School Days

Makoto Ito is a young high school student beginning his second term at Sakakino Academy. During his daily train rides to and from school, he becomes infatuated with fellow student Kotonoha Katsura; a girl that also commutes. When a new classmate acquaintance of his, Sekai Saionji, discovers his secret crush on Kotonoha, she helps introduce both of them to each other and over time they grow closer and agree to date. However in spite of her proud and triumphant matchmaking efforts, Sekai inadvertently becomes jealous of the new couple, having also developed feelings toward Makoto.

Source: School Days on Kissanime

About

School Days is a Japanese visual novel developed by 0verflow and was released for Windows as an adult game on April 2005. By July 2007, an anime television series based on the visual novel of the same name was released as a 12 episode series.

Thoughts

Despite the seemingly innocent title, School Days is far from that. It is a perverted, twisted psychological anime series that will make you question relationships in general, particularly the consequences of cheating. It is the perfect example of what happens when one gives in to their emotions without carefully thinking the full ramifications of their actions.

What better way to do that is through teenagers in the prime of their youth. School Days tells the story of Makoto Itou, a highschooler who is trapped in a love triangle with the girl of his dreams(Kotonoha Katsura) and the girl who helped him get the said girl(Saionji Sekai).

School Days starts off as your typical high school romance in which the main character has a crush on this pretty, kind, sweet, smart [insert all cliche adjectives] but naive young girl with big boobs. With the help of his tomboyish friend, he successfully got the girl of his dreams. Things start to get complicated when the tomboyish girl realized that she also have some feelings towards the boy. Up until this point, everything follows the cliche love-triangle high school genre romance.

Things starts to get dark after Makoto wants more from Katsura, his girlfriend. Makoto wants to get sexual. With Katsura being more prim and proper, she thinks that they are moving way too fast in their relationship. After many failed attempts by Makoto to get physical with his girlfriend, he started to feel bored on Katsura but can't help himself break up with her because he doesn't want to hurt her feelings. He soon tells his tomboyish "best of friend" Sekai all about it. Sekai then tells Makoto that it is all about the "mood" and offers to teach him the basics of intimacy and physical contact.

Basically, that is what School Days is all about. A 12 anime episode series about a young boys conquest over some girls. A young boy on the peak of his youth just can't help feel curious and want to explore more what's on the other side. The problem arises when someone like him, consumed by insatiable desire for sex has absolutely no sense of right and wrong in his actions and will treat girls just like crap.

Despite the simplistic plot, what made School Days popular during its time was the show's ending. It is by far one of the most surprising and controversial turn of event of all time. I am not gonna lie, Episode 1-11 was all not that good. If it wasn't for all the make-out sessions between the two "sex-with-benefit" friends I would have dropped this one on the go. But Episode 12, the last episode of School Days made it all worth it.