I think we can all agree that’s there some bad anime out there. I’m not talking about the boring ones, or the weird ones, or even the straight up disturbing ones. I’m not even talking about hentai. I’m just talking about poorly thought out, poorly planned series that somehow wander from kinda idiotic, into straight up moronic.
It’s one thing for a series to start out dull, and stay that way. It’s another to jump straight into stupid, and still manage to go downhill from there. Yet, despite this, there’s no shortage of anime that seem to exist solely to force anime lovers to justify why they love anime in the first place.
Yeah, School Days is really one of those kinda shows.
While I know that there’s a certain way you can watch the show, and be entertained by it, as a general work of fiction, it’s somewhere past absurd. It’s like it was a PSA on abstinence that went horribly wrong. So horribly wrong.
Right, so, first off, School Days is a 12 episode, 2007 series from studio TNK, maker of some things. Well, that’s not fair. They made UFO Ultramadien Valkyrie, which I think some people have heard of, and High School DxD, which I know is a thing that exists. It’s still fair to say that TNK has never really had a huge hit, or done anything overly worth mentioning, however.
A single look at the mess that is School Days is a pretty good example of why. While even the big name studios sometimes churn out a clunker, TNK has made something of a habit out of being substandard in every area. They kind of make me think of a bunch of people who figured making anime couldn’t be that hard, popped something out using a Commodore 64 from a garage, and are now trapped in a weird limbo between actual success and financial ruin.
I think I just realized why I’m not more well liked. I’m kind of a dick, aren’t I?
Anyway, School Days follows the life of first year high school student Makoto Ito, as he sees a pretty girl on a train ride to school, and decides he wants to date her. His only problem is that he’s a total idiot. Getting help from classmate Sekai Saionji, who coaches him on how to approach girls, he manages to win a date with the object of his affection, Kotonoha Katsura.
When I say she’s an object, that’s pretty much how the show, and Makoto, treat her, too. She’s just a thing that’s there to be won, which he does easily, then gets bored with, like a kid would with a new, cheap toy they got from the dollar store.
Mostly because what Makoto really wants is to get laid. He has no interest in Kotonoha as a person, and while she’s pretty, she’s also shy, fairly book smart, a bit inept in social situations, and very reserved. Naturally, Makoto spends no time at all bothering to get to know her as a person, before cheating on her with Sekai, the girl who helped him win Kotonoha in the first place.
Why does Sekai go along with this? Who the hell knows. Apparently, she’s just an asshole. Which makes her a great match for Makoto, since he’s basically a selfish asshole, as well.
As the story progresses, Makto sort of keeps Kotonoha dangling about the state of their relationship, while carrying on an affair with Sekiei, and any other girl who will get naked with him, which turns out to be a bunch, for some reason. If this wasn’t bad enough, the show then decides to go crazy, and has Kotonoha get raped.
Thus begins School Day’s descent into utter madness, and Makoto goes full player, sleeping apparently every girl in school, until Sekai announces she’s pregnant, making Makoto decide Kotonoha was the girl for him after all, somehow, which leads to him getting gutted like a fish by Sekai. Kotonoha then lops of his head as a keepsake, murders Sekai, and sails away into the sunset with Makoto’s head.
That is actually how the show ends. So, spoiler warning, I guess.
Now, to give TNK and School Days a bit of a break, the entire thing was based on a visual novel, which did have that ending as a possible option, for players who messed around instead of just being with one girl. Of course, you can’t get that just from watching the show, so the whole thing just comes off as the demented fever dream of a horny teenager with a lifetime supply of tissue and a huge collection of Playboy magazines.
Why TNK decided to go with the darkest possible story line is a mystery to me, as there’s never anything wrong with a good old fashioned romance story. Makoto meets Kotonoha, the two fall in love, and deal with the rigors of dating. How is this somehow not an already normal story? Why do you have to throw in that much sex, and graphic violence?
It isn’t just that the show is poorly planned, though. It’s that the characters are all terrible people. Makoto is a whiny shitbag, who only wants Kotonoha from the start because he wants to get in her pants. When she doesn’t immediately give it up, he hooks up with the first girl who does. Apparently, at that point, every girl in school contracts slut syndrome, and panties start dropping like a Victoria’s Secret airplane exploded mid flight, but just for Makoto.
Why do all these girls find him impossible to resist? Who the fuck knows. He’s about as bland as a protagonist can get. The only real defining quality we have for Makoto is that he likes getting laid. Other than that, there really isn’t much character to his character. Kotonoha is a timid train wreck, while Sekai is just a cheap bitch.
