User Reviews

School days has haunted me ever since I saw the credits of the last episode roll, ever since I heard that ear worm of a song play at the end. I can't hear the year "2007" without thinking "hey, that's when school days was made." Don't get me wrong, it's not that good, but it is a real enigma. I will forever be mixed over it.

School days is a dramatic romantic comedy? anime, about some dude named makoto who has a crush on the shy anime girl, who gets some help from the cheery anime girl, named kotonoha and sekai respectively. It starts out as a grating experience. These flat, annoying, and really ridiculous looking characters do their stuff, bringing the worst of anime to the table. Shrill voices, fanservice, and a poor, unfunny excuse of a story run on for a while. I rewatched the first ep, it was worse then I remembered. The whole thing just moseys along. The mc and the two girls all go on with their antics. One dimensional main characters, forgettable side characters. Sexual harassment. Bad jokes and boring plot. Uwu. But then something happens. The plot thickens, slightly. It turns out the mc is only interested in kotonoha for her hot bod, and when she rejects his "too-soon" advances for a while, he gets bored. It went from an unfunny, over gratuitous anime to an unfunnny, over gratuitous anime where the mc is sort of a douche. Suddenly, it had the smallest whisper of depth. It almost said, "this main guy is a douche. Now hate him and see what happens next." But I didn't really get interested until the real swerve came in. Cheery girl sekai is in love with the mc (of course), and the mc, who's been ignoring his gf shy girl bc she won't smash (much to her worry) decides to sleep with sekai. That's really when things picked up. It had a bit of drama, and tension. I had a reason to watch other than the really unflattering art style and terrible jokes. Unsurprisingly, the mc goes on to sleep with every girl he can get his hands on, with little regard to sekai, or even kotonoha, who he doesn't even remember at this point. It was really investing to see how this would turn out.

After a school festival, a terrible insert of comedy which had no place in the show's dramatic spiral downwards, a dance, and a terrible event, makoto breaks up with kotonoha, which devastates her (along with bullying, isolation, etc.) She becomes increasingly unhinged, and so does the rest of the story.

Mega spoilers here: Sekai (cheery girl) reveals she's pregnant. Suddenly no girl wants to be with makoto, so he crawls back to kotonoha, who turns somewhat back to normal, with a few changes. Sekai discovers makoto's with kotonoha, and angrily storms off. She feels betrayed, and even more so when makoto texts her and essentially tells her and the baby to buzz off. But don't worry. Things don't end well for him. Nothing ends well for anyone in the end (expect for the other dumb guy who got off scot free for his actions, I'm still mad). Sekai, at her wits end, meets makoto at his apartment, and while he's making a phone call, she brings out a knife. Cough. Later, kotonoha discovers makoto, and decides to get revenge. She meets sekai on the school rooftop with a blade and a bag... and she gets revenge on sekai, and the baby. Our final shot ends with former shy anime girl kotonoha (head over heels in love) on a boat, with makoto (sort of), with the sunrise, up ahead. To top it off, the credits play a really catchy pop song that was in one of the good endings of the original game (that's right I've seen it, only slightly better than the anime). I can't help but wonder what in the world the people who made this thing think about it. An epilogue reveals the aftermath, mainly, that their classmates go about their lives as normal, with no mind to their missing classmates or their terrible ends. Quite the ending indeed, the ending was what brought me to it in the first place.

That was school days. A truly mixed experience. If there's anything to praise, it's how well everything spirals downward so perfectly and awfully that you can't help but be invested in how these characters, while still bare, have more convoluted and complex actions. The way that ending jumps out at you, because you didn't expect it at the start. Even after everything had changed, it still came crashing down. That cursed, blessed ending changed everything, it was the reason why I didn't have to have another kotonoha bath scene, thank god. As for everything else, ewh. I truly can't place my thoughts on it. Did I enjoy it? I guess so. Did I like it? I have absolutely no idea. Like makoto's horny a**, I can't pick one side. As for the people who made this show, what do they think? Is this a satire? Does this have a message about how you should handle relationships? Was this for a joke? For fun? For seriousness? Or is it just senseless, a basic adaptation of the game, but with that heavy stuff thrown in to make it different from all the other anime like this one's beginning. What was the intention, the thought? I've seen other anime like it a thousand times, and yet this one is something all of it's own. I shall never know peace, and it's because of school days.

