School Days

"Television Kanagawa has decided to cancel the final episode of the anime "School Days," which shows a high school girl acting violently, in response to the recent murder of a Kyoto Prefectural Police officer by his 16-year-old daughter.

The broadcaster made the decision to cut the final episode on Tuesday. The drama is also being aired by Chiba Television Broadcasting Corp. and Aichi Television Broadcasting Co. Those two stations also reportedly plan to halt broadcasts.

"School Days" depicts a love triangle between three high school students: Makoto Ito, Kotonoha Katsura and Sekai Saionji. Episodes have been screened on Television Kanagawa and other UHF stations since July this year. The computer love simulation game on which the anime was based has about 20 different endings and one shows a high school girl slashing a victim with a knife.

Television Kanagawa officials said that the last episode of the anime shows a schoolgirl acting violently. To tone down the scene, the victim's blood was made black instead of red, but after the killing in Kyoto on Tuesday, officials decided to cancel the episode.

"We ask viewers for their understanding," a station official said.

Officials at communications satellite broadcaster "AT-X," which airs anime restricted to viewers aged 15 or over, said they were still considering whether to screen the final episode.

The killing in Kyoto occurred in the predawn hours of Tuesday, when a police officer's 16-year-old daughter attacked her father with an ax. (Mainichi Shimbun, September 19, 2007)"

School Days (スクールデイズ) is a 12 episode slice of life romance based on the visual novel of the same name developed by Overflow.  The anime originally aired during the Summer of 2007.  

 

   Ito Makoto, is an easygoing high school student who lives by himself. Makoto has become mystified by a cute, quiet girl who rides the same train he does. He is always admiring her from afar and one day secretly takes a picture of her with his phone. According to the current lore at his school, if you take a picture of the person you like and put it as your phones background you will go out with that person if no one finds out about the background for a month. The day he takes it Makoto is admiring it in class when the girl who sits next to him, Saionji Sekai, notices it and asks if it is his girlfriend. When he shows defeat she realizes he was trying to use the cell phone wallpaper 'talisman'. When she finds out that the photo was taken that morning she feels guilty for destroying his chances at going out with her so quickly. Sekai, which knows who the girl is, Katsura Kotonoha. She tells Makoto that she will help make Kotonoha his girlfriend. Along with pushing Makoto to talk to her and to ask her to go out, Sekai also befriends Kotonoha and offers her advice, working both ends of the relationship. When she finds out that Kotonoha has the same feelings for Makoto, Sekai realizes she  also has feelings for him. She suppresses them and helps both become a couple while continuing to offer advice as they date, in order to make the relationship run smoothly and grow. 

    Things start to go wrong when Sekai gives Makoto a kiss as payment for hooking him up with Kotonoha. Makoto tries to grope Kotonoha and instigate sex with her, but is rejected. This causes him emotional distress and he continuously goes to Sekai for help in the matter. Sekai tries to help him achieve his goals with Kotonoha, but it soon turns to her letting him do the things he wants to do to Kotonoha on her. She comes up with excuses to justify their actions, saying she is just letting him practice on her so he can build up his confidence so he can do it with Kotonoha. The amount of 'practice' greatly increases, with Sekai spending the night at Makoto's apartment quite frequently. At the same time Makoto is still technically dating Kotonoha, yet having sex with Sekai. Sekai partially enjoys the relationship, because she has Makoto, even though not all of his heart is hers. Kotonoha, on the other hand, is being pushed more to the sideline by Makoto, wondering why he is trying to avoid her. The students around her are also talking about how Makoto and Sekai are a couple, yet Kotonoha greatly defends her position as his girlfriend. Kotonoha begins to find out about Sekai and her boyfriend but chooses to ignore it, after all Makoto is her boyfriend. 

