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.