Mini-review of the two OVA's: They're both awful. Right at square one in terms of plot. The first one is about how all the girls want to give makoto Valentine's Day gifts. There's also a random bath scene in the beginning :/. The second one is about how some of the girls in the show have to fight robots or something, so they magically transform into revealing suits. When it came to fanservice in this episode, no one was holding back. Also kotonoha's little sister was there. Yes she was involved. Ew. You know what, I think I hate this show. That's solved. These two ovas threw me off. They're as terrible as the beginning of the show. I still don't know the intent, the message, the audience, and who's supposed to like this show anyways? I don't like it. The worst otakus probably wouldn't like it. What I want to know is: who would fully and enthusiastically like most of the aspects of this show, enough to give it any more than a 6/10? Forever a mystery, I'll leave this show to rot in 2007.

A story of a young man in high school who liked a girl. This girl was shy and did not know him, but liked him as well. There was a second girl who met up with the man and helped him bond with the first girl. As time progressed, the three formed a healthy friendship and the man and the girl became partners. The second girl gave the two advice on how to handle each other, however it eventually led to her wanting him instead. Add in the man's willingness to destroy his relationship with the first and you get a sad tale of woe.

The man never truly terminated his relationship with the first as he started dating the second. The first clung to him hoping he would say he never truly left her. He eventually told her he had. Add in the fact that several other women liked him as well as the original two, poor handling of relationships, and you get a fairly awkward series. The man tries to change back to the first girl, however the second girl makes claims against him which he ignores. This lead to his death...

The first girl comes home to find his corpse and knows who did it. She proceeds to take revenge on the second by meeting up with her on the school roof. She showed her the decapitated head of the man they both had loved and then proceeded to kill her. In the end, we see her floating away in sorrow. There are several alternate endings for this story, however none of them are truly satisfying. If I could rewrite this story, it would be back at Episode 3 where the fool made the grave error of indecisiveness. This anime could have been an interesting harem had the protagonist just used the two's friendship with one another to integrate them both into his love.

I might be harsh on this review but this is how I've seen this anime

From what I heard, this anime started as a date simulation game for Playstation 2 with more than 20 possible endings. Then they made a manga, which I haven't read it, but I believe it's similar to this anime except the ending.

STORY: This anime begins as a normal "Teen crush" story. Makoto is in love with Katsura (who we see that has big... uhm, chest) and a friend of his, Sekai, helps him so they can be together as a happy couple, yay. Now this is just the beginning. Later the story changes, but this is one of the problems this anime has, because later, the story starts getting silly. I mean how is it possible that every single girl has a crush on this guy, and what's so special about him? Looks? Maybe it's because I'm a male person that I can't understand female perspective, but if you really look at it, it's just unrealistic. Really unrealistic. This is not the only problem, like there's this part where Makoto starts getting addicted to sex, and apparently allows all girls from high school to use him for pleasure. He even does an orgy, that's how silly it gets. Overall, the story could do well, if it was taken a bit seriously. Other than that, it's silly. 4/10 just for the originality

ANIMATION: The animation is nothing new, same thing used in most animes. However it does have some impressive moments. There is a one major problem in the animation: repetitive scenes that try to look sexual. The animator thought this would be exciting if he threw some a** shots, shots of breasts, and in the pool episodes, you see a lot of these shots. There are a few scenes which they have nothing to do with the story (The scene where the big breasted girl is in the hot tub and suddenly gets up because of the phone call, only to see her covered nude body. Great). These scenes are probably targeted for those hentai lovers, but I don't find them really impressive, just boring and annoying. Also why do people at the first episode look like mannequins? 5/10 because of those annoying scenes, and that there's nothing new. If there weren't annoying scenes, I'd give it 7

MUSIC: Typical anime music (J-Pop). Themes are okay, soundtrack is okay. 7/10

CHARACTERS: The characters are okay. Makoto is a typical handsome shy guy, and Katsura is a typical shy, emotional girl. Although some of them are really annoying. There's this Makoto's friend, Taisuke, which wants to be in Makotos skin. He can be very annoying, and he's rather useless, like a fail jester. He is probably made for comedic parts, but really, I find him annoying. Katsura is an okay character, but at the end she just keeps yelling "Makoto is my boyfriend!" while he continues to have sex with all the students. I've heard it's called Yandere, when an anime girl emotionally gets crazy, which you can see when she talks to herself in later episodes. One part I really don't get is that at the 11th episode, Makoto asks for Katsuras forgiveness, after spitting her in the face and having sex with the whole school. And she forgives him? Why? How can she love this guy if he did all this stuff? But on positive side, there are some characters I like, like Setsuna. Setsuna is very keen and focused unlike other girls, which is what I liked about her. I just didn't like when even she had a crush on Makoto, and she was the character you would not suspect at all. Why did they ruin this? 5/10, again annoying characters

