Trivia / School Days

• Acting for Two: Kokoro shares a VA with Youko, Sekai's mother, in all adaptations, though they don't interact much, if at all unless you count the Magical Heart Kokoro-chan OVA.
• Creator's Favorite: The JAST interview has Mathers Numakichi claim that he loves all his characters equally, but Setsuna is at the top of the list.
• Cut Song: The Series Complete Box includes five tracks not found on any of the previous soundtrack album releases or in the games themselves, including a song titled "Liar in the Mirror" sung by Kotonoha & Sekai’s original voice actresses. One of them, "Knife or Saw?", was heard in the pilot film.
• The Danza: Minami Obuchi is voiced by Minami Kuribayashi.
• Development Hell: Cross Days was delayed no less than SIX times, from its original release date of February 2009 to March 19th, 2010.
• Distanced from Current Events: The "Nice Boat" incident. To summarize: The last episode of the TV series features Sekai brutally stabbing Makoto to death, Kotonoha cutting off Makoto's head, Kotonoha slitting Sekai's throat, cutting her stomach open to confirm whether she was pregnant, then sailing away with Makoto's severed head. The day before the episode was supposed to air, a 16-year-old Japanese girl murdered her father with an axe, so the episode had to be pushed back a week, and its slot replaced with a thirty-minute slideshow, which included a shot of a boat.
• Fan Translation: A partial translation patch was released in August 2010 by Sekai Project and endorsed by the game's maker, 0verflow. Later, when the game was licensed, the fan translators became the official localization team.
• Inspiration for the Work: In an interview, Mathers Numakichi stated that his intention with the series was to make a game that was entirely animated, and told a bizarre story like Fargo did.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The PlayStation 2 port is the only version of the game that was created specifically to be for a younger audience (15+) instead of an adult game. As such the game has new scenes made for the routes that used R content in the original game. It also contains special epilogues for the (then three) "Bad endings" of the original game as well as many brand new bad endings. All this new content wasn’t added to the HQ version that came out later so it remains exclusive to the PS2 version to this day. Sadly the port was Japan exclusive and is no longer in production so copies can only be obtained from second hand stores like eBay.
• Late Export for You:
  • The first officially licensed English version of the visual novel didn’t come out until 2012. 7 years after the original’s release and 5 years after the anime ended.
  • For several years, it was assumed there'd be no Western localization of the anime due to the infamous ending and the circumstances regarding it. Then after a long wait, the anime was made available for streaming on Crunchyroll in the U.S, and was eventually picked up for a proper release by Discotek Media.
• Meaningful Release Date: Shiho Kawaragi chose to debut her Sekai VTuber on July 3, 2022, exactly fifteen years to the day after the first episode of the anime aired.
• No Export for You:
  • The manga, unlike the anime, will stay in Japan. According to a notice from a major manga publisher in Argentina, Kadokawa (who published the manga in Japan) won't authorize any foreign releases of the manga outside Japan.
• The Other Marty:
  • In the promotional pilot, Sekai and Kotonoha have different voice actress, being played by Chiaki Ōsawa (credited as Eri Sakurada) and Akira Kasahara (credited as Mitsuki Ueno) respectively before being replaced in the main game and all subsequent media by Tae Okajima and Shiho Kawaragi. The original voice actresses also sang the Cut Song "Liar in the Mirror" and an ending song for Miss Each Other under the group label "unity", which was disbanded shortly afterwards.
  • Otome is voiced by Mikako Satō (under the alias Hina Kamimura) in the trial demo, but was replaced^note According to the Japanese Wikipedia, Sato was unavailable due to being hospitalized by a traffic accident after recording the trial audio by Haruka Nagami in the finished game.
• Pen Name: Mathers Numakichi, the creator of the School Days series and main scenario writer, is believed to be a pseudonym for Akio Ōnuma, the founder and CEO of 0verflow’s parent company Stack.
• Referenced by...: "Nice Boat" and some iconic scenes from School Days get referenced by other anime:
  • Hell Girl: In Episode 21 of season two. A guy named Makoto coldly rejects the woman pregnant with his child.
  • Aikatsu Stars!: As a form of Gag Censor: Episode 37 had Mahiru struggle breaking her tiles, so she "violently" starts breaking them apart piece by piece behind a scene of a boat on a lake...
