Reviews

You know, I thought long & hard about whether School Days is actually a realistic anime that did a good job of giving us characters we'd all hate and actually deserves some praise? And no, I really don't believe that to be the case, because the characters feel like they're forced to act dumb, instead of making normal , human mistakes. Furthermore, I absolutely hated the ending. I'd rather see some redemption, which would've been something actually REALISTIC and would've helped humanize the characters because even the worst scumbags out there seek redemption(and please, cheating is nothing compared to rape, murder or torture - especially when combined). But nope, that would mean writing more realistic characters so they went for a terrible ending entirely based on shock value.

There are a few romantic drama anime which show cheating & such like let's say, NANA, Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien, White Album 2, KimiKiss Pure Rouge and probably more but they are considered great or even masterpieces in their own genres by many. A praise well deserved because they manage to show real, flawed characters who make mistakes but try to move on with their lives and/or fix things, regardless if it might work or not. That's good character writing, not what School Days did.

I wouldn't even recommend this anime to someone in order for them to see the anime as a "ritual all anime fans should go through"(a very dumb one). There are good romance anime out there which aren't all fluffy, pure & innocent still suffer in popularity today because of School Days, since people will always think of it when it comes to those and some will even avoid them(even if they'd actually be interested in them) just in fear that it'll be "similar to School Days", something you'll inevitably hear more than you'd like on various anime forums & blogs every now & then...I wouldn't want to spread the taint further, lol.