If you keep the person you like on your cell-phone wallpaper for three weeks without anyone finding out, your feelings will be answered.
School Days is, at first glance, a romantic comedy in which the male protagonist, Makoto Itou, falls in love with Kotonoha Katsura, a girl at his high school who happens to travel with the same train he does. Since he is shy about approaching her, he gets help from Sekai Saionji, a girl in his class who turns out to be in love with him herself. Naturally, a love triangle ensues, testing the limits of everyone's feelings.The anime is an Animated Adaptation of an animated Visual Novel of the same name. Despite only three of the game's 21 endings being such, the game is infamous for its violent "bad endings", which include such things as Makoto's scorned ex-lovers goingsuicidal or downrightmurderous. The series starts out with a happy, innocent mood, but gradually becomes much darker and by the end plummets deep into the pits of despair, angst and violence.......and lulz, depending on how much you hated the main character by the end. Ultimately, the anime is like watching the worst ending possible on a visual novel.Sensitive, idiocy-intolerant or squeamish viewers, beware!The game was followed by two sequels. The first, Summer Days, is an Alternate Timeline prequel following Sekai's friend Setsuna in a What If? relationship with Makoto the summer before; a remake is currently in development, to be released in 2012. The second, Cross Days, is a P.O.V. Sequel which runs parallel to the events of the first game, following a new character, Yuuki Ashikaga, who also has feelings for Kotonoha and thus becomes involved in the infamous love triangle, unwittingly setting off one of his own.There are also two OVA episodes, Valentine Days and Magical Heart Kokoro-chan, that exist in Alternate Continuities. Especially in the latter's case, which turns most of the main females into Sentai and/or Magical Girls with liberal amounts of randomness and School Days-style fanservice and gore.Finally, there's also a manga, which is much more family friendly than the anime. Makoto, much less of a Jerkass here, manages to resist Sekai for most of the run; when he finally gives in to temptation, he feels so bad about it that he is prepared to break up with her... until stuff happens. Almost more disturbing than the anime, in a subtle way.The "remastered" edition of the game, School Days HQ, is being released in English sometime in 2012.This show provides examples of:
Adaptation Distillation: One could view the manga like this, as in its continuity Makoto has noticeably toned down his JerkassCasanova tendencies and seems to actually care about Kotonoha and Sekai.
To explain: In the final episode, one of the girls goes Axe Crazy in a fairly literal sense, killing Makoto before being killed by Kotonoha in turn. A similar event happened in real life in Tokyo just days before, and the networks decided not to air the final episode in order to avoid any unfortunate parallels. Instead, they ran a half hour travel documentary that included one section about the Fjord1 ferry. Somebody from 4chan took a screen grab of the boat and labeled it "NICE BOAT".
Oddly enough, the last episode ends with Kotonoha hugging Makoto's severed head on a yacht NICE BOAT.
On that note, at the end of ~Magical Heart Kokoro-chan~ where it's literally spelled out for you on Kokoro's inflatable raft. See Ascended Meme and Memetic Mutation below.
Also see the Shout Out at the end of ~Magical Heart Kokoro-chan~'.
Kadokawa run a 45 second video of a Nice Boat, the day that the first episode of Haruhi-Chan was supposed to be uploaded. The video had a message saying that they couldn't finish it on time. The episode was uploaded the next day.
Bait-and-Switch Credits: In the beginning of the anime, the OP seems fitting. Later on, it becomes so nauseatingly happy in contrast to the story that by the last episode, the show doesn't use the OP anymore, but just the "School Days"-Logo crashing like a destroyed sheet of glass.
Balanced Harem: Brutally subverted, as casually spending time with all possible options turns out about as badly as humanly possible.
It is possible to achieve harem endings in the game. In the original, there were almost as many harem outcomes as Bad Ends. Remakes have continued adding more and more bad endings, making the harem progressively more difficult to achieve...
Black Blood: The broadcast version of the ending. The DVD version leaves all the blood in its red glory.
Breast Expansion: Episode 5, one character uses inflatable bikini inserts to give herself large breasts.
