School Days: Somewhat Realistic Adolescent Romance at Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

School Days: Somewhat Realistic Adolescent Romance

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Popularity: 11% [?] Published by tj_han July 8th, 2007 in Anime Rave

I like School Days. It was the only eroge which I played and enjoyed, featuring a great story, deep main characters and animated cutscenes. The sex scenes were interesting, but not the main focus of the game. What I really liked was how the story reminded me of my own innocent youthful romances, and the huge pressure the two girls place on the protagonist, which made each and every choice in the game a heavy, painful one.

The first chapter of the game is basically the same as the first anime episode, naturally because the first chapter was an anime episode. There were a few changes, such as a reduction in fanservice levels, Makoto made sillier and piss-poor voice acting for the anime version.

In the game, Sekai was on the ground in a missionary position with her undies in full glorious view

If you like sort of realistic adolescent romance series, like Suzuka, you will surely enjoy School Days. It’s a huge step above the generic harem anime out there. The lead, Makoto, gets together with one of the girls, Kotonoha, in the first episode, thanks to the other girl, Sekai’s matchmaking. But upon completing the matchmaking, Sekai reveals how she actually has a crush on him as well by kissing Makoto on the lips. When she finally decides to fight for her love, the mild-mannered Kotonoha turns out to be a jealous control freak and a serious bitchfest ensues. Along the way, there are other less critical characters with more typical haremic sidestories.

I’m not exactly sure why Makoto didn’t turn away. I suspect it is because no straight guy would stop a hot girl from kissing him.

She doesn’t know… and when she does, it’s MURDER TIME.

I’m interested to see which route the anime takes, as there are about 32 different endings in the game, some of which are rather sad ones involving rape, murder and pregnancy. At the end of episode 1, it’s not possible to tell just yet. But the system the game employs is: There are a fixed number of chapters, and there will only be two paths for each chapter. Depending on your choices, you will get either route A or route B for that specific chapter. Hence the pathway goes like this: 1 -> 2 -> 4 (2 for each scenario) -> 8 -> 16 -> 32 Endings (due to degeneracy, there are only 21 ending types). Chapter 1 remains the same, Chapter 2 you will pick either Sekai or Kotonoha, Chapter 3 is the buildup to the battle, Chapter 4 is the full conflict and Chapter 5 is the climax which is resolved by Chapter 6’s denouement.

My favourite character is Setsuna, because I have a liking for silent lolis. I have a strong feeling her sidestory will be fully incorporated into the anime, as she’s quite popular in the fandom. So popular that she got her own spinoff sequel, Summer Days. One issue I have is the cutting of all the procreation scenes. They were quite significant to the story because they show the emotional investment each girl makes in Makoto. Most of the kids in School Days aren’t exactly the sex-crazed whores so common in the real world, they’re more like the good kids who keep their virginity till marriage or something. So the fact that they are willing to give themselves up to Makoto shows the amount of trust they have in him, which makes it believable when they go all batshit insane upon realisation that the dirty bastard is cheating on them.

Setsuna <3!! I note that when a girl is named Setsuna in any series, she becomes my favourite. Coincidental?

The beauty of School Days is that it’s a lesson in how harems can be very scary business indeed.

I did mention how it reminds me of my own relationships when I was a little kid. Subtract the violence, sexual activity and haremic subheroines, School Days is pretty realistic and relatable. Situations such as the matchmaker actually harbouring romantic feelings for the male are common. Makoto having a crush on Kotonoha based solely on her looks and his perceived traits of her are also stuff we all would have experienced. The initial shyness when meeting up with a crush is also something we all go through back in the days of our youth. Since this is a public blog, I can’t really divulge anything too personal lol, so too bad for that. Every man has his own dark secrets which he cannot reveal in media his missus has access to.

To cap it off, do watch School Days despite its crappy voice acting and animation quality.

Popularity: 11% [?]

21 Responses to “School Days: Somewhat Realistic Adolescent Romance”

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1 Zzz... 28 comments Jul 8th, 2007 at 12:59 am

A beautiful sadness is the best kind of sadness.
2 JS 82 comments Jul 8th, 2007 at 1:14 am

I’ll try out the game sometime soon, just in case the anime doesn’t satisfy me. If Makoto gets too annoying for me in the anime, I’ll go right to the bad guro ending of the game for stress relief.
3 Karura 20 comments Jul 8th, 2007 at 1:40 am

It’s hard to imagine that you were ever innocent…
4 bj0rN 153 comments Jul 8th, 2007 at 3:01 am

rofl~ remind me of the nice bad endings. =D
5 ChronosAI 23 comments Jul 8th, 2007 at 3:58 am

The game’s bad endings were something different from the usual and also being good at being “bad”.
And there will be ski-resort in Hell before we have one of the bad bad endings be the choice for ending in tv series.

