Case in point School Days. Originally based on visual novel games that were unique in that they included actual animation instead of still images was rather great, and they have since spawned spin-offs, and manga based on the original novel. Naturally, this means that anime based on it will happen too.
My problem with School Days is not its origins, or its sound or art-style, which I will get to in a minute, my main problem concerns the pacing of the plot, and the unrealistic ways that the characters react to situations.
Before we get to that, I feel I should comment on the art and sound, which in my opinion, are actually decent. Nobody was expecting a harem/slice of life anime to have smooth animation throughout, as animation is part of the budget, so you need to cut down where you can. That's ultimately fine, and the art-style is decent, but it isn't anywhere close to amazing animation.
The soundtrack is, admittedly, quite good, as the music fits most of the situations, and are actually melodic and well composed.
However, these two things are not enough to save the terrible plot and unrealistic characters.
The plot is, in essence, a harem, wherein a male character is put in a situation of having to deal with multiple female characters, but School Days adds in the plot-point of growing jealousy between two characters.
While fine in it's own regard, there isn't a single likable character to drive a plot like this. I often say that characters are the backbone to the entire story, and well written characters can make a generic plot enjoyable, but when you add in the fact that many female characters often overreact to the douche-shnozzle that is the main character, you get a generic plot with characters that are unrealistic in the eyes of the viewing audience.
In one scene, one of the females says that the protagonist should stop cheating on another girl, and if he does, he can have sex with her. It's contrivances like this that make the characters unrealistic.
Add in some weird direction wherein certain scenes are displayed sideways, which only serves to make the character's facial expressions harder to read, and to force you to tilt your head to see what's going on, you get a series that's full of narm, full of characters that act unrealistically to an otherwise boring but an otherwise believable plot.
The ending is the only thing worth watching in this series, the rest of it can be completely skipped and you won't miss a damn thing because the plot has horrible pacing.
There's better and more entertaining harem/moe/slice of life series than School Days. School Days is an utter waste of time, which is unfortunate because the series did have potential to be good, just horrible plot pacing, odd direction, and unrealistic characters made this a chore to watch.
Overall, I give it a 1/10. It isn't the worst thing I've ever seen or have yet to see, but it is still a complete waste of time.
