While I understand what the story was trying to do, it falls flat. It could have been a solid deconstruction of the harem genre that might turn everything on its head,but it failed to deliver any sort of tension, questions, of payoff. It was more of a slice of life of the main guy character just simply being there and the girls around him throwing themselves at him (except for one, I'll give her credit). It went for trying to be a dark psychological sort of thing, but felt like a typical high school drama (I'm not sure I can give it that much credit).
The art styles's very basic. There's nothing really special about it that'll make you remember it.
The sound is also very basic. The character voices along with the music did not stand out, with the exception of that song in the last episode at the end.
The characters (ah the characters) were the main downfall of this show. I understand that many harem girls throw themselves at the main boy because he did something to earn their love, but with School Days, I'm not sure what Makoto did to each of them. Kotonoha and he had been dating for three days at maximum and she's willing to kill for him. Sekai becomes so enamored that she's also willing to kill him (I understand her reason more). All the other female characters pretty much just appear and decide that Makoto will be the one. All of them act irrationally to the situations given to them and it seems like they chose to go for the worst possible outcome. There was hardly any development with each character as well.
I actually skipped a good two or three episodes to School Days because I was bored and wanted to move along quickly, but I found myself back at square one. It feels like the whole time you're watching you're waiting for something amazing or profound to happen and when it finally does, you're left with almost an 'oh that's it?' kind of thing. Apparently though,the visual novel has more and better endings than the anime itself, so I wonder why this route in the game was so special to be adapted to an anime. When I finished it, I found myself ranting to my friend a good three days after about things that would come to mind that annoyed me, and I can't hear the name of it without cringing.
All in all however, School Days gave an attempt. They should least be credited for taking the risk. It tried and it failed. I would not recommend watching this and if you do, watch it with a friend to at least make it bearable.
