Reviews

School Days the game was released a few years ago and it drew quite a bit of attention because of the fact that it was completely animated eroge. In addition, a 30 minute non-interactive ‘demo’ (it was basically the same thing as the first episode of the anime) was also subtitled when it came out. Watching this ‘demo’ gave me the impression that School Days had a very typical romance narrative. Well a few weeks later I saw several gifs of the 3 infamous endings. Like many, I when WTF!? and became excited when the anime was announced so I could see how such an ending would be possible. Although, I though that they would animate one of the more normal endings. Well thank goodness they didn’t because the ending was the only thing that made this train wreck worth watching.

At first School Days started off as a normal romance anime with your typical love triangle. However, a few episodes in the reason why I kept watching was not normal. I kept watching because I wanted to see what kind of messed up thing would happen next. It was pure morbid curiosity the kept me going. Sure there times I paused and started screaming at the idiocy but my morbid curiosity was too strong. School Days transformed into a stereotypical soap opera...wait scratch that. School Days transformed into a parody of a bad stereotypical soap opera. The actions of the characters were so over-the-top, sexually driven that one cannot help but laugh (or scream) at the idiocy. It was at this moment that I felt confident they would animate one of the bad endings. Interestingly enough they didn’t, instead the anime ending is on a level higher than the 3 bad endings combined in the game.

Once again the only reason why anyone should watch School Days is for the awesome train wreck that it is School Days as well as the ‘Nice Boat’ ending. The animation was almost identical to the game, but for anime standards it was quite poor. Art wise I guess it was ok, its saving grace was the fact that the school uniform mandates zettai ryouki. This is something that all school uniforms should have!...ahem anyway... Characters as mentioned above are complete idiots and the most mature/sensible ones are Kokoro (Kotonoha’s little sister) and her friend. They did do a good job with Makoto’s character, by this I mean he was designed to be hated and you will be hard pressed to find anyone that likes Makoto. In addition, this hatred is important in setting up the most important thing in School Days, the ending.

So why should anyone watch this? Well there are a few reasons. First, just to see first hand what ‘Nice Boat’ is all about. If you watch 2 episodes and drop it, that’s ok but if you watch more than 3 you must watch it all, else you will have wasted your time. I believe that the primary purpose to animating this was to show/set up an ending far worst than that of the game. In a way School Days can be considered one of the biggest fanservice anime titles out there. Second, out of pure morbid curiosity, admittedly this was the reason why I started/kept watching. That is until I was confident about a bad/bloody ending.