HUMOR: The anime has some parts that are humorous, but... it's not really funny. I mean the part where they have to prepare some sort of café while they are having so much trouble attracting customers because of competition is supposed to be funny. But I find it stupid. Even my favorite character Setsuna acts really stupid here. Humor is just stupid in this anime. 2/10 at least they tried

ENDING: Ah, the worst part. Most people found this sick, and so did I. The ending is like the animator decided to put Friday the 13th in the last episode. Why?! The game had more than 20 endings along with the manga one, and yet the animators decided to put the most sickest ending. When you create a "Teen love" TV show, do you put a massacre ending on it?! Some people found this ending sick, but unique on the other hand. I am not one of those people. I mean I understand that they had to do a twist ending, but not like this!! The last scene made me have nightmares. The ending is really sick in a negative way. 1/10

OVERALL: This anime had a potential, but they screwed it up in many ways. Silly story, repetitive sexual scenes, annoying characters, bad humor and a sick ending makes it just not worth of watching for fans who watched awesome animes. I think if you'd fix all these problems, then this anime would fall into the ranks of great shows.

Recommend IT?: I wouldn't really recommend this show, unless you really like teen love shows and annoying characters. It might be a guilty pleasure for some of you, watch it at your own risk.

4/10

OK, the characterization is good. The animation is pretty to look at. The music is even nice. But, don't listen to all these other assholes. Seriously. The grand finale that everyone warns you about is sickening, but, not worth the wait. This isn't Escapism. What happens is... stupid. And kind of boring. Everyone says this show is so shocking, and "nice boat" but ... after all that build up, it's not worth it. I'm a big "When the Cicadas Cry" and "When the seacats cry" fan, so take this with a grain of salt if you must, but honestly Higurashi leaves this show so far in the dust it's ridiculous. Even with its poor animation. Just play a hentai game or something. I felt sorry for some of these characters, but couldn't sympathize with the protagonist in the slightest. Bleh. Jerry Springer is more entertaining than this. Stay away from this snoozefest. So not worth all the buildup it's getting.

It starts off like a completely normal romance/comedy anime. Makoto likes Kotohona in which he confesses his love to her and she accepts him, but that was only the first episode. Then, his best friend Sekai kisses him, then trains him to date his present girlfriend by letting him do sexual stuff to her, in which he cheats on Kotohona by having sex with Sekai, which then leads to him dating Sekai, but still dating Kotohona.

This goes on throughout the entire show, which then ends up being with 8 different girls, and eventually leads up to Kotohona finding out about Makoto cheating on her. In the end, Makoto gets Sekai pregnant and she tells him that he has no choice but to be the father when he doesn't want to. After all this, he gets back together with Kotohona because she still loves him and he wants to date her again, which leads to the disturbing ending of this anime: Makoto tells Sekai that he won't be the father of her baby because he's in love with Kotohona, so she stabs him to death with a Butcher's Knife and flees the scene, in which Kotohona sees his lifeless body, goes crazy, meets up with Sekai, they go into a dual for the death, Cleaver VS Butcher's Knife, with the end results of Kotohona ripping apart Sekai's stomach and searching around for Makoto's child. And to make it even better, she sawed off Makoto's head and cradled it in her arms as she sailed off into the sunset on her yacht whispering, "We're finally alone now.". In other words, everyone goes crazy.

I liked some parts in the anime, but in the end, the entire thing just made me sick. If you have a hard time watching people cheat on one another, or have a weak stomach and can't handle watching people get stabbed to death, I don't recommend this, and I probably wont ever watch it again. It's just gonna be those "I've seen it once, and I only need to see it once" types of shows.

I just... oh my god. I hate this show so much.... Well, school days looks like your typical visual novel- inspired harem...but it's so much more than that (please note that I will be spoiling the ending). The characters are boring and stereotypical, and if you don't hate them all after the second episode you will by the end of the series. It isn't all that funny unless you're laughing at the utter stupidity of the characters, and... commence rant. OK, so there's a guy named Makoto and he likes Kotanoha. Sekai likes him but she doesn't tell him and tries to help him date Kotanoha. but Makoto soon gets tired of Kotanoha and decides it's easier to get inside Sekai's pants and by the end of the series he's sleeping with like 5 different girls. Then he decides to settle down with Kotanoha and is brutally stabbed to death by Sekai. Kotanoha then goes totally insane and kills Sekai, cuts Makoto's head of his dead body and cuddles with it on a boat. There's only one thing you could say to that... He had it coming!

