School Days Review

Overall Rating 7.8 out of 10 - A very good show with unfortunate ending and few other plots.

I recommend watching.

It turns out that "gambling apocalypse" Itou Kaiji has a little brother, Itou Makoto, who is "dating apocalypse" instead. 

This is a well written show, with interesting plot twists, diverse and well written characters, good story and many other things.

It is also a deep and profound story that illustrates a lot about human nature and such. In that regard it is similar to Revolutionary Girl Utena. However, unlike Utena, School Girls do not use metaphors and allegory (except at the very end), thus making it easier to understand for viewer unfamiliar with literary fiction.

Story begins with slow nice and easy romance. First 3 episodes are pleasant and enjoyable to watch.

Then in the middle part things get complicated.

Finally, a very well written culmination in the few final episodes. The only unfortunate part is that Sekai kills Itou. Itou did nothing wrong and it all was Sekai's fault.

Story has one male protagonist, two main female love interests and many more girls, who all end up sleeping with him.

However, that is not simple harem show, with some light comedy, like Hand Maid May, that I also like.

Instead, it explores darker sides of human psychology. It shows how people can sometimes can-do awful things, when relationships involved. I am not only talking about murder at the end of the show, but also of all the lies misinformation and pressure in the middle part as well.

Kotonoha is a very nice girl, but she has no allies and many enemies who are jealous of her beauty. Thus, they get out of their way to ruin her relationship with Itou.

In contrast community is on Sekai's side. Some like Kyoura help her openly and others are just misled by her constantly hanging around Itou.

I wrote in my previous article how it was Sekai's fault that Itou ended up cheating on Kotonoha. Show does agree with me in the epilogue, where characters in masks do show Sekai the truth of her intentions.

It was also Sekai's fault, that he cheated on her as well. Eventually, Sekai's overbearing nature, lead towards him going for other women out there.

Sekai faked her pregnancy, but that changed nothing. Doing that could not solve a fundamental problem with her own character. Sekai is annoyingly overbearing and fundamentally a liar.

My favorite is of course Kotonoha. She is cute, sweet, demure, woman like. She is an example of how women should be. When it comes to example of femininity, Ryo from Koufuku Graffiti, will do better. As there is nothing bad happening in that show.

However, Kotonoha is more than just set of feminine qualities. She is both sympathetic and even partly relatable to me.

I like how she worked hard to please Itou.

However, I also like how loyal she was. No matter how much Itou was hanging out with other women and how much other characters wanted to take her away from him, she stayed true to him. Her classmates burdened her with work out of jealousy. Sawanaga, who despite being Itou's friend, coveted cute Kotonoha as his own, tried to lie his way into her panties. That is how much any friendship is worth when faced with dating dilemmas.

That loyalty and attachment to Itou made Kotonoha almost insane at the end. However, that also allow her to learn the truth about conspiracies that were happening behind the scenes.

Still dead eyed Kotonoha is cute in her own way, compare to puppy eyed one.

I also liked it that she avenged Itou by killing Sekai. Sekai killed Itou and had to pay for that. Loyalty

Mess like this is why I am cautious with dating and such. I do not want to end up a victim of a crazy girl conspiracy.

Overall, however this is a very insightful show, that allows one to see issues and pitfalls of relationship and human nature. Something I used to talk about with TrueHellDei back in the days. I think she is much like Kotonoha personality wise.

Because of that all, I would recommend this show. So that you at least do not make the same mistakes as Sekai.

Extra: I also watched an original ONA that was basically just a first episode basically pilot with few differences. The show gets much better few episodes later. Also, I watched without subtitles, so there is little I can say on plot differences. ONA by itself is just 6.5 out of 10