“Just as I thought. There’s no one inside.”

School Days is unquestionably the most blogged-about anime of the summer season, perhaps even eclipsing the king from spring, Lucky Star. Whether the hype is proportional to the quality of the show is the major question here.

This story of the three people who met in the school and got turned into three “love” stories has been getting reviews all over the spectrum; and it’s not just anti-votes that are killing the show’s rating.

Aside from the seasoned SD vets claiming that the story doesn’t stay true to one plot – which is likely true, although unverifiable by me – the wide range of review scores and feelings about the show stem to the fact that School Days, above anything else, is unquestionably different from any show of the genre.

It sets itself up as a simple, happy romance show, a bit of a love triangle, something that a lot of anime viewers should be familiar with.

Where it goes from there is what’s interesting, perhaps shocking.

Most of the viewers of School Days are well familiar with its darker-than-expected roots, and quite morally and/or sanity challenged characters. But adaptations tend to change a lot and with only 3 true “bad” endings out of a possible 20 (summing up possibilities from harem endings to ending up with any main character or side character) there are plenty of ways to clean up School Days’s ways.

And for the first few episodes, School Days led you on like a criminal out of prison, claiming that it had changed. There was a happy, bright OP called “Innocent Blue.” The character’s crushes on each other seemed innocent enough. What could go wrong?

Plenty, in fact.

To say any more would be to spoil the show, but rest assured that if you like pleasant, upbeat, heartwarming romances you’re going to be running screaming from School Days.

Rather, what you get is a dark, almost soap-opera-like concoction packed with twists, turns, and drama. This polarized the crowd, which generally fell into three groups:

1) Loved the drama, and the show.
2) Hated the drama, and the show.
3) Found the drama, and thus the show, hilarious.

Your ability to survive characters specifically set up to be detestable will say a lot about your enjoyment of School Days. If you can handle hating characters, if you can handle not making any assumptions that any character is “good”, School Days is an excellent anime.

But not a top-notch one.

School Days is still a flawed anime, despite what one could possibly call quite enrapturing (when it’s not ridiculous, or perhaps because it is) drama. The focus is arguably too thin, as while the main characters will have their stories resolved in a nice manner, the side characters simply disappear by story’s end.

And it’s not by any means a show everybody could find something to like in.

If you don’t mind a walk on the dark side, School Days is still a show very worth watching, as what it does, it does very well. It’s just what it doesn’t do that keeps it from top status…

(Huge spoilers are huge, after the jump.)
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