I can't decide whether this series is genius... or terrible. It could be genius because the creators could have possibly made us hate the characters on purpose so that we get a happy ending when they all die and/or go insane (to kotanoha's defense, dating that guy would make anyone go insane..). But (and this is more likely) the creators wanted to make a huge melodrama and failed... then they realized everyone hated their show so they decided to give the audience what they wanted. I won't rate this. I'll hold on to that much of my pride for now.

I didn't like ending of this anime because they killed each other

I can't say I hated this show. It was very hard for me to stop watching after I'd started, except specific points when I was too disgusted with Makoto to continue. I had a hard time dealing with all of the drama between all of the characters. I couldn't get myself to believe that girls would be so stupid as to be so blinded by "love" that they'd be okay with a guy cheating on them over and over again. My favorite part of the anime was the ending, contrary to popular belief. I hope that if I'm ever in such a situation (hopefully never in that situation) I won't end up killing the guy like Sekai or chop his head off like Katsura and hug it on a yacht like a crazy person. I did, however, feel relief when he was killed, Sekai finally standing up for herself somewhat after being cheated on for so long and Makoto hinting for her to have an abortion. I hated that Sekai died, she was my favorite character, even though she was terribly stupid and fell in love with a guy who already had a girlfriend. And the way she died was brutal, even though she lied about being pregnant did not give Katsura an obligation to cut her stomach open. If she was not lying then she would've just killed, not only my favorite character but a little baby as well.

There are plenty of anime series featuring a boy who finds himself the centre of attention for several girls; usually he is oblivious or too shy to do anything about it. As this series opened it looked as it may be more of the same as protagonist Makato furtively takes a photograph of Kotonoha, a girl at his school, while travelling home on the train. When his friend Sekei sees the picture she volunteers to help him get together with her. At first things progress slowly and Sekei offers to help Makato further by telling him what he should say and do... unfortunately he soon starts 'practicing' with her and they are soon in a sexual relationship. Kotonoha meanwhile is oblivious and thinks Makato is her boyfriend. As the series progresses Makoto gets involved with other girls until it seems the only person he hasn't slept with is poor Kotonoha. Things get worse for her when she finds herself being bullied by a particularly nasty group of girls who believe she is lying about being Makato's girl friend. As the series approaches its conclusion things get worse and worse leading to a shocking and bloody conclusion which leave more than one character dead and another in a damaged mental state.

When this started I though it looked typical harem comedy but things took and interesting and dramatic turn just under half way though. Even though I'd heard that the ending was bloody I wasn't expecting it to be quite so shocking. While Makato may have slept with several girls the sex wasn't shown; that isn't to say there was no fan service though as there were several panty shots and an episode set in the pool. This series was quite disturbing, most characters were unpleasant and unsympathetic and those that were likable went on to commit the most heinous crimes but I did enjoy it as it was so different to anime I'd seen before. The animation looked good throughout and the story had a degree of believability although in real life I suspect the outcome would have been less violent and I don't imagine any school would have a 'break room' at the annual fair for the students to have sex in! I'm glad that it is available to watch legally on Crunchyroll at the time of writing as it doesn't look as if it will get a DVD release in the west any time soon.

These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.

The show can be quite boring the art style is quite cheap but it does have its charm at least in my opinion but I also like the 2000s anime art style with the big pupils for the girls the main character isn't great so don't expect that the anime is definitely for a more adult audience as it has sex scenes that do not show anything and is completely centered on relationship and cheating it also does have some gore towards the end I mark this as a spoiler so if you read it this is on you the main character gets butchered at the end I won't say why but he does get killed so don't expect a season 2 the English dub is absolutely horrible and I'm not even the type to hate on English dubs this one is just remarkably bad as they don't even bother dubbing all the characters nothing like hearing to voice actors that sounded like their pick up off the street talkin wall in the back ground the character still talks Japanese so it's horrible wouldn't recommend the dub even though I watch most shows dub it's pretty bland but it's only 12 episodes so it's not like it takes too too long to finish the story isn't that deep it was based on a eroge hentai game and the anime for some reason just happened to pick the bad ending so I'll throw it at 7 just to be generous.

I definately consider this anime a WTF one. It goes from happy on the beginning part but gradually you will get to see the darkness coming in towards the end. Man, it was a real shocker that Makoto was killed by Sekai who claimed she was pregnant but only found out that it was only to get his attention. Then as a way to get revenge on his death, Kotonoha gets to kill Sekai herself and manages to cuddle Makotos head on a friggin boat!!

