Introduction and School Days - Episode 1

So… here’s something I decided to do on a whim. I’m going to be watching School Days… which I know nothing about. Nothing aside from the fact that it’s apparently bad, but really now how bad could it be?

As for a little bit of background on me I’m am probably the least anime-watching type person you could ever possibly find. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I did religiously watch the first eight or so seasons of the Pokémon anime and I have watched all of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! (by which I mean the original, technically not the original one that people are more likely to see than that weird card game-less season.) and a bit of GX which I attempted to watch a couple times actually but it just starts dragging after a while that I lose interest entirely. Aside from that and a couple of other typical “we’re here to sell toys” anime I’ve never seen anything from what I can remember.

So how then did I end up here? Well to make a long story short I signed up for a Crunchyroll trial and proceeded to forget about it completely before receiving an email notifying me that they ransacked my PayPal account for a monthly premium fee. Stuck with a month’s worth of anime and no clue what to watch I asked one of my friends to help me out. He recommended me a decent list of various anime (nearly all of which were blocked in my region, thanks Crunchyroll.) before tagging on another message simply stating “I want you to go to the anime School Days, and watch the first and last episode of the anime”. Which I taught was a bit odd. I asked “What? The rest of School Days not any good?” before I was told that none of it is good. I simply replied saying that’s just “Excellent” and it turned out I was only supposed to watch those two episodes for the contrast between them.

But… the more I thought about it, the more I got interested in seeing how bad this anime really could be. Then one thing led to another and I ended up here, deciding to document my entire journey. I’m told that this’ll be quite a ride, so let’s not dawdle much longer. Time to strap in.

First things first before even starting the first episode (I have not read the synopsis) what’s up with the title ‘School Days’? All I really get out of that is that we’re gonna be following the “journey” of someone going to school, presumably high school and all the wondrous teen drama that accompanies it. In other words, I think that the biggest crime of this anime is that it’s gonna be boring as all crap. I’ve never been much of a fan of the regular school setting. I didn’t like school, why would I want to watch other people go to school? …Because I’m making a blog about it I guess.

I suppose it’s time to get this train wreck a-rollin’.

Episode 1

I suppose I should explain how I’m gonna work this, I’ll be going through the episode while commenting on anything I feel that needs commenting. Whenever I comment I’ll be pausing the video so I won’t miss anything. I’m sure I wouldn’t want to.

Well.. we start off with some of them pink petals. Those are pretty… I’m stalling.

“Sakakino Academy 10^th orientation”

What? The other nine orientations weren’t good enough for you? Really starting to get greedy here Sakakino Academy.

I kid, but in all honestly I have no clue what that means.

I wonder who the character is we’re supposed to be following. Maybe it’s second guy without a face from the left.

Again, I wonder who’s important in this shot. But the real question on my mind is, does that guy just have selective vision or are the rest of this school’s attendees just horrifying faceless shadow monsters?

Our main characters are vaguely more defined even now, I’m starting to believe my second theory.

“The train heading towards the school will be leaving shortly on line 1”

I’m getting a lot of weirdness from this single sentence. Apparently there is only a single school around, yet you have to take a train to get there. The fact that there is only one school would imply that there’s not a lot of people living there, but they still need to take a train there? Also, even if that’s not the case. This train is leaving from the first track. Are you telling me this train station’s main priority is getting kids to school instead of providing transport between cities or business districts? Which is weird to imagine this town having due to there only being a single school. I’m 90% sure I’m overanalyzing this.

Alright so, I watched just a couple more seconds from that and I’m pretty sure I just got hit in the face with jiggling boobs.. and have seen up a girl’s skirt.

Wait, hold the phone. All this guy knows about this girl is that she likes to read and goes to the same school. Clearly they’re a match made in heaven. I’m guessing that shot of her jiggling boobs is what he was looking at and the real reason he’s now so darn smitten with her.

“or even going as far as talking to her.”

Why you rebel you. Are you sure that’s legal these days?

I don’t like where this is going…

“Do you know about that cell phone love urban legend?
Yeah, if you take a picture of the person you like and make it your background, and nobody finds out about it for three weeks, things will go well between you and that person!”

Alright, I gotta stop and just take a minute to take this all in. So apparently it is an urban legend that this is a thing that happens. I take it that implies this is a common occurrence? That is just all sorts of wrong and creepy, especially considering you have to do it without anyone finding out. Meaning you probably didn’t take that picture with the other person being okay with that, which in itself is more than a little creepy.

