Overview

With the anime season slowly beginning to draw to a close, I was on the lookout for a decent filler series to watch, and thought that School Days might be interesting after a summer full of the likes of Claymore, Gurren Lagann, and Murder Princess. It wasn't long, though, before I started hearing rumors of the darker beginnings of School Days as an eroge of particular reputation. Still, I decided to keep watching, and see for myself what was up.

Fields	USA Info	Japanese Info	Image
Title		School Days
Alternate		スクールデイズ
Dates		2007-07-03
Company	TNK, AT-X, Lantis, 0verflow, avex entertainment, Marvelous Entertainment, Pony Canyon Entertainment, School Days Production Committee
Creator	0verflow
Director	Keitaro Motonaga
Genre	Drama, Romance, High School, Slasher
Related	School Days (OVA), School Days (Eroge), Summer Days (Eroge), School Days (Manga)

Review

Makoto Ito is, at the surface, a fairly generic High School Drama Anime Male. He rides the train into school every morning, and, as most HSDAM's do, he has a silent crush - in this case on a young woman that also goes to his school, but is not in his class, named Kotonoha Katsura. So far as he can tell, though, he doesn't even exist in her world. There's a little legend at this school that if you take a picture of somebody you secretly love with your cell phone and then keep it a secret for a week, that eventually that feeling will be returned. Makoto snaps a shot, little knowing that he's about to meet somebody that might possibly make that little legend come true for him - another young woman named Sekai Saionji. It's a fairly basic High School Drama setup, I know. It goes without saying that, of course, Sekai has a crush on Makoto too, but after seeing him snap the picture of Kotonoha she's determined to see them get together - a little self-sacrifice for teenage love.

With the basic triangle setup, I was ready for an overall bland series, and honestly, the first few episodes are just that - bland. The development is slow, dialog generic, events typical - though the animation is very good. More on that in a little bit. I've found myself skipping through the mires of dialog in favor of more eventful sections of the series, because things just plain move too damn slow in the early episodes. I had a particular reason to keep watching this series, though, and it goes back to those rumors that I'd heard. School Days is based on an eroge of the same name that was put out by 0verflow, which featured almost seventy minutes of full anime motion footage. While this was a first for the genre - the game played more like an interactive anime than a visual novel - what truly gained it notoriety was the twelve endings, including several particularly brutal and bloody 'bad' endings. I won't go into details here, but I wanted to see just how far the writers were willing to go. As of episode six, it looks like they're willing to go pretty damn far.

As I've alluded to, Makoto Ito is, at least on the surface, a fairly generic High School Drama Anime Male. Fortunately enough, it doesn't take long for him to shake off the generic label - or perhaps unfortunately, because the real Makoto Ito is one of those backstabbing little shits you got to watch walking around in school with the prettiest girl, and damn well knew he was banging half the other girls behind her back. That's a rather apt description of Makoto Ito, actually, because that's effectively exactly what he does. That's not to say that Sekai and Kotonoha aren't without fault in the events. Kotonoha is a sweet, shy, quiet girl with no apparent force of will; as events play out, we find out that she DID know that Makoto existed, but was too shy to say anything. Sekai is her equal and opposite - outgoing, brash, and at times just plain loud, but she's also self-deluded, believing that she'll be happier getting Makoto and Kotonoha together than going for him herself. She's so devoted, in fact, to that end, that she even gives Makoto 'training' for how to... handle... Kotonoha. With that in mind, is it even any real surprise that something has to break?

The animation of School Days is on the higher end of the spectrum, though no match for the likes of Gurren Lagann. Still, it's obvious where a fair amount of the money in this series went, and the results are great. The animation is smooth and settings have a nicely real quality that suits the storyline. Character designs are solid if standard; I can't fault them because they look to have been depending more on... character development and plot events, let's say, to break them out of their molds. The one thing I have issue with is that, despite the overall quality of the animation, the CG has that faintly plastic look that has been mostly eliminated these days; I'd have expected better from the otherwise great animation.

The vocal acting is solid enough, but I've heard better. The characters interact well given the situations, and some of the supporting cast actually deserves more credit. The main cast suffers, as I suggested, from dialog that is overall wooden in the beginning of the series. I want to place a star next to that comment - as I said, this review is as of episode six, and from the ending of six things have just hit the fan. I might revisit this review in a few weeks and update my take on the voice acting. Series music is pretty good, with one of the better opening themes I've heard this year. Almost every episode has a different ending theme done by a different artist, and the tone ranges with the overall mood of the proceeding episode, with the exception of the first episode. I'll admit to having been taken aback by the general venom that came through in the lyrics, and consider it to be foreshadowing of the future to come.

Overall

I can't really recommend this series if you're looking for a more typical High School Drama. Rather, I'm getting, more and more, the sense that this is a series that should be placed with the likes of Shuffle! and Shingetsudan Tsukihime in terms of overall flavor, although not in quality. The animation is certainly worth watching despite the faint plastic-ness, but so far development has been too slow for my tastes. If not for that fact that I want to see what happens, I'd probably have dropped the series by the end of episode three, something I don't often do. If you're a real big fan of love triangles, maybe give the series a look, just beware that it looks like things are about to turn very, very nasty. Otherwise, I'd look somewhere other than School Days for your HSD Fix.