School Days – Anime Review
Shadows
Classification:
Top 2007 entrance:
2º– 75.25%
All Time Top entrance: 42º – 75.25%
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!
*Watched by me in 2014 – originally
released in 2007
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