School Days

Have you seen School Days? As an anime fan, is that good or bad?

Whenever I’m asked about anime, specifically about how things will progress, I usually tell the person it’s not too hard to figure it out if you’ve seen enough shows. It’s all about experience.

Main characters almost never die unless the story will focus on them in death. For example, many people now will make fun of Dragonball Z for the fact that Goku continually died and came back to life. But that was a function of the show. The first time he died, as people watched the show, it was a shock, because that’s not what we’ve come to expect from a series.

I’ve discussed this before; that killing off characters is a delicate business in storytelling. If you’re too harsh with it, killing off too many characters or killing off important characters, it can turn off the audience. Take Ga-Rei Zero, an anime from a few years ago that was the prequel to the manga Ga-Rei. The first episode seemed to be all about these two characters who they did a fairly decent job of making interesting in just that first episode… most of that episode anyway, because they were dead at the end of the episode. I can recall how the internet blew up with people talking about how weird that episode was. And many people didn’t come back for episode two. Why?

The well was poisoned. If a story seems to apt to seemingly randomly killing off characters it’s a little hard to expect people to want to watch it. It is something that can work, but you have to be precise and careful about it. More often than not it’s a failure and no one likes it. Simply put, you kill a leading character you’re probably killing the story. Even when a story comes to its end it can be hard to just kill off a lead character. Usually they are popular enough to warrant disbelief, if not backlash. Look at Code Geass for example. There is a significant portion of the fanbase that to this point does not believe he actually died at the end of the series.

As I said, rules in anime are like wood – sturdy enough until someone decides to make kindling out of it. We know that the hero will never lose when it really counts, no matter how heavy the odds are stacked against them. We know that there will always at least be a love triangle if not an outright harem. We know that if there is a harem it will not likely end as anything but a harem, usually with no progress made towards a resolution. So why are we so apt to view every anime with a wary eye? It’s very rare that the ending is not a happy one for the leads. Of those that aren’t clearly “happy” still few are truly “bad”, let alone dying bad.

But there exists the specter of those series that break the mold. Often times School Days is the darkest specter that rises up.

As I said, I haven’t seen the series. There’s a relatively good chance that many reading this post haven’t either. Yet the chances are they know of its shadow, one way or another.

Many, if not most, anime nowadays have a strong tilt towards the romance harem angle. Most harems are fairly innocent – the participants aware of each other and actively competing towards the eventual non-ending that they usually terminate in, though the male lead is aloof to the fact that he is even liked. Sometimes the male lead is aware and tries to gently rebuff the advances, or directly rebuffs only for it to be all but ignored.

There’s usually drama dealing with the male lead being insensitive or obtuse, and in the cases where there is development of an actual relationship it leads to hurt feelings for which the make lead is blamed, fairly or unfairly. However the common outcome is one free of consequence. Someone might get a lecture, but that’s the extent of it.

School Days was different. It caught the anime crowd at a moment of complacency. From what I’ve heard, the main character was a playboy, getting with a number of different girls and dumping them to get with another. The girls become an emotional wreck. And at the end, in the last episode, there’s a murder. Apparently it’s bloody and disturbing, involving said jerk guy being beheaded by one of his jilted lovers, and another keeping the trophy.

Having not seen the show I can’t adequately understand the way in which some seem to have been traumatized by watching that show. It is such that any series that depicts a contentious love affair quickly raises fears that it will end the same as School Days. Look no further than the top romance anime of the last couple seasons, Golden Time. There are no end to the fears among some members of the fan base and viewership that worry the series will end like School Days.

The semi-opposite would be Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica. The grandiosity of the finale of the series and the explosion of the fan following of the series after the fact, overshadows the first shock of the series that came early on when Mami Tomoe, who to the point had been setup as the wise friend leading the novice Madoka, was killed. The final episodes deal with the fact that who had seemed like an antagonist, Akemi Homura, was actually reliving the same past time and again trying to save the M.C, Madoka, from essentially dying and taking the world with her.

Everything we see and do influences the way we see and do things going forward from that point. The more powerful a single moment is, the stronger it stands out in our memories. School Days, for those who have seen it, is a traumatic experience they never again want to walk into without being prepared again. For those who haven’t seen it, it is still a haunting tale, one we are both intrigued to know if it’s all it’s been made out to be, and fearful to see for the possibility it is just as the rumors say. I haven’t seen School Days. I’m not sure if I should or not.