Seriously this definately is a no ordinary horror schoolgirl type of series and like i say its not a bit different from the game! Your jaw would literally be hanging out of you throughout the week haha, it was pretty unexpected!

Really good anime series though, I like that its different and kinda has that soap opera genre to really give ya a shock of your life!

Although the series is garbage its a must watch anime for starters/people with little experience in anime.

Its the best worse anime you should see in your life.

Apparently is a very standart anime, especially for its time when ecchi was very prominent in the industry.

The protagonist is undisputed the worst of ALL time, without a doubt. I have seen a lot amount of animes and this guy is the number 1 trash for sure. Think about your most hated character in fiction, I bet this guy is worse. "Makoto" will never leave my mind unfortunately.

Its a really revolutionary anime because all the time until the lasts moments you think its going one way and man you can't be possibly more wrong!

WARNING: This review might be considered spoiler-heavy because of explaining underlying motives of the plot.

This is my favorite anime next to Gungrave and Hunter X Hunter. Unlike the vast majority of shows (like Dexter, Game of Thrones and pretty much any popular show out there) and games (like Call of Duty, Twilight Princess and Jak and Daxter 2 - which pioneered dark games, in my opinion) School Days provides a real dark story. It does not use a dark environment, killing (and mental illness related to killing) or sex to make itself dark. It shows us bright art that is simple, but somehow very beautiful looking. It shows us characters who are not acting mean to each other and are hopeful to fall in love and it reminds us of feelings of first love. But, there are hints of reality in there and they continue to grow until everything more closely resembles reality. The ideal life in our hearts is taken to the forefront and the complete confrontation with all the gritty details is presented. But everything still looks pretty and bright.

Not only that, but the soundtrack is pleasing to listen to.

The overall reason why I could not give 10/10 stars is because there is not a huge amount of depth to anything. There is only one secondary plot that gets enough exposure. A lot of characters seem to have more to offer, but it is unexplored (that being said, the unexplored mystery lends itself to realism in a way that I like, too).

The characters are the core of the controversy here.

The main character is not actually that bad of a guy. He seems to be naive and have the expectations of what a person first entering love would feel. He only cares about sex (this is apparent by the first episode) and he looks cute like a dog, but he also lacks depth of character and does whatever he wants, like a dog. However, he is probably not horny like a dog that has not been neutered, unlike what many might say. He is really just a dummy who lets society's standards get to his head and he just manages to have enough luck to get his way. Perhaps, he is more infantile than anything.

Sekai is an amazing character, but there are indeed people like her out there, too. She clearly has ulterior motives at the beginning and she holds onto Makoto (the main character) because she has fallen into bad behaviors. She cares about her friends, but is in very desperate need of someone to love. But, her statement of her being "the world" is very important to keep in mind. She is easily the character that adds a ton of hidden depth to this show and allows it to have replay value.

Katsura is the girl that everyone loves and she actually returns Makoto's love immediately. This is probably the source of why so many feel like this is a bait-and-switch anime - we always want the great girl to accept the main character and the drawing out of such a thing can be a real nuisance. Having such a perfect girl be the focus of the story makes it seem like it will be a fun romance story without much darkness. Katsura's little sister is also pretty interesting and she is one plot point that adds to the story by disappointingly not being explored deeply at all. Anyway, Katsura is the most dynamic character and people like myself have been in her shoes before. This can cause many people to be scarred by this anime.

Setsuna is my favorite character. She just has a great presence and she wants to help keep everything in order more than anyone else. She is the one person who does not purposefully do anything bad. Her fate was very sad because she was the one true ray of hope throughout everything. But, she is fun for being strict and demanding, but having a very good reason for that personality.

The other characters have hard names to remember. Makoto's friend is another tragic character because he will not see what is in front of him. I have actually been his way, too. If you feel like you are waiting for the perfect person and that they are destined to be yours once they see the heart of your personality, you will shrug off anyone else who might want your love and attention and be able to provide happiness.

Then, there are the classic gossiping girls. They actually make this story really fun if you do not take their cruelty to heart (most people apparently will). Each one of them has their own diversity in personality, but by being close to each other, they are blotting out another's brightness. They stay together in an art of competition.

If you have read my review, you have not experienced even 1/4 of School Days. Please do not think that you know exactly what I am talking about. This show is one thrilling ride, but it might make you feel gross and violated. It will definitely get some negative reaction out of you because of the effective storytelling. I have never watched something with such a strong emotional pull before, but that is only because I actually wanted to understand every character. This show is probably not for those driven by their emotions, but for those who enjoy their emotions and thinking about how they came about.