Apologies for a quick entry, but that just means I’ll have to leave the discussion open-ended instead of just babbling on forever. We’ll see if this incites more comment.

But, anyway, if I do manage to get this post finished in the next half-hour, it will have been roughly one year since the airing of the first episode of School Days, the infamous harem (some say anti-harem) show that was groundbreaking or shocking in so many ways. Truly it is one of the most unique shows the anime world will see – maybe not in concept, but in execution, you just have to wonder what kind of ideas were running through the producer’s heads, for better or worse.

I thought it would make an interesting topic to look back from much further down the proverbial river (hey, you make the boat jokes, not me) back at School Days, and see if it’s still everything it was cracked up to be.

When School Days first aired, it was the talk of the otakusphere. People would simply not shut up about it, myself included.

It was what seemed to be a simple show, but one that incited discussion, or at the least, rabid screaming. It’s been a long time since the harem genre has had a hero they can truly hate; truly, there have been a lot of ambivalent, meh-inducing, or just plain forgettable guys out there, but very few have had the guts to be as brashly promiscuous and two-timing as our dear Makoto Itou.

All this was rather odd to a fanbase which is used to much happier and much purer harem shows, and so there was a base-level talk of just how much Makoto (and, later, Taisuke and company) needed to die in a fire.

However, it wasn’t just that which was the source of all the chatter; School Days has had a long legacy, dating back to its visual novel roots, which were even more explicit and even more bloody. It was rather infamous for its endings, and so a lot of its veterans looked for clues in the anime version of School Days, seeing whether the train was headed for the cliff.

Perhaps the fact that School Days was a lot easier to talk about than any other show was simply due to how it incited anger and emotion in a viewer like no other show, and as we all know, the first thing to do when you’re angry is to rush to your computer and tell everyone all about it.

Although, equally, the trainwreck drama of the show may have left an equal amount of people spellbound and speculating.

We may never know – School Days was really a perfect storm of an anime. Not only did it steal the show during its airing, but some grim real-life circumstances in Japan caused the delay of its final episode, and the birth of perhaps the most lasting legacy of School Days, the ‘Nice Boat’ meme. Really, one could not have asked for a more controversial show, both inside and outside the canon.

But as fiery as it got us, as emotional as we got (for better or worse), the true test of worthiness for an anime is that of time. Would it still invoke the fiery rage in us in the second and third viewings, where we knew what would happen? Or would the feelings we felt toward the show fade, cooling over time?

Sadly I have not been able to find out quite yet. I’ve only seen School Days once, and somehow I feel that a lot of people would only be able to stomach it once. But I have a few conjectures to make.

School Days is very much a shock value anime. A lot of holes are left open, a lot of threads untied, in order to greaten the raw impact on a viewer – a strategy all not too uncommon in the dramatic-visual-novel anime, but optimized here in School Days, with twists and stakes much higher.

But the thing about shock value is that, it doesn’t last all that long. It’s kind of like the each generic massacre that sweeps the media in America. Everyone’s shocked, crying buckets, asking “how could this happen”, and bonding together. But before you know it, in a manner of weeks, we’re back to laughing at dancing dogs on the news and forgetting that that ever happened.

School Days is much the same. It’s shocking, yes. Sad, maybe. Spellbinding, for sure. But it’s not all that personal, for a lot of people. Maybe some readers have gone to schools where people get stabbed over romantic disputes. Hell, I wouldn’t dispute that a lot of guys in real-life do sleep around (although I’ve never had the experience with that crowd).

But for a large amount of viewers (especially considering the anime viewership), School Days is just shocking because it’s different from your standard escapist fare.

But as long as there is your general moe-moe anime material, School Days will be swept under the rug. The ‘Nice Boat’ meme along with time has helped to distill it down to a sort of superconcentrated point. Like most anime, it’s abstracted to a short message, or memory, but nothing sharp.

It’s also the fault of its story-weaving as well… it’s not really that intricate. “Cheat on your girlfriend and die.” Perhaps a bit exaggerated, but not all that complicated. School Days is lacking in complex motives, and, as IKnight remarked a while back, it’s not really a tragedy.

The most memorable shows are the ones that makes you think, which is why tour de forces such as ef ~ a tale of memories or Five Centimeters per Second, and their stories of gray areas, are so widely acclaimed (not just by the majority but by myself as well). They challenge your views at times, they don’t give you what you expect all the time, but they do this without throwing the drama (and thus, believability) balance all out of whack.

School Days certainly leaves you guessing, but it doesn’t leave a lot to apply to oneself. Perhaps your mileage may vary, but I really think that while it’s a noteworthy anime, it’s not a memorable one. Like I said in my original review of it, watch it once – but only once.

It’s an anime that everyone should see just for how different and how unbelievable it is, but evolution-wise it’s a dead end. There’s no sense to the bad end, to the raw hatred induced by all the main characters, and the only reason School Days got away with it was because people, to a degree, expected it. It’s a twisted form of fanservice.

It’s not an anime I would really reccomend to anybody looking into anime. It’s not a ‘classic’ like that. Really, School Days is an anime reserved for either those in the darkest state of mind, or for those who fully know what they’re getting into. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone looking for just another happy visual-novel conversion.

Rather, School Days is something that will go down into the history books, but not as a great. Rather, it’s kind of like the six-wheeled Formula One car by Tyrrell – something noteworthy and, yes, innovative … but something that we’re not going to see more of, and for good reason.

Your thoughts on School Days, one year later?

-CCY

(Well, so much for that Nodame / Haibane / Kure-nai review. We’ll get to that.

Also, new record for post time: 30 minutes. When you have a deadline to hit…

Finally, pardon for the sudden NSFW image – didn’t notice until I had already uploaded. Oh well, I doubt people will complain.)