  • Yuki Yuna is a Hero: One scene in the Jukai no Kioku game suddenly cuts to a scene of a boat on a lake, referencing the infamous "Nice Boat" meme from School Days. One of YuYuYu's writers, Makoto Uezu, was also a writer for the School Days anime.
  • My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering with My School Romantic Comedy: The OVA keeps up with the School Days references by recreating the infamous "There's nobody inside." scene near the end of the episode.
  • Higurashi Day Break: In the PSP game, Natsume's charge move looks a lot like what Sekai does to Makoto in the finale of the School Days anime.
  • Yandere no Onna no Ko: Sonoko is an Expy of Kotonoha Katsura, with a bit of an Irony that Sonoko is voiced by Shiho Kawaragi, the actor of Kotonoha's fellow Yandere rival, Sekai Saionji.
  • Daily Lives of High School Boys: Applies only to the Cantonese dub. In multiple places, people referred to "Makoto, scum of the earth." This is the epithet for School Days’ Makoto Itou among anime watchers in Chinese-speaking regions.
  • Pop Team Epic: At the start of Episode 5, the "Steamboat Willie" parody is censored with footage of a boat. Later on in the episode, we have a skit with Popuko doing her impression of Mi**ey, and we only get to see it via her shadow. The boat censorship, which was placed there to indicate "violence and adult issues" which were deemed harmful to minors, also doubles as one in and of itself if you know the reference: the following skit, "IMO☆YOBA", which was not censored, sees Iyo Sakuragi snap and attempt to stab Pipimi with a knife, only for Hojo-senpai to take the hit. Complete with Gorn.
  • Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA: The PV for Watashi no Jikan makes good on a couple of old memes, mainly Nice Boat and Leek Spin.
  • Honkai Impact 3rd: The "Nice Boat!" achievement is a reference to the last anime episode.
  • Kamen Rider Amazons: The episode involving a star-crossed couple and decapitations, amusingly, happens to be named School Days.
  • Majikoi! Love Me Seriously!: In the Miyako route, the group catches a stalker named "Ito Makoto".
  • Oreimo: In the pilot episode of the anime, when Kirino shows Kyousuke her large stack of H-games, several real-life titles can be spotted in said stack, including (but possibly not limited to) School Days, Summer Days, and Cross Days.
  • The World God Only Knows: In Chapter 3, p.2, Keima is playing a galge in the middle of class as usual, but if you pay attention to the text that comes out of his headphones, you'll notice he's playing School Days.
  • Yandere Simulator: Akademi Uniform Style 5 bears a resemblance to the uniforms from School Days. Fitting, really for a game featuring a Yandere.
• Refitted for Sequel: As stated under What Could Have Been, one of the original three bad endings was going to be "Pushed Too Far" in which Sekai pushes Kotonoha in front of a moving train, but the final game replaces this with “Forever” in which she is Spurned into Suicide and dives headfirst from the apartment building in front of Makoto and Sekai. The School Days HQ remaster adds "Pushed Too Far" as a new bad ending, and the School Days L×H port for PS2 includes several new bad endings, all of which are permutations of this original concept but with the final victims varying between them.
• Virtual YouTuber: Kotohona debuted as a VTuber on Christmas 2020. Shiho Kawaragi’s own YouTube channel would later host Sekai as a VTuber in July 2022.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The prototype anime pilot to promote the game (included on the Series Complete Box) shows a number of differences from the finished product. The art style is noticeably different, as are some details of the bad endings. The "Forever" ending where Kotonoha is Spurned into Suicide replaces the "Pushed Too Far" ending in the final cut (though the latter was Refitted for Sequel in the remakes), the “Bloody End” took place at the school rather than the overpass at the train station, with bystanders attempting to hold back the killer, and Makoto’s walk on the beach as he bleeds to death goes in the opposition direction and happens in the daytime in “To My Child”.
  • Magical Heart Kokoro-chan has slightly different choreography for the Transformation Sequence between the trailer and the OVA, though some animation is reused between them.
• Word of God: The Shiny Days art book includes an interview by JAST with series creator Mathers Numakichi, who explains certain details like Fargo being the Inspiration for the Work.
• Rather hilariously, one of the producers of the anime is also named Makoto Itou (though the name is really common in Japan), and his name can actually be seen in the opening credits.

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