If you ask me, episode 11 kind of gave an illusion that everything would end well, while at the same time hinting at the insuing bloodfest.

Firstly I think I should say how much I loved this series despite some clashing opinion (especially with the haters who think that it should have been made proper) – but this is all a matter of personal opinion and taste.

So what did I like about school days?

DRAMA!!! HIGHSCHOOL DRAMA!!!

I don’t think there is another word quite fitting for this series. Ever since I’ve heard about this series I have tried to dig up information on it while spoiling me at the same time but that was no biggie. I came to realize that this wasn’t any ordinary series where it followed a common run of the muck plot. No. What made this series special and eye catching to me in the first place was the awesome bad good ends from the game. And of course knowing how much of a bastard makoto was before hand also made me desperate to find out what happens in the series.

Enough background now and onto the series itself.
The story was just, well fantastic in my opinion. Everything played out perfectly to what I expected it to be and maybe even more seeing some of the events that came about. While it may not be to some peoples tastes I did think that the series was “working as intended” as it wasn’t meant to be a love story to begin with – more of an anti love story in fact.

The plot was whacky but I find it highly believable and realistic – well maybe except for the killing...and the threesome...and the “trance like state” from kotonoha – but on the whole I feel that it captured some essence of reality as we do get people like makoto these days (as much as I hate to admit to how much society has fallen but that is another story).

Well I guess I should make a breakdown of the characters.

Makoto –

Seriously, has anyone met such a jerk in real life? If you have better give me the address so I can go on a killing spree! :rolleyes: As a character makoto fails at life. Some of the things he does are impossibly annoying an illogical given the situation. I mean perfect example would be his first date with kotonoha. JUST WHAT THE HELL IS THAT! I have said that there is a limit to stupidity but he just blows the limit through the roof. He should have looked up the definition of “date” before actually going on one. I mean what kind of guy puts themselves over their date? Even more so when the girl is a super hot babe/idol – you would normally do anything to please her going by normal logic but as well know makoto is a monkey.

The guy is not only indecisive but also f**king indecisive as we have come to know. He just doesn’t seem to have the brain power (lawl did I just say that?), I mean he doesn’t have any brains at all to think about his actions and consequences. I have to say that some of this responsibility (or a lot) hinged on sekai for the first half of the series but right after the frequent sex they were having we see that makoto is looking for variety. HAPPY YAROOOOOOOO!!

Like I said first had of the series is somewhat detached from the second half as far as the characters go. We see the heavily controlling sekai turn into mush later on in the series as she loses her leash around makoto’s neck. To be honest she had it coming to her but looking at the end even I am depressed at how things turned out. Back to makoto, well to start off with his was a wimp. No spine at all AND LOOK he still doesn’t have one! But that’s not the point. The thing is that makoto is a bastard who always acted like the pushover. Maybe he was still a virgin which caused him to think like all teens think at this age but he only does so in the weirdest way ever. He won’t ever show his true colours unlike taisuke yet I suspect that he is worse than his brain dead friend.

Being pushed around by sekai was what got this whole thing started. I was fine with sekai trying to play match making but what she did at the end of episode 1 was just “zomg I’m so going to see blood later on!” and hey here we have it :p
Makoto has always been bombarded with mixed feelings, which is natural considering that now sekai is going out some false vibes. Why the heck would she kiss him if she set them up in the first place? Incomes first bashing!

But this is the first half of the series where makoto has showed nothing more than being a jackass with a perverted monkey attitude towards kotonoha. The way he lusts after her body is just disgusting! Firstly he tries to kiss kotonoha on the lips on their second failure date and thinks it is weird that she runs away from him – sekai should just give him a f**king beating! :frustrated:

Next he grabs her chest while she gives into the “kiss” thinking that she will do her part and be a good girlfriend to him. WHAT THE FCK ARE YOU THINKING! Normal people won’t just grab someone by the chest without warning, and those who do are usually locked up in jail! Kotonoha seriously needs to reconsider her choice for makoto but meh that is how the story goes.

