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School Days | Anime Review

School Days – Anime Review

Shadows Classification:
Top 2007 entrance: 2º– 75.25%
All Time Top entrance: 42º – 75.25%
STUDIO – TNK: 13º (Unfair Studio Ranking) with 75.25% [New Entrance]

Directed by – Keitaro Motonaga
Studio – TNK
Year – 2007
Season 1 / 12 episodes

Warning this review could contain spoilers!
If the reader wasn't watched this anime, this could reduce the enjoyment!
For instance Sasuke will kill Naruto in season finale!
See the danger of a Spoiler? Now this was a lie, only to show the power of a spoiler!
The reader was been warned!                  
" The Love Triangle With More Than Three Sides"

Loose notes – The Controversy

School Days is an anime that generated a lot of criticism and bad reviews by the anime universe!

Everybody that watches anime heard about School Days, in a review or in a form of joke when people ask for anime recommendations! (Boku no Pico and School Days generally are referenced).

Basically this is my motivation, I had to see this anime and try to understand the controversy causes!

School Days is an adaptation of a visual novel (game where the player takes some decisions, each one leading to different finals) with the same name. I think for the adaptation purposes, the studio followed the right path (the path that gamers generally follow in this kind of game),  i.e. conquer all the characters.

The Opening

The opening is pretty simple with a generic song, where we assist a parade of the characters and we received a little hint of what will happen.
The opening reflected the little budget of this anime, it didn’t show nothing too fancy.

 (School Days - opening)

Analysis

This is a tough one, I really don’t know where to start, because besides watching the anime for reviewing, what I really want is to understand the controversy!

Although the anime aired in 2007, I didn't notice a major decrease of quality in the animation, it show a Moe style (common in this time) and perhaps a low budget!

School Days starts as an simple and typical romance between the innocent Kotohona and the clueless Makoto, and with Sekai being the confident of both (this is the story…in the first 15 minutes) until Sekai kiss Makoto as payment for his help (a kiss is quite rare in anime and watch one in the first episode was very surprising and raised expectations).

After the kiss obviously Makoto stayed confused. But Sekai try to make Makoto forget and starts to advise him and Kotonoha, with the purpose to help their relationship. She decides to step aside from Makoto!
This worked until the third episode when Makoto declares that Kotohona is boring and gives to much work!

At this point Makoto should break with Kotohona and try to start a relationship with Sekai, but that didn’t happening and probably was the cause of all the controversy (much person wanted to see an nice Moe romance, but the studio decides to adapt one ending of the game!) and in my opinion, explored something that is rare in anime but pretty common in live action movies and TV series.

So what happened!?

It happened that School Days follow a storyline similar to the American Pie Movie, Sekai tried to make Makoto relationship’s works, offering him some lessons about an woman’s needs and started practice with him how to kiss, touch and sex (no hentai scenes! Perverts!). Makoto in this point completely ignores Kotohona and she doesn’t take any action!

Then the innocent Kotohona discovered all, and how she react?
She continues to say to all that she is Makoto's girlfriend and stays happy every time she sees Makoto!

With the decline of Makoto/Kotohona relation, Sekai started to be the official girlfriend and in this point the secondary characters starts to gain some protagonism. I’m talking of Sekai's best friend (Setsuna) who demands Makoto to break with Kotohona. He breaking her heart!

But Setsuna also likes Makoto and kisses him. This originates the harem transformation in School Days! When Sekai gained the status of official girlfriend, Makoto again starts to ignore her and cheat her with a childhood friend (Otome), Setsuna discovers and she begs to Makoto to break with Sekai in exchange of her body!
This leads to several cheats by Makoto, ending with a foursome!

School Days lost the control of the plot in this point, the cycle only ends when Sekai after some away episodes, discovers that shes pregnant. Because of the pregnancy all girls lose the interest for Makoto!

Makoto starts to panic leading him to return to Kotohonawho surprisingly accepts him back and suggests to convince Sekai to go to an abortion clinic!

Sekai didn’t react to well and released all the accumulated stress with several knife's stabs in Makoto's chest!

Kotohona seeing Makoto body, also didn’t reacts to well and completely lost his mind, cutting Makoto head, putting in a bag, kill the pregnant Sekai and goes in a cruise with Makoto head!

?Future Seasons?

Well everyone is dead! School Days add a weak OVA.
This one didn’t receive a second season!
Final Conclusion

First the million dollar question did I liked School Days?

Yes! School Days, besides some strange plot decisions, is the first anime that tried to use a plot like in TV series. Sex in anime is very, very rare and use themes like teen pregnancy is a first time to me! (there are also murdered, but not new in anime reality :P and ours L)

But the studio also take some notes and stated that the community in general didn’t like of what happening, probably with more budget they could tell the same story but with a better plot!
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*Watched by me in 2014 – originally released in 2007

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