Brother-Sister Incest: What a bunch of fans don't know, partly because of one of the great problems in the series, is that in the game Summer Days, that is chronologically before School Days, it shows that Shun Hazama is the father of Sekai, Ketsuna and the twins of Summer Days Kazuha and Futaba, and their mothers are all his half sisters. Since Makoto can have sex with Youko in Summer Days, this apply to him as well, since he is half brother of Youko too.
In the same game and in Snow Radish vacation Tomaru Sawagoe is the father in six consecutive generations, the first one with his half-sister. Genetics hooray!
Deconstruction: Arguably the main point of the series is to deconstruct the Harem Genre, h-game adaptation dramas, and other slice of life style romance anime series. This is every harem trope going horrifically wrong.
Long story short, it shows what could happen if someone really did treat a group of young women that all had feelings for him like your typical h-game player treats the female characters of a game, if some of those women happened to be extremely unstable. Most real people wouldn't react like that. Some would.
Also, it makes it clear that someone pursuing solely his or her own pleasure with everyone in sight while paying no attention to the effects that's having on others is an immature, maladjusted jerkass.
Development Hell: Cross Days was delayed no less than SIX times, from its original release date of February 2009 to March 19th, 2010.
Downer Ending: Although judging by most of the anime's entries, it probably fit into non-sexual fanservice to most tropers who saw it. After the nice boat, that is. Not to mention that the Bad Endings of the game are bad enough in the original version, and get even worse in the PS2 extension.
The Manga, though fewer people die is still quite the downer. Although Makoto survives his injuries trying to protect Sekai from Kotonoha, he later learns that during his hospitalization Sekai has killed Kotonoha to be with him...
Dysfunction Junction: The whole high school seems to be surrounded by a reality distortion field.
Establishing Character Moment: In the first episode, Makoto exposits on a supposed love charm activated by keeping your crush's picture as you cell phone wallpaper. We hear him think, "What bullshit," in an unpleasant tone right before he tries to delete his picture of Kotonoha.
Even Evil Has Standards: Sure, ALL the girls in the 10th grade are spreading like peanut butter for Makoto and each don't mind in the least that they're not the only one; but they all drew the line at Makoto loudly and publicly abandoning his unborn child and collectively dropped him like a sack of shit.
Everyone Is Related: Tomaru is his name, Sawagoe or Itou can be his family name depending on the setting, he fathered six generations, and made everyone in the Overflow universe related in one way or another.
Fan Disservice: Towards the end of the anime, when things go to hell, Makoto is murdered by Sekai, whose panties are clearly seen as she does so and later sits in a pool of Makoto's blood. The scene where Kotonoha murders Sekai, cuts open her stomach and checks to see if she's pregnant while in a short miniskirt counts as well.
Fanservice: Lots among the girls. Panty shots in particular are quite abundant. Not to mention the implied sex Makoto has with many every last one of them.
Which often turns into Fan Disservice, on account of it being present in even the most horrifying scenes.
Fan Translation: As of August 2010, a partial translation patch (the first three chapters of the original H-Game) has been released by Sekai Project.
Overflow, the company responsible for School Days, has endorsed the fan translation effort. This is quite different from the various Visual Novel companies which sent cease and desist letters to fan translators in 2010.
First Girl Wins: Played with quite a lot. Kotonoha is the first girl the audience sees, Sekai is the first girl who talks to Makoto, and Otome was the first girl Makoto met, chronologically speaking.
Generation Xerox: On further searching for information on this anime/manga/Visual Novel... It turns out Sekai and Setsuna's dad is Makoto's half brother, and in one Tenchi Solution ending of the visual novel Makoto does the same thing his brother does and gets the girls pregnant. This time though they don't try to kill each other because they both realized they love Makoto but rather both decide to tell Makoto the wonderful news at the same time.
Genre Shift: Starts as a light-hearted and slightly ecchi comedy, finishes as a big melodrama. And in the final episode, it turns into slasher horror...
Girl Posse: Otome's friends Minami, Kumi and Natsumi are a really nasty and cruel version. By the end of the series their Alpha Bitch, Otome, ends up as being less bitchy than them.