Well makoto after having sex with sekai is 100 times worse – oh joy as if it couldn’t get any worse for him. He begins to screw around now that he has got what he wanted from sekai but that wasn’t the first thing he did. Well firstly he kept putting off from telling kotonoha the truth. I blame sekai for this (partly) but I’ll get onto it in the next section.

Yea well makoto is so spineless I just saw him as a person who doesn’t want to lose both girls. Even though he knows how deep of a shit he is in, he is just unwilling to let go of kotonoha hence delaying the inevitable. Isn’t it shocking that it wasn’t until the last few episodes of the series where it was setsuna who made makoto tell kotonoha the truth...err by that time it was way too little too late, Which results in kotonoha breaking down.

But before that the most thing I’m pissed about with his attitude is his inability to feel any regret or remorse (unlike sekai) as he obviously knew that holding onto this secret and avoiding her was only hurting the girl who he has previously “loved”. HA! In this series love is used in the most twisted way ever!
I suspect that makoto never “loved” anyone...what he loved was their bodies – typical :rolleyes:

He is such a lucky yaro if I’ve ever seen one myself! Go the guy is a chick magnet for all the wrong reasons and yet they keep coming for more...until the end that is :D

The ending that makoto go was just perfect. Now if all women did that to guys who deserve it then this would be such a better world.
I just don’t know what to say for makoto anymore. He is such a bland and boring character even seeing his dumbass face makes me want to break something *punches wall*.

Sekai –

I never harboured much love for sekai. Even in the beginning I only thought of her as someone who is too nosey at looking into someone else’s business. And my dislike soon turned into hatred when she started to give makoto the special helps. I mean to be realistically it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!

Looking back we all know how sekai was the one pulling the strings which started off the unwanted relationship between makoto and kotonoha. However, she should have just left it at that and for nature to take its own course. But instead sekai confused makoto by giving him the first hint of being unsure about who he really loves.

The kiss...WHAT!!!! :twitch:

Yea that was my initial reaction to the kiss after episode one. The act that spelt disaster for kotonoha. This is the thing that I hate about sekai. She is just to dam unstable in her own thoughts. She knows full well what he feelings where but yet she chose to ignore them. Fair enough but only if she kept her urges to herself then maybe makoto might live a happy life with kotonoha. But instead she chose to drop hints every now and then.

But another flaw in her character is that she just doesn’t seem to get the point of couples no working. Why the hell is she trying her hardest to pull makoto and kotonoha together when it’s obvious that it won’t work out? Forget what happened firstly, sekai was given a second chance to officially date makoto when kotonoha split up with him after the movie incident. But instead of taking this as a sign to go in and get her man she, instead to it upon herself to play cupid AGAIN. GIRL get some brains already! If she can see that the relationship isn’t working then why did she try to get them back together again? She should have just dated makoto herself instead of laying the goody goody ass friend.

The special training, now that was going one step too far. I’m sure everyone here agrees that sekai must have been out of her mind to be offering this so called “special training” AKA practicing sex. Just what has this world turned into? She really didn’t think that this act of seduction would have had and after effect? Give me a break. This act just shows that she is as naive as makoto.
With that said and done she later gave into his wishes. Fair enough but what happens next? She total fails to get makoto to tell kotonoha the truth. *sigh* as I have said countless times if makoto doesn’t have enough of a spine to go then she should have gone instead.

Anyway, as the series progressed we see her influence over makoto lessen as he begins to lust for other women. This ultimately results to her depression and emo states with countless highs and lows – so much that I can’t even remember it all :heh:

So to summarise. Sekai is the person who started all this balls in the first place. Even if she wasn’t the person to finish it (actually she was the second) she is directly responsible for all the drama in this series concerting the trio. She is constantly fighting her feelings but isn’t unaware that those feelings are not being fully contained and so events happen between her and makoto. Before she realized what a mess she has made it was all too later. Setsuna is gone so there isn’t anyone to count on. She was left by herself to clean up everything but her naive attitude caused her downfall. Her last resort to make makoto saty by her side failed as obviously he doesn’t want to hold responsibility. And hence the killing ++++++ points and her death -------- points >_<

Kotonoha –

Ah my princess...how hath dost been wrong.
Yep as most may already know I am a full supporter of kotonoha so bare with me if my view on her comes across as being bias.
Throughout the whole series kotonoha has come across as being the victim to me. Why? Well the simple answer would be because she didn’t have anything to do with this yet her devotion to a single man (however unworthy) is causing her to miss the plot completely.

