Alright, so a while ago I posted a brief comment just to vent my frustration with this anime. I got into it expecting it to be a mediocre, school life anime but was a bit surprised. I think the series honestly started off pretty well. It was cute, you know, with the typical boy asking a girl out stuff. However, it went downhill pretty quickly from there.
So, the first episode pretty much establishes the overall quality of the show itself. The art isn't great, but it also isn't terrible. The animation itself is fine (movement is smooth, etc), I just didn't love the character styles. The personalities of the characters are a bit weak, at first. However, the first episode was entertaining enough to make me want to keep watching.
Now, the anime turns into a psychological anime pretty quickly. I like the ideas behind the whole thing, but I am not convinced that the themes were conveyed well. I understand that School Days was supposed to bring to light the darker side of relationships and people, exposing how cruel and selfish anyone can be even if they at first appear normal, and how other can be sucked in to the negative influence of someone they admire. I think that's a pretty interesting topic, to be sure, but it just wasn't done well or with taste in School Days, in my opinion.
So, Makoto is the male lead of the series. At first he seems like a weak character, if a bit of a clueless sort of guy. However, after manipulating the feelings of his girlfriend, hooking up with another girl (Sekai) multiple time, being generally abusive to Sekai, having casual sex with three random girls from his class (while dating Sekai and Kotonoha), generally not caring about consent or the feelings of anyone else and denying getting Sekai pregnant (even though he is the only one she has had sex with) just so he could return to doing it with Kotonoha, it becomes pretty clear what an abusive toolbag Makoto is. There are so many moments that are uncomfortable to watch and just plain disturbing, not de to sheer sexuality, but because of how twisted and abusive this guy is.
Also, I found the ending to be a bit of a cop-out. I'm not saying I know how it shoudl have ended, but it seemed a bit cheap to have the girls go into murder-mode. I understand that they were abused, but I also do not think it was in either of their characters to lash out with violence, since they both seemed to find Makoto faultless for the entire anime. They were both self-depreciating characters, so I don't know if it really made sense that Sekai would kill Makoto. But, that's just my opinion.
I do understand why many people think this anime is a work of art. It's themes are really intriguing and it could have been really good. For me, though, there were too many weak spots, overly disturbing bits and frustrating characters for me to really care about any of them. The only emotion this show really got out of me was frustration.
