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**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS, PROCEED IF YOU ARE FINE WITH THAT**
Disclaimer: If you don't feel like reading personal stuff, just skip to main review. This review is meant to be complete analysis of the show. The TL;DR version is in the end.


REVIEW'S PREFACE, my motivation to write the review (skippable):

Hello. For about 10 years i was watching anime among other media and i never felt like writing the review. Every anime i watched had already done pretty good, full-fledged and fair ones. Some opinions about anime i agreed with were minority in some cases, some of them majority but i never felt i needed ... to touch the matter, introduce something to people because it was already told.

This is the first time i felt differently. Review is written mostly for myself. At the moment of writing the review, i'm not sure how to rate it yet, i want to sort out things that happened. But also there is one thing I AM sure of which was the second motive to write this review. The scoring on this one is really not appropriate. This anime does not belong to <6 star trash animes category.


You can say there are better anime in this niche but this one is not entirely horrible how rating would suggest. Everyone who sits on MAL knows that anime below 7 stars generally in most of cases are bad quality, half-ended not logical, dreadful animes. And School Days is even lower! Below 6 stars! I shall write this review to shed some light on this series for people who will read that AND for me and also WHY community rated it so low and how it doesn't have to do that much with quality of anime itself.


MAIN REVIEW (SPOILERS):

I can calmly say it is proper psychological anime about middle-school kids. It is not super deep going into characters hearts but hello, those were kids. Kids are during developing their personalities and mindsets, often brutal, not conscious about things surrounding them.

This anime's purpose is to describe what cheating can do to people but i wouldn't say it was even the main reason of this whole mess. This was just an outcome of self-denying one person's feelings (Sekai). And anime is conscious about it. Yes, even though i don't like Itou (main character) i still put Sekai as main issue that spinned plot in bad direction.

But let's start from the beginning. First group of people who might hurt anime's rating would be watchers that get bored quickly.

I've heard people complaining about how show is slow paced at the beginning but i really don't understand them. This "slow-paced beginning" here would be around 6 episodes of characters and story setup. We get to know about 5 characters, their motives of their doings and initial development:

- Itou - typical horny school student, that wants to do perverted things with girls and don't feel any kind of responsibility about his deeds

- Katsura - shy girl feeling affection towards Itou, trying her best to overcome her shyness for the sake of relationship.

- Kato - elementary school friend of Itou, feeling affection towards him, not getting into the business at the beginning yet, but anime spent some initial episodes scenes on her to show her not clear feelings for the viewer yet

- Setsuna - girl that appreciated Itou behavior and looked up to him, she was shown a few times observing Itou, she needed to be foreshadowed at the "slow paced" beginning to not be pulled out completely out of nowhere in the later part.

- Sekai - the most important one. The girl who helped Itou and Katsura start their relationship, BUT at the same time, she loved Itou, she connected him with Katsura out of completely unreasonable desire. The reason why she did this is not clear, it's up to viewer to decide whether she wanted to get closer to Itou by making him confess to Katsura (she might wish that Katsura would have denied Itou because of her shyness) or maybe she just wanted to do something good for the person she loved. Even if that was the second case, she was hurting HERSELF here.


This description should show, there was really pretty much to say there. I can't agree that episodes were stretched out, or slow-paced without a reason. Giving this that many episodes made character development more believable, screen time allowed to describe them properly. People who said it was slow-paced just didn't care enough to follow character development kept in healthy pacing.

Another group of people may comment on "romance and relationships" part of anime that happen here are complete bullshit, bland and fake drama. One more time. It's about middleschoolers. There are kids in the world that are straightforward and does not think much. I will not agree with people saying show got not believable and solid story. Those events occurring between characters could easily happen in real school (maybe not all of them combined, but i believe kids were described realistically). Except one that will be mentioned.

**CLOSER LOOK AT CHARACTERS PERSONALITIES**

Katsura shyness is something normal for girls in that age, she fought with it pretty successfully, the main hero really found good girl, he didn't deserve her. While she was trying her best to adapt to the partner, he started to be annoyed by relationship.

Itou didn't have patience to overcome troubles or change himself, he was repeatedly forced to apologize for things he does but didn't feel any remorse. He thought being couple is all fun and games and didn't want to take responsibility. Every relationships have their good and bad moments, people are happy or fed up with themselves but usually they try to overcome it. Itou and Katsura could be able to overcome their crisis.

