TL;DR: As far as writing and stories go, this anime is not good. In my opinion, it's not a good example of what an anime should be, and if it was remade today by a different director/author it could be a masterpiece. However, it IS still worth watching, because it is the birth of the yandere genre. Don't expect it to be good, but go watch it to soak up on some anime-history goodness.
Here's three reasons I don't like this anime:
- Bland writing skills
- No relationship development
- Poor character development
-> School Days is the perfect example of what happens when an author has a good idea for a anime story line but no writing skills to truly bring it to bare. This is one of the biggest failing points of this anime. The way the story is executed is just terrible. If this anime was re-written in a way that made me actually empathise with each of the characters involved, and if it caused me to gain a deep emotional investment into ANY of the characters involved, then it would be a masterpiece. This point is more or less a summary of the other two points though.
-> None of the relationships in the anime are fleshed out in any detail. They feel alien and obscure, because they only exist as a means to an end rather than being noteworthy themselves. There is no aspect of any of the relationships that helps me empathise with any of the characters involved in them. I know anime has never been known for it's accurate portrayals of real life romance, but that being said there is no aspect of any of the relationships that even remotely resonates with a relationship at all, and this is why I detest them. There is no "falling in love" or anything of the sort. It's all just a simple matter of Makoto banging chicks because he likes their breasts - and they always say yes because the "script" makes them.
-> My final gripe with this anime is that every character is inarticulate. Now you might say to me: "Some characters are supposed to be inarticulate, it might be part of their personality." - I grant you this is the case for some characters. However, in School Days EVERY character is in articulate and is incapable of even describing their feelings. This is not for character development. This is because nobody put the time or thought into giving these humans feelings.
Now, I haven't actually read the manga, so there's a chance that the manga doesn't have any of these problems - it could be fantastic - but whether the anime is a poor adaptation of the manga, or if it's actually cohesive to the manga - it's still terrible.
Well there's three reasons why I dislike the anime, but here's the reason I actually watched the whole thing instead of dropping it: School Days is the "birth" of the yandere genre, which, as you will see, has come leaps and bounds since then. However, if not for School Days and the idea inside the mind of the manga author, we would not have our beloved Yuno Gasai. This in itself makes the anime worth watching. I'm not saying it's a good anime, but it is definitely worth watching. Just get ready to want to throw your computer out the window every single episode.