Reminds of me that I have to go and re-install Summer Days from disc.
6 Sasa 82 comments Jul 8th, 2007 at 5:59 am

Now if School Days is to you what Nana is to me (a reflection of my youth, that is), I am now even more interested in the series.
I actually also want to play the game, but I fear the moonspeak.
7 Crusader 28 comments Jul 8th, 2007 at 7:09 am

Not sure if innocent and good belong in any place in this post. Youthful romances? Nice euphemism comrade.
All I care about in School Days is the promise of blood and somebody dying. As to the use of realistic, I guess that is colored by one own experiences. Even it the average girl in School Days makes an emotional investment the double pregnancy ending tells me that while they aren’t promiscuous they certainly aren’t smart either.

All I can hope for is that everybody dies…
8 Seleria 8 comments Jul 8th, 2007 at 11:40 am

The character designs appealed to me at first, when I looked it up in Wikipedia and read the infamous bad endings, I now have mixed feelings for it. Also, the male protagonist has been grouped together with that loser Shirou from FSN. That’s just sad.

Since this is a public blog, I can’t really divulge anything too personal lol, so too bad for that.

I’d like to read how innocent you were tj han :p
9 tj_han 1440 comments Jul 8th, 2007 at 2:03 pm

Seleria: If I did share then this would become a personal blog, you know like the sort those regular folks keep at myspace or livejournal? No way am I dumb enough to do that lol.

Crusader: The girls aren’t promiscuous, they are just stupid. You hit the nail on the head. But aren’t girls stupid in general? Especially when it comes to emo stuff.

Sasa: But the girls in NANA are pretty old aren’t they? I played the game, it had Japanese subtitles and the language was sooooo simple that a seasoned anime viewer can catch them all.
10 Sasa 82 comments Jul 8th, 2007 at 3:34 pm

I believe the game is nothing like the Nana manga. If I’m not mistaken, the game was produced after Nana became a huge commercial success (and that’s actually also where the manga turned worse and overly emo). The dialogue in the Nana manga aren’t all that difficult to understand, that may be, but Nana has something that other shoujo manga don’t: The characters who are worrying about the others also talk about each other (behind their backs, if you want) and analyse their personnalities - very correct analyses, I might add. That also adds depth and gives the readers the possibility to sympathize with the characters.

So yeah, the girls are quite old and out of school, but I am rather talking about the quality of the relationship themselves - the passionate way the two Nanas are loving and the illusions they had fitted my relationships back then perfectly. It’s quite different, now that I am equally as the Nanas *haha*
11 DrmChsr0 190 comments Jul 9th, 2007 at 4:31 am

Nana? School Days? Dan Kim?

OSHI

*thinks of another torrid Dan Kim webcomic.
12 Somatic 33 comments Jul 10th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

“Most of the kids in School Days aren’t exactly the sex-crazed whores so common in the real world, they’re more like the good kids who keep their virginity till marriage or something”

Hey TJ, I do agree on this one with you.
13 Ryunatta 1 comment Jul 11th, 2007 at 4:48 am

Sooo the protagonis guy is a cheating bastard (scraches School days off of anime watching list)I need another “faithful” romance anime to watch….
14 tj_han 1440 comments Jul 11th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

Ryunatta: Faithful romance? You must be a girl. Guys are hardwired biologically to be polygamous. And yes, Makoto is one of the more unfaithful protagonists out there and you might want to kill him at times.
15 exalt dragon 162 comments Jul 14th, 2007 at 12:05 am

TJ han: you sound very, very old, waaaaaay beyond your years…… I practically feel the jiji-ness coming out of you.

It just seems to me that Makoto is more of a retard in the anime, and somewhat cute at it. E.g. during the date in episode 2.

The preview at the end of ep 3 said the 3rd episode would be surechigau omoi….Why do I sense that the ending, therefore would be either:

Futari no Koibito(the perhaps only somewhat harem ending),
Soushite Kotonoha to(Stick to the kotonoha path), or
Omoi　Musunde (Sekai Ending)

…

Or perhaps one off the other possibilities.

Considering the totally trying-to-be-funny-but-ending-up-lame tone that the anime employs, it seems unlikely to end in the bloody endings..
16 shin asuka 1 comment Jul 22nd, 2007 at 6:48 am

i have bad feeling about this game!!! ive seen the animation in the game,, thats where i get my bad feeling in this anime!!! hope the ending will not be like the violent one in the game!!!
17 rollchan 1 comment Aug 1st, 2007 at 5:14 pm

let’s hope, really hope that the producers wouldn’t make an one of the endings so obscene and graphic in nature as the one in the game, thus the 3 infamous bad endings. *sigh…*
18 jingtian 1 comment Nov 28th, 2008 at 9:48 am

I believe love is the strongest way of expressing once love to one another. If feel that your in love with somebody u will fil a happy day in your whole life. love can melt the pain but pain can melt the love 2.
19 SpAwnofchAos 1 comment Mar 26th, 2009 at 11:14 am

Where do I buy this game?

Do not use any < and > for your own sake. It will end the comment there and then. Also, there is an automatic IQ filter which weeds out comments made by those who accidentally got transported from the stone age.

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