I will say he might just have had not given enough time to develop and learn relationships, because Sekai butted in. It could get happy end pretty early but didn't.

Comming to Sekai who helped Itou and Katsura at the beginning. She made that decision while knowing she is in love with Itou. It was shown in anime that she swapped places with her friend Setsuna to sit next to Itou. By making Itou and Katsura meet up she made kind of teasing on herself and self-harm. It was a matter of time until she breaks since she didnt try to put down her feelings (just after pairing up Itou and Katsura, she took a kiss from Itou, as a "reward"). And then it took about 2 episodes until she broke. She took advantage of Itou hesitation and not stable feelings towards Katsura. She made many calls with Katsura and Itou, she knew who they are and she used the fact that Itou was horny beast. By her "practice" proposal (kisses, cuddling in park) which was basically cheating, she made him hungry for her, she gave him exactly what he wanted from Katsura AND she knew he doesn't get it because of constant calls to both of them. She gave him what he wanted but also what she selfishly desired. The main hero had predispositions to become compulsive cheater but Sekai was the one who knew that and initialized it. If someone wants to blame main hero, i tell them to blame Sekai too.

From now on it was just endless cheating chain of main hero with Sekai, Kato, Setsuna and other. And hell, it wouldn't be that bad if main hero just told Katsura that he breaks up with her. While i was pointing out the Sekai's faults this time it was the Itou bigest failure in series. His lack of courage to tell Katsura what's going on. Avoidance just made her hurt more.

Among cheating chain, i also want to mention Hikari Kuroda. She appears in the MC's bed kind of out of nowhere at the beginning of episode and feels kinda forced because she didn't get any development towards Itou, she had a crush on Sawanaga and didn't have any reason to stop liking him. That's the only element of story i felt it was forced and without stable fundaments as for 12ep series. At the same time poor Katsura is bullied by other students and she feels really bad about Itou, needesly blames herself.


The ending of anime really proved the author was conscious about what story they crafted and pointed out the most guilty one. I get that many people can be pissed off that main character who did so many horrible things to that many girls wasn't highlighted as bad guy the most. I really understand the hate and i didn't like Itou the most in series too. But anime shows us that self-denial Sekai's feelings was the biggest issue in series.

You can say many bad things about Itou but he was honest with himself. In this theatrical scene by the end in "Sekai's head" the main show message was told. Some can say it was some random scene but i assure you it is accurate description of Sekai's motives. Think about characters once more, who they were and what did, and find part of this review which refers to that, and then watch theater scene once more. It will make sense. What should help you accept that Sekai is horrible person is that she lied about having a child too.


To sum this up, i really will not rate badly anime which managed to send specific message and made me feel such pity for one of characters, i really felt bad for Katsura, i liked her. She didn't deserve all this meltdown and depression, she was good girl. Also i will say i don't really reach out for generic anime that often, because im tired of same archetypes and most of tsunderes/yanderes etc. are the same character for me but with different "skin". Taking that into an account, since i could sympathize with Katsura after hundreds anime i watched, hundreds of characters with same archetypes i grew bored with i can calmly say at least some of characters were written well. Some to like, some to hate. MC could be bland but Sekai was depicted well too.


TL;DR:
-story was planned well, it had message with it, most of events were part of logical chain and didn't feel out of place.

-sound/OST is okay. Not something bad or good, just typical anime of that time. I would compare it to Kanon or Clannad with no hesitation.

-same goes for art and animation. Just properly drawn characters, maybe some of them too similar to each other but hey, in real sad world people are huge mass too.

-enjoyment of the series is tricky one to describe since i didn't feel bored even for a second, i got hang of the show, but at the same time main hero was pissing me off so much through the entire series. It is the huge issue. But at least i was mad because he was ugly person, not bad written. I had to struggle from like 4th episode up to 12th, but i wasn't mad, i just suffered because of the sad direction of plot.


That wraps it up. Show that does not shine in terms of sound art or characters, was struggle to go through, but it has interesting and solid story to tell, which isn't cheap and bad quality. This 5.9 rating for the current time really hurts series. I will not rate it 10/10 or something because there are many more beautiful series but it isn't that bad as currently shown to community, by community.

Thanks for reading,
have a nice day.