Rating: 8.5/10

Overall Series Rating: 7.5/10

Impressions:

Hah, bad ending WTF. Or should I say, good ending? The highly violent stabbings are certainly extremely pleasing—Higurashi style, even with the excessive censoring. I hope they’ll release an uncut version (or if they have, I should start looking for it =D). I must say, this ending is extremely pleasing, and far more violent than I thought. If anyone saw the first few episodes, they would dismiss it for another crap harem. But to the crowd’s amusement, logic and plot turns to mush, and in the end, we get a nice big bloodbath with decapitation and everything. Now I wonder how the ONA ended…

Rating: 7.9/10, 7.3/10

Impressions:

Lol the school is so fucked up. But I guess it’s perfectly normal to have a ‘lounge’ in a school in a galge, as well as have everyone to use it to its full potential, and also for it to be recorded and shown to the public. Wow, everyone is psycho. And it reaches its peak in episode 10. I mean, it seems that for Makoto, getting a kiss is pretty rare, but advancing to having a ‘five’some or ’six’some, or whatever number of girls he did it with in one night, is just lulz. How old is Makoto anyway? Apparently he’s in the first year of some ‘gakuen’, which translates to academy, but does that refer to a high school or college? Well, not like it matters—it’s still hilarious. xD

Rating: 8/10 & 8/10

Impressions:

As everything is becoming ever-more complicated, it’s also becoming far more exciting. Makoto has now shared a kiss with Setsuna and slept with Otome, while Kotonoha is likely to do it with Taisuke. Everything is extremely unbelievable (especially the fact that the school has a ‘lounge’, and people actually use it), but that’s anime for you. Of course, School Days makes everything serious, which is all the more fun. Everything is pretty messed up now, and I don’t really care about individual characters anymore—it’s simply a matter of what happens next. I can see everything crashing down on Makoto in a few more episodes.

Rating: 8/10

Impressions:

Makoto continues to annoy me. I like how he at least has the heart to know that ignoring Kotonoha is just plain bad, but the problem lies in his inability to see that he has yet to break up with her. He doesn’t want to be cruel to her, yet he’s cheating on her, and doing it extremely blatantly. Kotonoha’s chances have been going down, though they start to go up again in episode 7, where it seems Makoto’s interest in Kotonoha is revitalising, while Sekai’s tolerance for Makoto is dropping. So far, I still like Sekai the best, mostly due to Kotonoha’s behaviour—she refuses to believe that Makoto is cheating on her, despite the obvious clues, until the very end. Sekai is blunt at least.

Rating: 8/10

Impressions:

It really is pretty hard to tell whether Makoto really does like Sekai, or if just failed to get Sekai’s special training out of his head. For the sake of entertainment, this episode is really well done, especially with the insert song (which makes Makoto’s feelings seem genuine). Even so though, I can definitely foresee Makoto losing interest in Sekai. But her being my favourite character, I’m quite content with the happenings up until now. Of course, cheating on someone is certainly not something I condone, but this is anime and it’s all for the amusement of the audience. =D

Rating: 7.5/10

Impressions:

Whoops, I kinda forgot about this show…it hasn’t really been able to keep my interest, not compared to some of the others anyway (Darker than BLACK, Claymore, Gurren Lagann etc). Anyway, this episode takes things along nicely when it comes to the relationship between Makoto and Sekai. I’m a Sekai fan, though I don’t really care what happens in the end since I can’t seem to find any aspect of either her or Kotonoha to really like. It isn’t even clear how far Sekai and Makoto progress to this episode, but I assume they go all the way (or hope, to further increase tension between the two the next time they come to be in such a situation).

I wouldn’t really call this show a romance-drama, as the relationships are just too shallow. Makoto seems to be indecisive about which girl he prefers (or he’s more likely just trying to answer his manly desires), while from Kotonoha’s point of view, the relationship can’t be too serious. As for Sekai, she probably just wants some of Makoto (I would say she definitely does if not for her momentary hesitation when Makoto starts groping her). You’d think that Makoto gets the hint from Sekai, since he doesn’t seem to be smart enough to keep it a secret for ‘more’ later if he really does know about Sekai’s desires…sigh, I guess you can’t help it if it’s a school-based romance.

Rating: 7.3/10

Impressions:

I have to say that if anyone was somewhat bored after half of this episode due to the repetitively of things and no exciting plot twists, the final line of this episode would surely change their minds. I say this because I did become a little uninterested, Makoto’s ‘Dating Kotonoha is tiring’ would seem to mark a change in the progression of the story. Originally it has been mostly Makoto and Kotonoha, but being a single season series, we all knew Sekai would come into play soon enough. If I know anything about Sekai, I’d say she’d try and keep Makoto and Konohana together initially, but will soon and surely try and steal Makoto from her friend.

