School Days is a 12 episode anime series that came out in 2007 that was based off on a PC game that came out in Japan in 2005. Let's get into my review. Now, I'm also going to go in a ranting direction, in some parts of this review because there are some things that I need to explain, in terms of the characters. Let's get started.

The story starts off with a student named Makoto Itou, who is a young japanese high school student. In the process of riding a train to his school, he encounters a young girl by the name of Kotonoha Katsura. Makoto took a picture of her on his cellphone, due to the fact that he becomes easily attracted to Kotonoha. However, an acquaintance of Makoto named Sekai Saionji discovers his crush on Kotonoha and decided to help introduce both, Kotonoha and Makato, to each other. And with that, both of them starting dating and it also leaves a bit of jealousy from Sekai because of the couple. In my opinion, I think the story is good, but it's nothing really special in an anime. This anime has a story that centers on real life in high school, so it's not going to be something special in an anime like this.

What really bothers me mostly in this anime is the characters. Almost, half of the characters included in this anime are not likeable. Makoto is such an idiot in this series, mainly because of dating a lot of girls in this show and can't choose which girl he likes the most. He dates Kotonoha, Sekai and another girl named Hikari. So, I really can't stand Makoto. Kotonoha was a good character (in the first half of the show). But as soon as the second half started, she started to be unlikeable. First reason as to why I find her some unlikeable how can she say "I'm still Makoto's girlfriend", when she sees Makoto with Sekai a few times? Doesn't she realize straight up that Makoto ditches Kotonoha and falls in love with Sekai? And worst yet, Kotonoha never gets mad at Makoto! Instead, she gets mad at Sekai because she thinks Sekai stole Makoto away from Kotonoha. I mean, look at it this way. Let's pretend that I'm starting a love relationship of a girl named Rachel. I took a picture of her in my cellphone and a friend of mine, who is a girl, named Jennifer discovers my little crush on Rachel, ok? Jennifer makes me and Rachel introduce ourselves to each other. We both start our first date and Jennifer gets a little jealous because of how both me and Rachel are dating. Overtime, I secretly ditch Rachel and go out dating with Jennifer. If Rachel finds out that I'm dating Jennifer, you know who will Rachel slap for this? Me. That's how most girls are nowadays when their original boyfriends ditch them and those guys go out with another girl. Rachel would slap me, instead of Jennifer. Why?, because Rachel would by the fact that I ditch her rather then Rachel thinking that Jennifer stole me away from Rachel. You get my point on this folks. I really can't stand on how it was set up differently in School Days.

And here's another reason, as to why I don't like Kotonoha. At the point where Makoto was on the side of loving Sekai more then Kotonoha, he tells her that their relationship is over. Kotonoha got upset and felt sad because of their break-up, at that point. Then around the end of episode 11, Kotonoha encounters Makoto. And guess what, she didn't appeared angry when she encountered him. Instead, she was all happy. That's not how most girls act like in real life, when they see their exboyfriends. They would mostly appear angry when a certain girl encounters an exlover. That's really messed up in the anime. Now let's move to the other characters, since I got my feelings of Makoto and Kotonoha out of the way. Sekai doesn't really impress me all that much. I don't like Setsuna, because she gives out a terrible first impression. She started out mad and she's been like that in the anime for a while. I think she could given out a better first impression, where she was good at first. Then make her be mad around the second half of the show, that way the character development of Setsuna would have been better that way. You could've made her like the aunt from the anime movie, Grave of the Fireflies. But as it is, Setsuna is not a good character. I like some of the other characters. I like Taisuke, Makoto's friend and I also like Kotonoha's little sister, Kokoro. And the other girls, which are Hikari, Otome and Nanami, are ok, even I'm not too crazed for them. So, there are some characters I like, but there are some characters I dislike.

Certaintly, there are other positive points in School Days besides the fact that some of the characters are likeable. The artstyle in this anime is really good and the animation is really nice. Despite that this anime takes place in a high school, you're not going to see any flashy stuff or anything. But the animation is still good. There are a couple of things that bother me, though. First of all, who came up with the idea of having the rest of the students look like dummies in a clothes store, over the main and secondary characters in the first episode? That really bothers the hell out of me. Now before I go on to my next problem with the animation, I must say this will spoil some people who haven't watch this show. I hate giving out spoiler alerts, but I have to address this issue because it is another flaw I have with the animation. In the final episode where Sekai kills Makoto with a kitchen knife and Kotonoha killing Sekai, you see black blood. Why the hell is the blood black in the anime? It's supposed to be red. That's really weird.

Soundwise, the anime sounds superb. The japanese voice work is great and the music is awesome. There is a lot of piano music that plays during the episodes of the show and it reallys fit well to the overall theme of School Days. The opening is pretty good and there is quite a lot of ending themes for the show and they all sound very nice. One problem I have with this anime (in the case of the subtitles) was that you see english and japanese lyrics of a song, while you watch a certain episode. That's weird on how you see that. And that is something that no other anime has done. I mean when you watch an anime, the only subtitles you see while watching an episode is english subtitles in a japanese dub anime. They never show you japanese and english lyrics in those episodes. But it's strange that School Days does that. But with that little issue, the sound is this anime is spectacular.

School Days is a very shallow anime. With it's generic plot and some unlikeable characters added in the mix, it's just not a very fun show to watch, even with it's great animation and having very awesome sound quality, that still wouldn't save this anime for me giving it a bit of a higher score. If you're looking for an anime that has a story that draws you in, then School Days is not the show you should get into.

6.5 out of 10

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