And there is the title screen… two and a half minutes in…

Wait a second, hold on. What is that?

In the school, the three guys met. Their relationship had been changed in the season, and turned into three love stories.

I have a pretty good number of questions now. First of all, three guys? We’ve seen one guy and one girl, excluding shadow monsters. The season? What season? I guess it’s trying to tell me that there were three guys who were friends and grew apart over time, yet they instead found love. Though I believe “lust” is the word you were looking for judging by this first guy.

“I didn’t expect you to be into things like that”

You just caught him with a creepy picture of a girl on his phone, and the first thing you comment on is that you didn’t expect him to be into urban legends. You should not be that okay with this fact, young lady. That’s creepy and messed up.

Well.. just twenty-one more minutes to go… on this episode…

WAIT A MINUTE, SHE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THE GUY. HOW WERE YOU THAT OKAY WITH HIM CREEPING ON SOME RANDOM GIRL. WHO APPARENTLY YOU KNOW HE’S NOT INVOLVED WITH SOMEHOW. YOU KNEW THAT HE WAS FOLLOWING THE URBAN LEGEND. WHY WERE YOU NOT WEIRDED OUT BY THE MAN. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE. WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?

Oh, alright. Now it makes sense. She’s in love with the girl as well. Hell, she probably even has a similar picture on her phone. I guess that’s why she can’t judge. I take it back, this makes perfect sense now.

Random thing to note though, I am not sure what to think about the segregation between regular kids and those shadow monsters. I mean come on people, you can’t do stuff like that these days.

I’m just kinda lost now. We get introduced to, who I assume to be, the second of the three guys who I think is into the girl that’s into that other girl the first guy is into. I’m smelling a love decahedron.

Alright so, the girls wants to talk to our main guy in private. Alright. So she takes him to the roof (which I kinda thought we were at in the last scene, but okay.) which she has access to because she’s the leader of astronomy club. This would be alright, aside from the fact that it’s been dead for years and I think she’s implying it has no other members. Why would the school give a single student access to their roof instead of telling her to find a different club? Either way, I’m not sure why the roof is off-limits seeing as it has one of those chain-link gates on it which you generally on see on building where you’re allowed to go on the roof. But I digress.

Wait what? How does that even begin to make sense?

I was about to ask the same thing. Her explanation is that there’s lots of girls who like him so she couldn’t let this slide. …I’m sorry, what?

Never mind, sarcasm on her part.

Wait, so what’s the deal with the creepy girl? And why did she seem weirdly controlling of the other girl.

Well aside from the whole blind date bit being a bit awkward, I thought the guy nearly choking to death after eating twelve sandwiches at once was pretty funny. Not sure if it was the ridiculousness of it all or if something is seriously wrong with me.

Did he just get hit while he was fake boxing? Again, that’s pretty funny.

Wait, what in the crap? I thought she sounded awkward on the phone because she maybe liked him too but then it cut to her here, laying like that… without pants… was she… Oh no… I think I know why she’s really doing this now, I’m starting to think I’d be better off not knowing…

Taking the phrase “prepare your anus” a little too literal. In all seriousness though, why is this here?

I don’t have much to say for these next couple scenes, the two girls talk then the not-couple talks.

And then she did make out with the guy. Now I’m just confused. I suppose that explained that other scene more but… That feels kind of out of the blue, doesn’t it? Also I was half expecting the other girl to come out of the train at that exact moment, but that was thankfully averted. Nonetheless that end was a downer. I really have to wonder why she set them up to begin with now. Unless she was trying to have him make an ass of himself and have it not work out but.. I don’t think that’s what she was trying to do. I really don’t get it, but oh well. I think we’re done with this episode. There’s eleven more to come to explain it all to me, hopefully. We sure did see that third guy though.

Wait, why are the credits a flashback without actual credits- Wait a second.. Those are new characters and some of the ones we met already.

Huh, I guess they were there before. Good to know they found a cure for shadow people.

Anyhow, that was really it for the first episode. My only real issues with it so far were just kind of nitpicks and the fact that some parts are really strange (that bedroom shot of the girl for instance) other than that if this is your cup of tea, I guess it isn’t bad. It just so happens to not be mine.