Why did so many people dislike School Days?

[Crimson]

Well, things are getting kinda philosophical now but I'm interested in discussing that Topic further. As far as I know it's not the captain's "duty" to wait for the last passenger to be rescued until he's allowed to board one of the boats. Anyways, if I was the captain, I wouldn't give a damn even if there was such a rule. Such behaviour would be perfectly human, after all, you wouldn't be willing to die because of one simple mistake, would you?

[douggle]

School days was alright, however it had lots of issues, the biggest being that Makoto was hands down the WORST protagonists EVER, another was I felt that Sekai and Kotonaha really weren't that great, they were both rather manipulative, I actually preferred Setsuna over all of the other girls. The Bad endings were ok, I suppose I think another huge issue was the way the choice system worked, that whole you have to make a choice in x amount of time was bullshit.

[yashasupercow]

School days was alright, however it had lots of issues, the biggest being that Makoto was hands down the WORST protagonists EVER, another was I felt that Sekai and Kotonaha really weren't that great, they were both rather manipulative, I actually preferred Setsuna over all of the other girls. The Bad endings were ok, I suppose I think another huge issue was the way the choice system worked, that whole you have to make a choice in x amount of time was bullshit.

No wonder why i read 2 of the walkthrough still haven't achive the right ending.still the choice system doesn't make any sense!

[khan009]

SD as a visual novel was always one of the best sellers and most popular...

Until the anime was released.

The problem is that in a visual novel, Makoto is literally a character that the player chooses to be. Every good or bad action he does is literally a decision made by the audience, Well, all of Makoto's important choices were actually made by the player, not by him. But in the anime, Makoto was literally a lustful and irresponsible trash man, and the fact that important choices were made only by the player in the visual novel also caused hatred of the visual novel.

In one sentence, the School Days visual novel has been unfairly criticized for its poor anime plot.

I liked the VN because it was really my choice of the story and Makoto was a character that my choices affected. Like Makoto in this love triangle, I found myself confused and indecisive and had trouble choosing the right decision. But I hate to death the anime and Makoto's character and the others in it because no right decision is made by anyone in it.

Edited July 8, 2023 by khan009

[littleshogun]

Decided to revive the thread, and let's just say people have enough saying about Makoto and how the higher up (Director/producer/0verflow) was adapted the worst ending for some reasons (Most likely to become viral, and the studio definitely aware of Nice Boat meme). Technical wise, I should say that 0verflow tried their best to bring the anime like experience in the VN, although unfortunately it make the game become buggy and had too big size.

PS - By the way, 0verflow stopped their VN production in 2016, and while usually I feel bad whenever the companies does so, I don't feel bad for 0verflow at all when they said they won't develop their own VN, especially after they make the mess of Makoto's family tree with them probably being drunk when they do the meeting on it. Granted the relationship in the tree would probably happen in a bunch of nukige, but sometimes I need to draw the line with 0verflow manage to do so.

Edited December 8, 2024 by littleshogun

[Okarin]

For the same reasons people don't get into Subahibi: it's too edgy.

School Days is a particular style of VN that's a bit far removed from your usual moege- and moege is the thing that sells like hotcake.

[Clephas]

7 hours ago, Okarin said:

For the same reasons people don't get into Subahibi: it's too edgy.

School Days is a particular style of VN that's a bit far removed from your usual moege- and moege is the thing that sells like hotcake.

It's not just that... School Days' biggest flaw is the degree to which the protagonist's personality changes route by route.  There is very little consistency in his character, which makes the whole experience that much less believable than the average game of the type.  While most JVN protagonists are pretty templated (making the exceptions really stand out), School Days' protagonist is a different template depending on the route... and most of those templates aren't really ones people who read this sort of VN want to experience.  The anime showed off the 'selfish adolescent man-whore' template, which was pretty much his worst version, but that only serves to show how the writers essentially wrote him as a different character depending on the route.