She was betrayed! Basically yes she was betrayed as she never got the full picture until it was too late.
In the first half of the series we have seen how much kotonoha has tried to become less shy, and she even succeeds with the pool episode, I laugh so hard at the kotonoha haters because the mainly use excuses such as “she is too shy” to beat her away with the stick. Yea kotonoha may be shy but just look at her try hard NOT to be shy. She knows her own weakness and tires to improve on it while sekai doesn’t. THROW THAT INTO YOU PIPE AND SMOKE IT! *cough* random fanboy outburst :heh:

Continuing, kotonoha has been betrayed quite badly. Looking at her personality we can see that she is the traditional “Japanese housewife” type of girl which isn’t surprising that she asks shy and reserved. It is just the way she is brought up to be – yep the perfect wifu. It also isn’t shocking to see why she would want to be with makoto so much but later on it takes a deeper meaning.
Kotonoha has always been the girl idol which is like a double edge sword. While people drool over her nice curves everyone is scared to talk to perfection and hence kotonoha is left without a friend and manages to make a lot of enemies AKA jealous bitches!

When I said that she has always been the victim I wasn’t joking. Looking at the amount of shit she takes in everyday 1) bossy bitches 2) loneliness 3) shyness – being too afraid to speak up 4) people wanting to rape her – I am actually quite surprised that she managed to held things out, with a hint of deny until she was told the truth.

Basically for makoto she was just treated like an object (a slab of meat), not that she knows or probably even care now that she has find “happiness”. For someone who has been alone for so long the word “happiness” is warped. What kotonoha think is happiness is just her way of saying to feel wanted. She is afraid to lose the only two people who would even care for her but little does she know all the time she was being backstabbed.

Now onto the relationship. Kotonoha has played the part of the tragic heroine. Looking at the facts it is evident that she has been denied a proper explanation throughout the whole betrayal. Pretty bad when she announced to the bitches that makoto is her boyfriend only to catch him having sex with sekai. Just imagine the amount of shock she went through? This was when the cracks started to appear. She becomes in denial of the situation whether or not she really understands it is unknown but from the looks she is really innocent in that aspect (though some might argue that she is just batshit mad :rolleyes:).

It is really sad to see her holding onto hope when everyone was spreading rumours on her lying about the fact that she is makoto’s girlfriend. This fact is true seen as makoto never revealed the truth until later. Looking at how fcking bitchy everyone can be just proke my heart – even setsuna couldn’t resist but give the evil eye to kotonoha countless times.

Kotonoha then actually has a completely breakdown with the whole “taking to herself” and stuff. I guess the second shock of having her boyfriend confirm the truth was just too much and there we have it.
Next was her revival but that didn’t prove that she was sane. Yep the way she acted towards sekai in the last episode was just out of her usual character. At this point I just can’t see her as a sane human anymore – the mental damage was just too much.

I’m actually pretty depressed seeing her killing sekai with such a psycho look. All of this came about due to a series of misfortunate events and so I can’t find the heart to condemn her. She has already suffered enough from the amount of shit that wasn’t supposed to happen but did and just looking at the final scene where she was holding onto makoto’s head like some treasure just broke my heart. Depression has sunk a new low :sad:.