I wonder what Kotonoha sees in Makoto. He’s a little better this episode, though you can still tell he’s an idiot. His relationship with Kotonoha just doesn’t work out. There’s no chemistry at all as far as I can tell. Kotonoha looks like she’s forcing herself most of the time, though that could be due to her nervousness. Sekai tells Makoto to act naturally, though ‘naturally’ for him is utter failure. His eagerness to further his relationship with Kotonoha, probably by getting her in bed, is surely failing and this is most likely why he finds dating her a pain in the ass now. I feel sorry for Kotonoha when she’s asked about her boyfriend lol…

Speaking of the incident where Kotonoha is questioned about her boyfriend by her fellow student council members, it would seem that she’s even thinking to herself about how much of a dick Makoto is. Regardless of what Makoto does, Kotonoha never seems satisfied. While this I guess is not all Makoto’s fault, it does mean that their relationship will most likely fail. It seems likely that there’ll be a bad ending, which is something I’m really looking forward to. For now though, I think it would be pretty interesting if Makoto started two-timing with Kotonoha and Sekai.

Rating: 7.3/10

Impressions:

So Makoto scores in the first episode with Sekai, and now again with Kotonoha. Things seem to be going pretty well for now, despite him being such a retard. Yup, I hate him now. I usually don’t hate harem leads no matter what happens, but seeing Makoto do the stupidest things possible on his date is just horrific. For an ending, I would like one where he gets killed or something. I do want an ending where he gets together with Sekai, though for that to happen he definitely needs to reform his personality and common sense. He’s a real bastard at the moment (I feel sorry for Kotonoha lol).

I’m slightly disappointed that the mood between Makoto and Sekai doesn’t change even after she makes a move on him. I’m sure no one in Japan would believe that kissing is a way of saying hello. Even in western countries, between teenagers a kiss on the cheek is as far as anything goes between friends. I guess Makoto is too infatuated with Kotonoha to worry about Sekai. Hopefully Sekai makes another move soon and actually gets her feelings stuck in that think brain of Makoto’s (lol am I speaking too badly about him? I don’t actually hatre him that much—he IS really annoying though).

Kotonoha’s change in attitude during the last few minutes of the episode certainly make me like her character more. I doubt she’s moved on from her reserved and shy self, though as it seems things will probably start heating up soon and she’ll be forced to be more aggressive. I wonder how she’ll feel when she actually thinks about the kiss that she shares with Makoto. I can imagine an ‘OMG what did I do? Embarrassing!’ line coming from her in the next episode, but personally I’d prefer it if she actual stays in the state of mind that she is in during those last few scenes. At least then any competition with Sekai will be interesting.

Rating: 7/10

Japanese Title: スクールデイズ
Genre(s): Drama, romance
Episodes: 13 + 3 (wait am I sure about this?)
OP: “Innocent Blue” by DeviceHigh
Producer(s): TNK, Marvellous Entertainment
Official Site: http://www.schooldays-anime.com/

Impressions:

School Days (yes I’ll be blogging this) focuses on the love triangle between a guy (Makoto Ito) and two girls (Sekai Saionji and Kotonoha Katsura), though as of the first episode Sekai and Makoto have already hooked up. The initial story is a pretty often-seen kinda thing, with Sekai helping Makoto hook up with Kotonoha, even though Sekai herself is in love with Makoto. I’ve heard about the several ‘bad’ endings in the game, and I’ve also ‘accidentally’ read about them on Wikipedia, so I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if the anime takes any of those routes. The little scene where Makoto gets unexpectedly angry and pushes Sekai may be an indication of a bad ending.

The animation quality isn’t great, but it’s at least at the standard of an average anime nowadays. The characters’ faces often need some touching up though. The seiyuus sound pretty inexperienced to me, since the dialogue just doesn’t sound like the ones you’d hear in the other thousands of series there are. The character designs are pretty attractive, while the characters themselves (for now) are pretty likeable. I like how both girls are new acquaintances, unlike the common osananajimi (childhood friend), cousin, unrelated imouto (little sister) or well-acquainted kouhai/sempai (junior/senior) etc. With this, it seems a lot more realistic and fresh in my opinion.

Of the two girls, I like Sekai a lot better, due to her outgoingness and secret crush (though it’s not in the dark anymore). Kotonoha’s ‘weak body’ aspect (since you know, heaps of anime girls have ‘weak bodies’) is not too appealing, and her personality is the shy admirer type, which I am not too fond of. Hopefully Kotonoha won’t stay the goodie-goodie that she is at the moment and the story can develop into a real drama (or tragedy). Makoto’s the pretty average kinda harem lead guy, though this time it’s not a harem (unless a third girl comes into play). He’s not exactly annoying at the moment, but I can imagine the foolish things he might do in the future to change that.