Okay, let’s get started with this train-wreck now, shall we? School Days is another one of those hentai-game adaptations, but it’s a special one: the original game became notorious for a few of its rather bloody endings. Because of this, it’s become a fan favourite: you can’t go to any on-line anime-community where you won’t find tons of fans rambling about various death treats towards the main character. In the end though, this series became an utter failure.
Let’s start with about the only good point of this series: the male main character, Makoto. I know it’s ironic, but this guy actually finally deviates from some of the clichés that plague all of his colleagues, and most important of all: he’s realistic. It’s a sad thing, but in real life there are tons of idiots who just date girls without caring about any of them. You’ll love to hate this guy, and the things he does to all the poor girls in the series.
I wish I could say the same about the female characters though. The story is just so incredibly fixated on that bloody ending that it turns every single female character into a plot-device to get toward that ending. Actions are forced, characters conveniently run into each other, and most of them are a tad too often in too much angst, preventing them to connect with the viewers.
Still, at the halfway point, I would have actually considered School Days decent enough. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but the love-triangle that develops was interesting enough to make me keep watching. And then, as the series draws to its end, everything falls apart with some of the most forced and blatantly obvious plot twists I’ve ever seen. I won’t mention them for the sake of spoilers, but you should be able to guess their nature, with School Days being a hentai-game adaptation and all.
And then the setting! Seriously, it nearly looks like Makoto is in a school with only TWO GUYS in it. There is another guy (the so-called “rival” that you see in nearly every hentai-game adaptation) but he’s just good for one minor plot-twist and he just disappears afterwards without leaving any trace.
Seriously, if you were planning to watch this one: don’t. The scriptwriting and plot twists are just too forced and artificial to really form a connection, not to mention that 75% of all the scenes are incredibly annoying to watch, due to the characters being teenagers and all. While I admit that it could have been good, the scriptwriters just ruined it completely.
Notice in all the screens that Makoto almost always gets his way/gets it on/sleeps with a girl/makes out with a girl. Yep. That jackass is the character known as Makoto.
