Several months later, I learned of an anime adaption. Since I can't play the game, I thought maybe the anime would at least give me all the highlights of the games storyline. I grabbed my laptop and watched the whole thing (on Youtube, actually) in one sitting. At first, I thought it was a terrible and boring story. But something was wrong, I couldn't stop watching it.
For about nine of the twelve episodes, I sat there watching the story slowly unfold. The art was fantastic, almost cinema quality all the way through. That probably kept my attention through the slow first few episodes. Although, some uninspired backgrounds brought the score down by one point on this review. The soundtrack was a little bland as well. To this day I can't remember even one memorable song or melody. I actually was able to hear a few tracks from the soundtrack several days ago and I remembered none of them.
Anyways, back on track. Around episode nine (I think), that's when you realize why the previous episodes kind of seemed like they were "holding back". Sure, there's plenty of "oh God, why would he/she do that?!" moments, but nothing to drop your jaw to the floor. The last few episodes changed all that. By the time you reach the climax, all the slow character build up suddenly makes perfect sense and all those somewhat shocking actions of the characters reappear in raw emotion shown by the characters. I mentioned that watching this all at night was a bad idea earlier, here's why: the ending will leave you speechless and very uncomfortable if you're in a dark and lonely enviroment. I don't think I slept that night.
So overall, I give School Days a 9/10. The slight art and soundtrack "errors" are really all that brought it down. I've actually been wanting to rewatch the entire series again one day which is very rare for me. I may also finally check out the visual novel that introduced me to this masterpiece... Maybe.