Good Girls Avoid Abortion: In the anime, after Sekai tells Makoto she's pregnant, he pressures her to get an abortion simply because all the other girls he's been sleeping with refuse to after they hear how he treated the girl he got preggers. In other words, the concept of an abortion is used to drive home what a total Jerkass he is.
Gorn: In addition to all of the High Pressure Blood in the bad game ends and the end of the anime, the anime had Kotonoha slice and pry Sekai's stomach open, blood everywhere, with an "inside looking out" camera shot, which, aside from some fleshy strands still attached, wasn't too too bad in the TV broadcast, but then the Nausea Fuel gets cranked up even more as the DVD edition did away with the Black Blood, so you can make out all the textures and stuff.Seriously nasty.
Gratuitous English: The logo has the tagline "In the school, the three guys met. Their relation had been changed in the season, and turned into three love stories." Seriously.
Translation: "Three individuals met in high school. Their relationship has changed in the course of one season. These events are turned into three separate love stories."
Jerkass: Makoto, Makoto, Makoto...and oh yeah, MAKOTO! Mostly in the anime, though. Otome's Girl Posse, though not Otome herself, take this Up to Eleven, and into Complete Monster status. Taisuke also counts, as he takes advantage of Kotonoha and is (at least vocally) more perverted then Makoto.
Jerk Ass Woobie: It's easy to feel sympathy for Sekai throughout the story. But considering that her actions were pretty much the reason the entire plot happened, Your Mileage May Vary. Not to mention that it's even worse in the manga.
Karma Houdini: Otome's "friends" get away with bullying Kotonoha, sexing up Makoto behind Otome and Sekai's backs and exhibiting a tape that shows Nanami and her boyfriend having sex, ruining her reputation at school. Makoto's best friend Taisuke also gets clean away with raping Kotonoha at the school festival.
The same troper could be applied to Kotonoha in the last episode, unless you consider madness karma.
In the Visual Novel, with exception of the bad endings, Makoto himself.
And in some of the bad endings and Sekai, in the manga, the girl who murders her rival and/or Makoto. Granted, it usually ends just after the deed is done.
Love Triangle: That is, if you discount half a dozen other girls - Makoto certainly does!
However, the manga is more of a deconstruction of the trope since it only focuses on Kotonoha and Sekai.
Luke, I Am Your Father: Sekai, you may not know it, but following the game it seems Setsuna is your half-sister. Oh, and Makoto is your uncle. Yes, Makoto's father IS the grandfather of Sekai and Setsuna.
"Like father, like son" indeed.
Male Gaze: The ratio of face shots to boob/butt shots in this show is close to 1:1.
Memetic Sex God: Makoto. A rare in universe example at that; he proceeds to have sex with literally every girl in his class.
It's taken to new heights in Summer Days, where he can have sex with Kokoro, Kotonoha's 13-year old sister who looks like she's seven, Sekai's Hot Mom, and Kotonoha's Hot Mom.
And now, thanks to Cross Days and the new Gay Option, Makoto is no longer just after every girl, but everything thatmoves.
Reversed in the manga when Kotonoha tries and fails to kill Sekai, Sekai is the one who later kills her, even gloating about it in front of a hospitalized Makoto and also in some new bad endings from the PS2 version, which involve trains. One of these endings shows Sekai pushing Kotonoha on the line, but getting hit by the train when Makoto is bailing Kotonoha out. The second features Makoto getting killed in front of the girls after he saves Sekai from her fall, and the third kills off both girls in front of Makoto . NICE TRAIN, INDEED.
The HD version adds one more version where Sekai succeeds. Nice Hand.
No Accounting for Taste: Of the four anime love interests (Kotonoha, Sekai, Otome, & Setsuna), it is only explained why Setsuna likes Makoto, and ironically she is the only girl to sleep with him for reasons other than liking him, curiosity, or lust.
Subverted now, it is now available for watching at Crunchyroll for U.S. viewers, but not a single major home-release licensor like Funimation, Section23, or Bandai Entertainment would pick the series up for the very same reasons above.
Although recently Funimation has been deleting fansubs from Youtube. Make of that what you will.