 

    Things come to a head during the school festival. Sekai's best friend, Katsura Kokoro, thinks that Makoto is her boyfriend and that Kotonoha is trying to steal him from Sekai. She does everything she can to try and stop what she thinks are illicit advances on someone else's man. She even sets up Makoto's cell phone to block emails and calls from Kotonoha. Katsura is Sekai's closest friend as well as her emotional support. She is going to be moving to France and wants to make sure that Sekai has someone else she can lean on for support. Katsura sees Makoto as that person and is determined to make sure that he is faithful to her, even if they are not really a couple. She continuously talks with him about how he should finalize his break up with Kotonoha so she won't interfear with his relationship with Sekai. On the night before the festival Kotonoha comes across Katsura stealing a kiss from a passed out Makoto and thinks that the reason she has been so cold to her is because she loves him instead. Both Kotonoha and Sekai ask for Makoto to dance with them at the end of the festival to symbolize their relationship. Before that happens though, Makoto ends up having sex with a random friend from middle school who is in Kotonoha's class, Kato Otome. Makoto has not only cheated on Kotonoha with Sekai, but has now cheated on both of them with Kato. Kotonoha watches from the rooftop of the school as Makoto and Sekai lovingly dance with each other around the festivals ending bonfire. This pushes Kotonoha over the edge, into a sea of insanity and delusions. After finding it easy to cheat on Sekai, Makoto finds himself sleeping with a revolving group of classmates, daily. He even goes so far as to sleep with 3 girls from Kotonoha's class at the same time. Needless to say everything comes crashing down as Makoto's extra curricular activities become well known through out school.  Sekai reveals to him in school that she is pregnant and tries to capture Makoto's heart completely so they can raise their unborn child together. Makoto wants nothing to do with Sekai being pregnant. Kotonoha has completely lost touch with reality and is slipping into insanity. As everyone else keeps their distance from him, Makoto finds himself rejecting Sekai and yearning for everyone else. The series comes to a head, as the original love triangle comes to a resolution.

    This series starts off as a mundane high school romance but quickly changes into a non-graphic porno, as Makoto takes every waking available moment to screw Sekai. It also changes into a drama as the relationships are strained as the love triangle grows. You really start to feel sorry for Kotonoha who is being lied to and cheated on by Makoto, who himself is turning into a sex fueled beast of no remorse. The one troubling thing with the series is its tendency to have shots posed like those from ero dating sims. There are a numerous views of the characters through out each episode that are done in the odd ero-galge fashion...but given the titles origins this makes sense.  I don't remember there being a lot of fan-service for fan-services' sake in this show though.  

 

    The show is done through Makoto's eyes a lot of the time, much like the game is. At first I was on the fence about if I wanted to continue watching it, sure I needed a new romance series, but this one just seemed so mundane and a little annoying. As it became more serious I started to get into it, but not enough to really want to actively watch it. Then when I heard about the last episode being preempted I was quite interested to see how everything spiraled out of control to lead to a knife attack. So, after I had episode 12 I sat down and watched the last 5 episodes in a row…it was quite a roller coaster ride. For anyone who started off thinking Makoto was a likable character you will truly hate the demon he becomes in the end. You pity Kotonoha, but not too much, because she herself cannot accept the truth in front of her. Sekai...you could go either way, but in the end she was manipulative and sneaky. Near the end they have a brief Eva-esque moment in which Katsura realizes the evils she has done while watching an avant-garde play put on during the festival. They use the same scenario to examine Sekai's wrong doings. Oh yeah, Katsura even ends up sleeping with Makoto…pimp.

    Now you might say to yourself, that this series shows that men can get away with doing whatever they want and so on and so forth. Let me just say that this series has an ending that is furthest from a happy one. It is so far beyond the typical way a high school romance ends. Let’s just say the creators probably chose the worst possible ending for the game when writing this series. Sure, everything gets fun and you’re screwing all these cute girls, but that all crashes down and you have to pay for your sins in the end.  School Days is one of the more messed up series I have seen; along the lines of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. It's the dating sim version of Higurashi, yet without the Watanagashi festival or Oyashiro-sama.

    All in all, even if you do not particularly like romances, but you enjoy Higurashi no Naku Koro ni or similar savage titles, give School Days a shot, in the end you will be satisfied.

(There is also a 1-shot hentai oav that ends differently than the series)