*pause*

Well I guess I’ll stop here for now seen as I’m goddam tired XD I will probably finish this post off tomorrow.
Just for the record though ill rate this series a 10/10 for reasons I will explain later on

This was never going to be a presto-chango redemption anime with the warm inner glow of humanity's enduring goodness burning throughout, however dimly. No, this was dirty, ugly, depraved and inconsequential desire without consideration, rampant and unabated lust on all sides, not just Makoto. All serious offenders get their comeuppance in varying degrees of ironic and macabre detachment, bathed in the blackest of humour. Sekai gets the horror of dumping right in front of her eyes, tortured by the apparent love-in going on right in front of her eyes on Makoto's doorstep. Nothing breaks a girl's heart like a fierce tongue wrestle inches away from your nose. Kotonoha taunts Sekai with the horrible grain of truth within her barbs - the calculated seduction of Makoto, the pretense of getting close via comaraderie, the revelation of Setsuna's 'infidelity' AND we learn that Sekai even was originally aware of Setsuna's liking of Makoto and tried to pull exactly the same stunt to get close to Makoto. I guess we can infer that Makoto did give Setsuna the benefit of his experience if this is how Sekai reacts, although Kotonoha is probably just exaggerating because unless Makoto told her (and that's doubtful), she's probably just playing it us. It's as indistinct as ever, but Sekai recognises that Setstuna was just as selfish in her pursuit of Makoto as she was regarding Kotonoha. Each and every one of the women here are at fault in varying degrees. The breaking of Sekai occurs in one fell swoop - Makoto doesn't want her, he doesn't love her, their love was a pretense based on seduction, he doesn't want to have their baby, her only friend did the dirty on her and has left the country AND she faces the Makoto-shaped pressure of getting an abortion (or does she? I'll get to this). That's a lot to handle in one night.

Makoto's like a human weather vane. In the final episode, we got a little bit more of a sense of the character. I do feel as though he redeemed himself SLIGHTLY, although he'd already signed his death warrant by being so explicit with Kotonoha in front of Sekai. What struck me as odd was that a great deal was made of Makoto claiming he'd had enough of chasing every skirt he could and instead was trying to 'settle down' with Kotonoha. He actually seemed to be making the effort (however superficial). We got a sense of some of the turmoil he was in being lumbered with a pregnancy this early in his life (his own stupid fault, but both he AND Sekai should have been more careful) and his desire to make things stick with Kotonoha (although the application of hands to breasts with the promise of more to come was surely a motivation...). We got to see him making tea for his girl, which is a little strange because we'd NEVER seen him make such a small gesture before outside of his bumbling attempts at courtship (or pleasuring himself - that's a rough joke).

Now, I'm a squeamish little ponce. I can't handle blood, black or otherwise. What I did enjoy was the pacing in the final episode. They played with the atmosphere of expectation perfectly! The kettle being boiled was a great little bit of manipulation - it's eerily quiet and then we get the smash cut of the hob starting up. There's a lot of great imagery going on in that kitchen - Sekai's realisation that she, and potentially her child (had she have gone through with the abortion), are yesterday's rubbish while staring at the waste in the binliner from the night before, Makoto literally getting his fingers burnt by trying to get at the kettle before he's ready to handle it etc. etc. All nice touches. They didn't forget some of the smaller details like Kotonoha's wealth (getting picked up by car) as well, which was nice to see. The actual stabbing of Makoto was harrowing from the point of view that we get a distressed style of animation on his features while he's in his death throes - the flashing before him of his romantic life was probably, as hinted, to cover some of the more explicit scenes of his wounds that were supposedly seen at the 0verflow screening, as they seemed a little trite and forced. But it's where Makoto's hand ends up that's the most interesting part of this scene. That and his 'thank goodness'. This is the writer's attempt at giving Makoto a tiny little bit of redemption - or a last cruel trick on Sekai. Did he want the abortion? He made a point of saying that Kotonoha had suggested the doctor. While in the living room, he wonders whether she got the wrong idea... The wrong idea about what? "Do it as soon as possible". Seems pretty clear cut. Also, why does Kotonoha know a doctor specialising in abortions, hmm? Does he also assume she took the morning off to meet the doctor? So many questions, so indistinct (as normal, eh?). Let's assume that Sekai did have an abortion, and that compounded her mental state to such an extent she murdered Makoto in much the same fashion - Makoto's abdominal fondling would suggest he actually wanted the kid. It would give Kotonoha's examination some credence as well. That would send Sekai right over the edge. But then again, she claims she didn't go to the doctor (or at least, 'not one that Kotonoha recommended')... So indistinct! Questions upon questions. Ah well, dead men tell no tales.