this was my second time rewatching school days! i first watched it back around 2016, funnily enough with my first ex-boyfriend who ended up acting a whole lot like makoto. i suppose the meaning of the story was lost on him (lol).
"Wishes won’t be granted by just thinking about them!"
when i first watched school days it was about a year before i even had my first relationship - so i couldn't really relate to or understand the various relationship problems in the series. now, however, with some life experience i found it to be a fairly meaningful rewatch.
in some ways it is better and worse than i remember - worse because the MC is even more annoying and indecisive than i already could remember him being, which leads to a lot of frustration, but it's also better for this reason. youre not supposed to like makoto at all - and i feel like some people dislike school days because of the "protagonist is supposed to equal good guy" kind of logic.
some stories are meant to be aggravating, i think on top of this they purposefully chose an edgier route from the game to gain notoriety. Which, it did work, since back in the day school days was one of those troll anime people would recommend in order to watch you call it garbage/be shocked by the gore towards the end.
lack of communication and indecisiveness are very real reasons that relationships dont work out, especially in highschool, so it was pretty nostalgic for me. i remember really relating toward kotonoha when i first watched it - i was a virgin who was terrified of intimacy. i always forced myself to go along with it for the guy i liked. a year after watching the series ironically had a girl wedge her way into my relationship and essentially win my ex over with manipulation. now, of course i put most the blame on him (and makoto) for being disloyal, but the snakiness involved cant really be ignored. everyone kind of sucks in this series to some degree, nobody is really innocent.
it is fascinating though to look at and think about the logic behind these sort of people - what they're all thinking, why the disloyalty happens, what could've been done better. im not saying its a masterpiece, but i do prefer anime that make me think and that are actually interesting, so i give it points for that regardless. i never felt like anything didnt make sense or was outside of reality; highschool was a time period where cheating, lust, manipulation, and bullying were all rampant. i dont miss those days, so in some ways it was an unpleasant but meaningful watch.
one thing upon growing older and rewatching this series is that sekai's character has become slightly more sympathetic to me.
SPOILER: SEKAI'S CHARACTER
i can see that her efforts to help makoto in the beginning are genuine, regardless of how she really feels about it deep down. she does try her best not to intervene between his and kotonoha's relationship, she doesn't give in until makoto spits on his relationship with kotonoha and tells her he loves her. for that reason, even though i hate that she kisses him in the second episode or so, i can kind of forgive her. it's clear she was suffering and still trying her best to help makoto and kotonoha be happy - however, her own desires led her to be a bit manipulative. i almost kind of admire it, she knows what she wants and was trying to go for it. she was getting mixed signals, and when the person you love keeps promising to do better for you it can be hard to turn away.
in regards to makoto, i honestly didn't begin to hate him until episode 4 forward. up until then all his blunders were fairly forgivable in my opinion. it's normal to be young and hesitant when you've only just begun dating - and even now i don't believe there's anything at all wrong with changing your mind when it comes to love. i don't believe we can control the heart.
PLOT SPOILERS
on top of this, i can understand how the lack of intimacy from kotonoha was frustrating. obviously, though, nobody is owed anything - especially not sex. i sympathize with kotonoha's end heavily because i have also been in situations where i've made myself uncomfortable in order to please someone else. in society it is very disadvantageous for a woman to have sex - it's seen as dirty, a "loss of innocence", you are viewed as having already been claimed in a lot of men's minds. but for men it's seen as an impressive feat by most people, and it even often boosts your status to have been with a lot of women. the real answer to his problems should have been either becoming more patient for her or calling the relationship quits - communication. not only does he fail repeatedly to just say what the hell he means and feels, but he's extremely selfish. he hops from kotonoha to sekai because she's an easier lay, and then he swaps right back to kotonoha after sekai gets pregnant. he's truly terrible, and all the while he's sleeping with basically half of his class. honestly, i don't know if anyone felt bad when he was killed.
the most level headed character is probably setsuna, honestly i couldn't remember her at all until rewatching.
SPOILER: SETSUNA'S CHARACTER
i really admired that she tried to force makoto to choose fairly, and when he leaned toward sekai she tried to force him to remain on that path. i found her to be extremely selfless - doing her best to help sekai despite her own feelings, yet mentally healthy at the same time.
i think that overall school days is an exaggerated but more realistic look at harems. even when first getting into anime at 11 years old i remember hating that such a large portion of anime are nonsensical harems and fan service. ones in which the protagonist has all these options at his disposal despite being painfully average (or shitty..), he's allowed to do every little perverted thing he wants (he might get a comedic slap, but that's the end of it), and he's allowed to pick and choose between girls at any time he wishes - sometimes even having multiple girls at the same time. it always made me sick, and i think school days set to make a break in that trope. for 2005 it was pretty ahead of its time.
personally, for me, after all this time it held up wonderfully.