Lol. Anime is fucking serious business, you should know that, and not something for you to sit back and relax about. A lot of anime should really be treated with due solemn, and that, of course, includes THIS - the bloodiest, sexiest, most so-horrible-it's-awesome harem series. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome School Days.
STORY:
Here's the recipe to make School Days: You start off with the simple life of a perverted male high schooler. You add in a sexy bitch, with big boobs and an innocent mind and such, who became the official girlfriend of the high schooler. You add in a love rival, who pretends to be the love mentor of the high schooler, but instead enjoys sucking his d*** in the dark. Sprinkle some more bitches on top, throw in a complicated love-hate plot, wrapped with a bloody ending, let it simmer for thirteen episodes and you get School Days.
Of course, the gourmets have diverse opinions about the cuisine they tasted. For me, it's fresh, juicy and delicious. Fresh, because it has an original taste. Juicy, because the fanservice is too much to bear. And delicious... do I need to talk any more about that?
Put into simpler words, School Days is a highly satisfying series for me. Not only because of the unexpected ending which granted a 'happy' conclusion for our protagonist(s) (which I enjoyed a lot), but also because the pacing is excellent. I'm not being sarcastic here. Indeed, the flow of the plot is good and you can literally feel yourself immersed in the harem world of our protagonists. Or should I say, antagonists?
ART:
Now here's where School Days suffered a lot. The character designs were actually good, but if you put them into animation, oops. Other than the infamous pool episode, the (sex) scenes and the ending, I could not see good effort put into the drawing by our beloved animators. The characters seemed... off at a lot of times.
SOUND:
Excellent. The soundtrack blended with the mood of the show well, turning from a few whimsical melodies in the earlier episodes, to melancholic, sorrow tunes in the middle episodes; and in the end, the music became so sad that you will weep just by hearing the soundtrack alone. For the vocal songs part, we have a few memorable inserts, particularly "Kioku no Umi" (which I also enjoyed a lot), "Namida no Riyuu" (used in the turning point of the series - the raining scene), and of course "Kanashimino Mukou e" used in the final ending. The OP also deserved a special mention, although I did not enjoy it as much as the other songs.
CHARACTER:
Since School Days is a deconstruction of the harem-high school genre, rather than saying that the characters received any form of development throughout the show, I would suggest that the characters received a lot of "anti-development" (yes, it's a new word I invented). Indeed, you can see Makoto turning from just a normal high schooler to a pervert who does nothing but having sex all day. Kotonoha turned from an innocent young woman to a love-craze. Sekai... Ughh. She was as bad as she was throughout the whole show.
What I was particularly impressed about School Days is that it managed to give everyone a fair share of screentime. We see action from the main characters as well as the minor characters. The latter, especially, a few will get stuck in your head after you watched the show. For me, it's definitely Setsuna.
OVERALL:
School Days is an anime with a highly exciting setting and interesting development of the plot with a final twist that makes it unforgettable. In short, it's a good anime that I would recommend to my pals to watch, except for those whose hearts are weak of course.
