School Days - Episode 12 (Finale)

Here we are, the grand finale. We’re finally gonna find out how the confusing, frustrating and sometimes really dull story of Makoto, Kotonoha and Sekai is going to end. I would say nothing bad is going to happen but… That knife plot points hasn’t paid off yet.. and that mean we have a Chekov’s Gun amongst every single other plot point that did get resolved. I’m hoping for the best, but setting myself up for the worst. It’s up to debate which situation is which. Let’s do this.

So we start out with Makoto and Kotonoha. The former complains it’s cold and tries to warm his hands before the latter promptly places them on her boobs. Then we cut to Sekai, who I think is actually living with Makoto now who complains that he’s late. He’s a real asshole though if that’s true because just last episode he was actively trying to call the girls he was banging on the side.

Then instead of the usual intro we get the glass shatter that the first episode had… I’m not sure why but it gives me a really weird foreboding feeling.

So we have Makoto call Sekai and lie to her about his whereabouts until he lets Kotonoha’s name slip and Sekai figures out what’s going on. He then ends up telling her off and basically kicking her out of his house saying that she’s not even his girlfriend. What’s the really unsettling thing though is that before it cuts, she angrily grabs onto her stomach and you hear glass shattering. I’m guessing she flipped that table but.. I can’t help but feel the angry stomach grab implied something worse than that.

We then cut back to Makoto who drops to the floor and immediately receives a text from Sekai in which she apologizes for what happened. While he’s down on the ground Kotonoha just kind of stares at him and this episode just continues being unsettling…

We see the three characters heading home until Sekai gets a repeat of the first time Kotonoha caught them making out.

Makoto and Kotonoha head to his home where he finds the dinner on the floor, meanwhile we see Sekai come back and angry push the elevator button. I had to pause because I had a feeling shit is about to go down and I wouldn’t remember to write this part.

Speaking off mirrors, we start off with Sekai slapping Kotonoha in the face this time. We then get Sekai screaming at the two of them until this happens.

My thoughts were literally “Oh shit..”

Then Kotonoha proceeds to spill the beans about Setsuna to Sekai, first insisting she told her do it before quickly realizing she didn’t know. Kotonoha talks about the “realizing how Makoto feels” conversation from the second episode and tells her she finally understands before shameless making out with him in front of Sekai, causing her to scream out in agony at the sight.

We proceed to a flashback of Sekai and Setsuna talking about Matoko shortly after their orientation happened, then Sekai is also put into that weird masked play thing from before. Apparently Setsuna was one of the people and Sekai is told that everything is basically all her fault and that she only made them be together to make herself look good. It was really weird and confusing but it was enough to make her fall down on her knees and cry.

And then the next day Sekai gets a text from Makoto basically saying Kotonoha knew an abortion clinic and that she should go ASAP.

The next seen has Makoto at school when Sekai text him she wants to talk to him in private, at this house.

Apparently Sekai is going through with it because the next scene immediately has him discussing it with Kotonoha. I guess he really did learn though, because he tells Kotonoha that he enjoys just spending time with her and will remain focused on her now. Better late than never I guess?

No never mind, he hasn’t talked with Sekai yet. He’s doing it now.

I can’t believe his first question to her was “So how was your abortion?”

Eventually he offers to get them some tea but she says she’ll get it instead. While she makes it she eventually notices the garbage bag with her dinner in it and grabs her phone.

We cut back to Matoko who is in the living room still when his phone goes off and he goes to find it in I guess the bedroom when…

“Oh shit” once again was all I could think. She’s gonna murder this asshole.

It cuts to Kotonoha and Kokoro talking about how Kotonoha is gonna make Makoto dinner and go to the ocean the next day and Kokoro saying she wants to come with them.

And then we cut back to Makoto finally reaching his phone and reading a text from Sekai

It then repeats the following screen and I wasn’t too sure what to make of it…

Those are returns… there’s probably another message at the end… and he’s scrolling to it…

This is actually really suspenseful..

Oh. My. God. The teapot squealing louder and louder in the background as he scrolled, the sound design was excellent there. I’m almost kind of terrified to unpause but.. I want to as well.

