But before I continue bashing Makoto, let's get a few things straight. First off, it's true that most of the story has a lot of potential to be enjoyable if it was tweaked in some areas. I personally also like the yandere trope, which added a little enjoyment for me I guess. It's also true that Makoto is just an inexperienced male teenager dealing with hormones and girls, which can be understandably difficult. The girls aren't completely innocent either and do make mistakes here and there as well. Add to all this that School Days can be considered a psychological anime that delves into what cheating could do to humans and even into the topic of sociopaths. However, none of that excuses Makoto from being THIS despicable.
Makoto constantly switches between a plethora of girls like they're simple toys he could just play with whenever he wants. His attitude and consideration towards the feelings of others goes way beyond just simple 'not picking up on hints', and straight into what seems like 'being willfully ignorant and selfish'. Makoto is also an enormous horndog that thinks of nothing else except trying to get into a girl's pants. Then there's also the few scenes where he tries to force himself upon a girl, only being stopped at the very last moment when the creepiness has already fully set in. Oh but the list doesn't stop here. He's also in a near-constant state of lying and/or denial, on top of always blaming others and never once standing up for anyone except himself. Finally, whenever another character was in trouble in some way or another, Makoto almost always takes a sort of 'wait and see' approach and barely puts in any effort himself.
School Days in and of itself is fine and even enjoyable for the most part, especially considering it came out in 2007. So I'll praise it for that if nothing else, and bump the overall rating up to a 3. But I really can't give it any more, because Makoto just ruined what could've been a pretty decent anime for me. He's a liar, a cheat, a coward, a sexual deviant and overall just a horribly selfish person. He had so many opportunities to make things better, but he let all of them slip in favor of getting his groin wet. Enjoyment was far to be found for me because Makoto brought me nothing but hatred and disgust, [slight spoiler: to the point where I was literally cheering when he finally got what he deserved at the end.] But this final feeling of relief still doesn't warrant a positive rating in my opinion, especially considering everything that went before it and how horrible it all felt. In short, Makoto has definitely made my list of top 5 most hated anime characters.
