School Days

I’m sure like many oth­ers I was enthralled by the story that the final epis­ode of School Days had been indef­in­itely post­poned due to a sup­posedly viol­ent end­ing and its like­ness to a real-world killing. Not one to pass up on con­tro­versy, I queued up the series expect­ing it to be a fluffy, real-world ver­sion of Shuffle! or per­haps akin to Kimi ga Nozomu Eien; what I didn’t expect was an unflinch­ing, overly-dramatic por­trayal of the depths of teen­age decrepitude.

“the series’ H-game roots are only evid­ent in the amount of sexual devi­ance present”

» Gal­lery

The first epis­ode of this petite twelve epis­ode series is as mediocre and clichéd as I expec­ted: intro­ver­ted loner Makoto takes a lik­ing to a girl he sees on the train, female best friend tries to help him get together with her while secretly hav­ing the warm-and-fuzzies for him her­self. Rolling my eyes and switch­ing off my sens­ib­il­it­ies I began to place bets on the most prom­ising axe-wielding female: per­haps the fun-size, silent one is actu­ally a dark-horse in all of this. It took less than half the series to con­vince me that end­ing with viol­ence is just one of the punches that School Days will deliver.

I hes­it­ate to call the series “good” or “real­istic” as neither is accur­ate; it holds the same kind of qual­ity as a slow-motion train­wreck and is genu­ine inso­far that very few of the char­ac­ters remain clichés. Char­ac­ters and events spiral quickly and unerr­ingly towards dis­aster as the male prot­ag­on­ist engages in self-destruction on a massive scale. Con­tinu­ally blasé about his part­ners’ emo­tions he flits from skirt to skirt, dis­card­ing women as quickly as they present them­selves. His fall from grace is mirrored by the over­bear­ing malevol­ence of school life and the passive-aggressive bul­ly­ing enacted on one of the female leads.

In con­text, the finale is noth­ing short of inev­it­able and is as bru­tal and unwaver­ing as the rest of the series. Makoto has debased or deflowered no less than five women, his self-flagellation cul­min­at­ing in an oth­er­wise com­mend­able four­some; the series’ H-game roots are only evid­ent in the amount of sexual devi­ance present, always implied and never expli­cit. Neither gender escapes from the series cleanly: catty bul­ly­ing turns to voyeur­istic black­mail, harm­less flirt­ing turns to a he-says she-says series of faux-pas; School Days accur­ately con­veys the oppres­sion and down-right vin­dict­ive­ness of high-school stu­dents. Makoto rep­res­ents everything a male wanted to be in school: promis­cu­ous and uncar­ing, while also being everything that is des­pised: cow­ardly, spite­ful and emo­tion­ally turbulent.

It’s for these reas­ons that I find it hard to recom­mend School Days, it is as power­ful as it is unreal­istic and dredges up far too many rasp­ing memor­ies for it to be com­fort­able view­ing; but it’s for that pur­pose that it’s hard to fault it bey­ond the obvi­ous. The anim­a­tion is unceas­ingly aver­age and the audio fit­ting and unob­trus­ive; most faults lev­elled at the story or char­ac­ters will be at its laugh­able applic­a­tion of the Ten­chi Syn­drome or the shal­low ter­tiary char­ac­ters, bey­ond that it becomes an opin­ion on how best to lam­baste Makoto. He is a dis­gust­ing and detest­able char­ac­ter, some­times feel­ing his inev­it­able death is deserved, his sav­ing grace never quite comes and he is murdered for his con­tinu­ing inab­il­ity to stop think­ing with his genitals.

School Days is by no means required view­ing unless you’re out to see the quint­es­sen­tial yanderekko, it is as harsh and thought-provoking as you let it be and could eas­ily be dis­reg­arded as over­blown, melo­dra­matic tripe; the real qual­ity comes from empath­ising with the char­ac­ters and being able to see your­self in one of them and ask­ing whether, truth­fully, you would do the same… ¶