OH MY GOD…

That was really fucking intense…

And really fucking messed up…

I really recommend you watch it yourself because it was really intense and extremely disturbing…

But if you’re not up for that, allow me to tell you in fine detail.

Alright so…

After the goodbye message you get this really earie silence. You don’t hear the steam anymore, no music… nothing.

Then the music starts to kick in and we see Sekai standing behind Makoto, before he even fully realize she just dashes for him and stabs him, causing him to drop to the floor.

She tells him he’s too cruel and we hear another step while flashing back to earlier moments.

She keeps stabbing him while we see more flashbacks until he says her name one last time before grabbing her boob.

The man is dead. Makoto just fucking died.

(The censored blood kinda took away from the situation a little as it was black, not red. At least.. I assume it was censored.)

The steam finally kicks in again as Sekai realizes what’s she did and hauls ass out of the apartment back to her own home, somehow without anyone noticing her being covered in blood.

We then see Kotonoha enter the apartment and finding Matoko’s body. It cuts to a distressed Sekai sitting on her bed as her phone goes off.

She reaches the roof and there seems to be nothing but a bag on one of the benches until we hear Kotonoha ask if she went to the abortion clinic. Sekai tells her that she would never go to one she recommended and Kotonoha tells her it’s because she’s lying and that she never was pregnant. She only said she was to have Makoto come back to her.

At this point, you can see the danger approaching if you look closely. Unless Kotonoha suddenly grew a tail…

Sekai breaks down and tells Kotonoha that she deserved to be with Makoto after everything she did for him.

Kotonoha then remarks that he’s right here.. and before you think she’s being sweet and pointing at her heart or something, no. Remember that bag? Oh yeah, we’ve gotten into full on Se7en territory.

Sekai opens the bag and proceeds to throw up. We don’t actually see what’s in the bag but you can just tell it’s insanely disturbing.

After Sekai gets up, Kotonoha tells her she wants to see if she was telling the truth and reveals a huge knife already stained in blood.

Sekai tries to pull out the knife she used to murder Matoko but Kotonoha blocks her and she drops it.

Kotonoha glares at her as we pan up and just hear a slice and blood shoots up like a fountain.

Sekai dies instantly, drops to the ground and blood starts spilling everywhere.

Kotonoha is covered in blood as we get a shot from inside Sekai’s stomach.

She then confirms Sekai was lying after all and the scene ends after we hear Kotonoha state that there was no baby inside her.

We then cut for one last time to see a ship on the ocean. All we see on the ship is Kotonoha lying on the deck… holding Matoko’s severed head and the bloody bag behind her, saying that now they can finally be alone.

Holy hell, crap on a cracker. That was freaking insane and kind of out of nowhere but.. it was kind of awesome. No really, I actually kinda dug that ending. I’m not sure if Sekai should’ve died like that, though I guess she did murder a man.. Oh well. Where did Taisuke by the way? Maybe he really took Kotonoha rejecting him to heart. I don’t think he was seen after that… That’s dark.

Well, that certainly was a journey. That definitely was an experience.

I did like some parts of it, the beginning was alright, it was kinda funny. The end of the third episode is where it started going downhill for me the whole affair really didn’t do much for me and the fact that it was the only thing anyone ever talked about got really tiring after a while. I can’t really say it was all bad though, I certainly enjoyed myself for the most part. It’s weird how there was a lot of points where I feel this thing could’ve ended and I’d be perfectly alright with it, but it didn’t and it just kept getting worse. For example, the end of episode nine would’ve been an okay thing to end on but alas.

The final ending was messed up to hell and back but in a strange way… it’s a far more satisfying conclusion than him ending up with either one of them, despite Kotonoha deserving to be happy she really didn’t need to put up with this asshole. And I guess she’s still happy now in her own twisted little way.

Overall I’d recommend seeing it at least once, maybe do the thing I got recommended initially and just watched the first and final episode if you’ve already read this blog anyways.

That certainly was an interesting intro to anime as a whole, I’m glad you guys were there to witness it.

From here I’ll probably do another full series if I find a good contender for it, aside from that I’ll probably blog about various first episodes of other anime I had recommended to me. I might not be watching School Days anymore, but I’ll definitely be watching something.

- Kevin

PS. Whatever happened to that third guy?