No Periods, Period: Averted, sorta. One of the reasons why Sekai thinks she's pregnant, aide of suddenly having vomit fits, is that her period hasn't come on time.
The Ojou: Kotonoha. Just compare her room to Sekai's and/or Makoto's.
Parental Abandonment: The only parents ever seen or heard are Sekai's Hot Mom Youko, Kotonoha's mother Manami (only heard in the anime), and Setsuna's mother Mai (in the Summer Days spin-off game). All the others (Makoto's estranged father, Kotonoha's father, Sekai and Setsuna's father) are merely mentioned.
Parody Episode: The OVA ~Magical Heart Kokoro-Chan~ is a spoof of the Magical Girl genre and the Sentai genre, as well as of the original series.
Pettanko: Again, Setsuna. She's flat-chested, while both her best friend and Makoto's other love interest are VERY busty, so...
Practice Kiss: Sekai, taking advantage of the problems between Makoto and Kotonoha, uses this as a ruse to make Makoto fall for her. It works in the anime, while in the game it's up to the player's choice.
Rape as Drama: Kotonoha's mental and emotional breakdown begins hitting more fully after she's raped by her Stalker with a Crush, Makoto's best friend Taisuke.
Relax-o-Vision: After a particularly nasty Real Life incident in Japan where an Ax Crazy schoolgirl murdered her dad, the final episode was deemed Too Soon and replaced by an episode of random peaceful Norwegian scenery, which included a rather nice boat. See the Memetic Mutation description above.
Not to mention the unmistakable Shout Out at the end of the episode, regarding a certain famousmeme associated with this series. See Memetic Mutation above.
Soundtrack Dissonance: The ending murders are set to a calm, though still depressing tune that also plays during the credits in the game's bad endings.
The opening and ending themes for the Anime eventually become a big contrast to the Genre Shift / Mood Whiplash]]. In the last episode, the opening and its respective theme aren't even shown. It would've been too dissonant at that point.
Spoiled Sweet: Kotonoha, who is WAY sweeter and gentler than Otome and her bitch squad.
Stalker with a Crush: Taisuke Sawanaga, Otome Katou and, to some degree, Kotonoha Katsura.
Also Setsuna Kiyoura. She tried to be more discreet than the others ... until Kotonoha caught her kissing Makoto in his sleep.
Surrogate Soliloquy: In this case, just Talking To The Head. While there is no exposition on Kotonoha's part, there is no mistaking to the viewer that she has perhaps irrevocably gone off the deep end, mental health-wise, on her Nice Boat. See Alas, Poor Yorick above.
Tenchi Solution: The harem endings in the game. Even when the game and anime seem to be a Deconstruction of the concept.
The harem endings are the game's way of conceding that it is possible to pull off a Tenchi Solution; it's just very,veryhard and one little mistake can equal NICE BOAT.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gratifyingly, Yuki of Cross Days delivers a much-needed one to Sekai, being the only character in the entire franchise to call her out on her mistreatment of Kotonoha and the general manipulative nature of her actions.
There Are No Therapists: Nobody but Kotonoha's little sister Kokoro and Sekai notice her fall into insanity.
To be fair, anime Makoto eventually notices, but only when he happens upon Kotonoha while wandering around alone and becomes horrified by the sight of her standing in front of him rambling about how she wants to be a good girlfriend to him.
Otome is a more straight example, acting like a Type A often. Lampshaded in her ending, where her Girl Posse ask her how come she and Makoto can stay together if they keep squabbling all the time, and Otome just shows them a picture of them kissing.
Tragic Hero: Makoto (Manga and certain routes in the game only) He genuinely cares about both Sekai and Kotohona, but his TragicFlaw of not being able to choose between them and carrying on a simultaneous relationship until it's too late. This, however, is in direct contrast to the completefuckwad he is in the Anime.
Wingding Eyes: In the ~Magical Heart Kokoro-chan~OVA, Makoto and Taisuke sport big shiny gold starbursts in their eyes in their ecstatic response to the arrival of the Anonymous Defence Service. Later a naked Taisuke's eyes contain big white starbursts for Magical Heart, whom he sees in person for the first time.
edition of the game, School Days HQ, is being released in English sometime in 2012.
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