The following post first appeared on my old blog: Chibi no Nothing
I may be one of the few people who actually like the way School Days ended. Let me rephrase that. I loved the way School Days ended.
Watching the characters in a show unhinge and fall apart is one of the most interesting ways to convey their perspective. This is the case no matter how unreal or real it may seem to the viewer. I find it particularly insightful. Obviously, it doesn’t work in all situations and story lines, but the School Days plot did it well. Whether you are in love, out of love, forlorn love, lust, or hate the plot had something for us.
Kotonoha, despite being a main character, wasn’t very dynamic. She spends a great part of the series being an object of empathy for the viewer, but only because she is such a completely innocent person. She can’t be faulted in any way for much of the events that occur around her. That makes her practically blameless. Oddly, even knowing this from the start, I had thought she was the one who would kill Makoto.
Sekai’s dynamic was a little more complex, but only near the end when it becomes apparent that she had been after Makoto since the beginning. The explanation that she setup Katsura and Makoto as a way of being nearer to Makoto, by proxy, actually made sense in the context of the story and her character. It was the simple fear of rejection, and the thought of being alone.
School Days relied on simple emotions to tell the story, most of the time. With regard to that, it is most evident in Makoto who we saw changing interests on a whim whenever he was around a different girl. But, I just can’t fault him the way others do because it’s evident that he was a pawn, just as much as those around him. We seem to think that because the girls seemingly had “purer” emotions that they are somehow less liable for the events that surround them. Sure, Makoto was a letch, but was he taken advantage of as much as others took advantage of him. Case in point, how often was it that he pursued someone, as apposed to how often it was that he simply took advantage of what was laid before him?
Makoto was an idiot. It was apparent that he regretted his behavior, but not to the extent that he should have and not for the reasons he should have. In the end Makoto died for being selfish and ignorant, which was exactly what he was from the beginning. He was not more selfish or ignorant that any other character in the series. It’s just that he had more opportunities.
As I mentioned before, the best part of School Days was watching the characters react. Falling apart is enlightening, and events that cause sorrow are learning experiences. Our literatures are filled with the tales of other’s pain because we want to know more about ourselves through those stories.
School Days will never be held up as an epic. It’s because the story is so common. The characters didn’t go through any events that weren’t ordinary in every respect, with the exception of the end. A lot of it was over dramatizing the ordinary.
Still, it was plenty good in its own right.
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