Yeah, that really does kind of sum up the main cast right there. Other girls wander in and out of the story at times, but their only defining characteristic is that they’ll put out for Makoto for no apparent reason. Then, people get murdery, also for no apparent reason.
Which, if I’m gonna be brutally honest, makes the only real take away from the show pretty hard to miss. High school guys are assholes. High school girls are sluts. Then you get your head cut off.
It’s all just so random, and bizarre.
In terms of animation, School Days certainly ain’t doing itself any favors. While it isn’t horrible, it also isn’t very well done. It’s just average. Things move, and happen, but none of it is eye catching, and the color palette is just bland. The whole show is, from a visual standpoint, about as engaging as a log. It’s a nice log, with a bit of moss, and a turtle, but nothing you’d remember five minutes later.
The character designs, on the other hand, are just a step down from average, making them dull. All the girls are kind of similar, and frankly, Makoto looks like he could be any one of them’s brother. It’s almost as if someone took a generic paper doll and stuck different hair styles on several, to make the characters. They are less than bland. Cross dress most of them, and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
The series was directed by Keitarou Motonage, who’s list of crimes against anime are fairly easy to list. He’s like the Uwe Boll of anime, to be honest. With such credits as Date A Live, GetBackers, Yumeria, and Oniichan no Koto nanka Zenzen Suki ja Nai n da kara ne!! (the one where a guy’s sister throws away all his non-incest porn so he’ll do her.) it’s kind of easy to understand what first went wrong with School Days. They hired this idiot to direct it.
Now, I’m not saying Motonage has no business directing traffic, much less an anime, but I am saying exactly that. Dude’s got a weird hard on for high school girls getting some. Plus, his handling of direction is just weird, with strange slow pans that often seem to include a girls butt, not to mention he has no idea how to frame a scene so it has any emotional impact. I’ve never seen a show Motonage directed that I didn’t think was absurd, boring, or just plain insulting.
So, yeah. Poor choice of director there.
The writing, on the other hand, is much harder to explain. It was done by Makoto (O.o) Uezu, the writer behind Space Brothers, Assassination Classroom, The Heroic Legend of Arslan, and Konosuba. Of course, he also wrote for Scum’s Wish, Is This A Zombie, Yumeria (again with this show) and My Bride Is A Mermaid. So, I guess Uezu is only as capable as the material he is given to work with.
Nor do I forget that the writer is basically under the director, so there may only be so much he can do in any given circumstance. It’s hard to explain the massive gap between his excellent work, and his terrible work. Probably just comes down to a paycheck si a paycheck, if we want to be honest.
Still, Makoto writing a show about a kid named Makoto is… weird.
The music was composed by Yoshiyuki Ito, who is probably best known for his video game work, and for being the head music producer for Lantis. Well, he’s also known for being married to Masumi Ito, the lady who composed the soundtrack to Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, and a mess of other amazing anime OST’s.
The music isn’t bad, so much as it’s just there. It’s hard to enhance a show that has nothing to enhance, however, so I won’t fault the music too much for being pretty thin. It doesn’t really sell the moments that are suppose to be emotional, or sad, or anything. It just sits there, wishing it could be doing something else, like getting strangled by a group of mafia sharks.
Yes, take a minute to process that. It’s fine.
Overall, School Days was a disaster from the word go. A director with a habit of taking on really tacky soft porn work, a writer who obviously was just there for the paycheck, and a soundtrack from a guy who lives in the shadow of his more talented wife, all based around a cheesy harem visual novel. How was this ever going to be anything other than a mess from the very start?
Simply put, it wasn’t.
Now, you can enjoy School Days as a so bad it’s funny kind of anime. However, bear in mind, this show was meant to be taken very seriously, as a dark harem story, featuring a protagonist who just bangs all the girls that are interested in him, rather than be a nice guy who can’t decide between them, so just remains neutral to avoid hurt feelings. Still, the ending just kind of comes out of nowhere, and too much of what happens is just random stupidity for it to ever be taken seriously, the way everyone wanted it to be.
So, watch at your own risk, and don’t say I didn’t warn you how bad it all gets.
Cain S. Latrani 
I probably enjoyed this show more than you but it is pretty dreadful. It is one of those shows that is so bad you kind of have to watch it once just to realise how good other shows actually are (though even this one doesn’t make Hand Shakers seem any better).
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it.
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