Now, the story. Once you get passed the fact Yuuki could've just cut this plot in half by just telling the girls straight out Makoto was cheating on them instead of Operation Cross Days, how was it? For the most part, it's light-hearted romantic affair, and that's fine. The characters are all decent enough to be seen doing this. And there's no fluff in it either. Most of the scenes are straight and to the point, and add to the story overall. Yuuki's attempts to bring Makoto's evils out in public are fun to watch and he does make the right choices most of the time. While the manga is nowhere near as dark as School Days, it is definitely a drama instead of a comedy. On the ending (as School Days is definitely known for it) no one dies at all, though it is still a little twisted at the end of the day.

The art of the manga is very good. Character designs are detailed and look very cute. You can easily tell apart characters from the original series and no one really looks alike.

I really enjoyed Cross Days personally. Seeing the familiar story through the few of another character was refreshing. It's very entertaining to read and see the characters we all know and either hate or love, depending on the person, through another light. In a way, I feel like Cross Days purpose was this- What would the events of School Days look like through the eyes of a normal person who just happened to get wrapped up in it some way? Is it possible to fix the wrongs of Makoto? The view this manga gave was very interesting.

Overall, I say Cross Days is a must for any School Days fan. If you're a hater of the show (which several people are), then there's nothing new here to really attract you, but if you enjoyed the show at least somewhat, I recommend this manga.

If you think that raping a girl just because you're irritated with her is fine, then this manga is for you.

Then there's the couple falling in love for no particular reason. It's a classic deus ex machina. Who needs a reason? Just throw the couple at each other and that of course results in love.

The story also tells you about one particular relationship fairly early on. Then, surprise, one of the girls involved drops a bombshell by informing the main character, who already knew what was going on, about what was going on. ... And he is surprised! It doesn't work folks. It's only two volumes. Nobody did any checking of the plot to see that they were repeating themselves before it was published.


Spoiler of sorts:



The most disgusting thing of all is that the guy attempting the rape, even though he's stopped, suffers no consequences. After all, it's the girl's fault cause she ticked him off.