TL;DR: must watch, but a bit boring at times. Fantastic ending.
Synopsis: boy and girl start dating after a friend of them introduced each other, and things get weird.
School Days is one of the most divisive anime out there. It has 793 reviews in total on MAL, which is a massive amount for a series that has not been watched that often.
In fact, it almost has as many reviews as the most popular anime on MAL, Attack on Titan, which has 877 reviews. Clearly, people feel a need to comment on it in a way that is not related to its popularity.
School Days starts out as a rather conventional anime — Sekai (flat-chested girl) helps Kotonoha (big-chested girl) to attract Makoto (the main character) in a school setting. The big-chested girl and main character start dating, with the classic falls and rises of teenage love. Then, the flat-chested girl falls in love with the main character and start to have an affair. This is really where things start to get interesting.
Eventually, the main character becomes the focus of attraction of all of the girls in his class, and he proceeds to fuck them all, one by one, sometimes three by three. The main girls eventually find out about what he is doing, and the flat-chested girl even claims to be pregnant later. After this, things start to build up to the point where it looks like the big titty girl is going to kill the main character, but the flat girl kills him instead. Then, the big titty girl responds by killing the flat chested girl, opening her stomach, and claiming that there is no fetus there after all.
As a disclaimer, I will say that there are many legitimate reasons as to why somebody might not like School Days. The production value is mediocre, even for a school anime. The anime is very dark, which will inevitably be a turn off for more agreeable or neurotypical people. Despite how shocking it is, the anime itself can get rather dull at times, as there is not much going for it beyond the fact that it is a deconstruction the fact the main characters are cool. That said, most of the criticisms people have to offer this anime are very superficial and weak.
One of them involves the main character, Makoto. He cheats on both of his main girls and fucks all of the girls in his class. Yes, this is “immoral” behaviour, but it is not out of the ordinary for a high school boy, and serves as a welcome contrast to the weak and beta harem protagonists that plague the genre. I know this word has become somewhat of a taboo after the release of Evangelion, but yes, School Days is a “deconstruction” of the harem genre in this respect.
Other people think the ending was just done for the purposes of shock just to be edgy. The ending was indeed shocking, but it was not out of the blue, and the foundations of it were built upon in previous episodes. It would be something else entirely if the girlfriend of the protagonist decided to kill him in the last episode, but that is ultimately not what happened.
Scoring:
Design (5/15):
Distinguishment: (1/5) - normal school setting with uniforms and big eyes
Animation: (1/2)
Sound: (1/2)
OST: (1/2)
Character designs: (0/2) - bad
Backgrounds: (1/2)
Script (38/50):
Character Investment: (8/10)
Character Realism: (1/2)
Character Complexity: (3/3)
Plot solidness (5/5)
Plot complexity: (6/10)
Ending: (5/5)
Pacing: (4/5)
Stakes: (6/10)
Value (11/15):
Thematic elements: (3/5) - subversion of the harem and school genre
Skill: (4/5) - ending was shocking, but well constructed
Originality: (4/5) - avant garde ending
Enjoyment (12/20):
Did I like it: (12/20) - great ending, but can get a little dull