I like to stir things up a bit sometimes (copied from elsewhere, where it did)...
Hey, there’s always School Days…
I'll pass, thanks.
Well, if you know me at all, you'll understand that I don't like to leave things unresolved... A little research on
School Days showed me that it divides opinion more widely than most shows. I found that reviews of it are more varied than those for almost any other series; The Nihon Review has no less than three separate reviews of it with scores of 4, 6, and 8 (out of 10), while Them Anime Reviews gives it its minimum one star. So obviously I had no choice but to watch it myself, which curiously I did not regret. I now understand the variation in the reviews quite well; it's not easy to judge. My conclusion is that it's often misunderstood, and I think it is subverting itself so hard that some people just don't get it.
There are many kinds of lies; but the worst, in the end, are those you tell yourself. A collective madness engulfs pretty much the entire cast by the last couple of episodes, but it is their lies to themselves that lead to the ultimate tragedy for each of them. Of those main players it is Makoto Itou, in spite of the bad press he gets, whose lies are the ones least motivated by malice, or at least a desire to manipulate; that doesn't help him, though. Yes, he is weak and indecisive - but are we all as strong as we like to think? Remember that the girls are all after him because he is perceived as
a good guy, and we are told this repeatedly.
Anyway, people who start this looking for a SoL high-school harem anime are rather in the same position as those who start
Evangelion hoping for a giant robot show; they will discover in time how wrong they were. And by the end realism has long gone out of the window; but that's not the point - the extremity of what happens is just a way of getting across the message of the damage that can be done by lies. Of course, I'm not pretending this is at the level of
Eva; but it's a good solid show none the less - mostly. Some details let it down: The first few episodes are somewhat undistinctive, for instance; I hated the post-credits ending, as well - floating into the sea at the end was quite enough, and like
EoE didn't attempt to sugar-coat anything. And I loved the music - nine EDs in 12 episodes!
I haven't watched the OVAs, and I'm not sure I want to. My understanding is that they follow different paths from the VN, and so don't really tie in.