School_Days – 12 [FINAL]

Posted by Shin

Despite the fiasco last week it's nice to see the broadcasters finally muster the courage to air the final episode to this series, albeit heavily censored of course. After watching this, I now understand why they were so desperately trying to get it off air in the first place and treat viewers to Nice Boat instead.

Unlike the bad endings portrayed in the game, the one shown here is far more gruesome than I had originally anticipated and made Higurashi's somewhat over the top cartoony violence laughable. Picking up where the previous episode left off, we see Katsura and Makoto together again after the former decided to patch things up. As the pair settle down for dinner at a restaurant, Makoto receives a call from Sekai who has already prepared food for the him. Suspecting that something is aloft, Sekai questions Makoto on why he refuses to come home and is given a vague reply. He then lashes out at her and hangs up on her, leaving Sekai speechless.

After apologizing to him, she heads back home, but encounters the pair along the way. Infuriated, she rushes to back to the apartment demanding an explanation, only to have Katsura adding insult to injury by accusing Sekai of trying to break her and Makoto apart by seducing him and such, not even leaving Sekai any chance of retorting. As a final blow, she kisses Makoto in front of her prompting Sekai to scream in agony.

=(

>=(

The now broken Sekai lies in bed in anguish when she suddenly receives a message from Makoto, who suggests to Sekai that she should abort the baby as soon as possible as it would be less taxing on the body. That was the final straw.

The following scene entails what fans have been hoping would happen to that worthless bastard, and while being a disturbing sequence, it was satisfying to see Makoto get his just desserts. Having said that, the scene would have been much better if they had the accompanying sound effects to go with it, which was omitted for obvious reasons, not to mention the black blood which made everything look out of place. Apparently the special screening held by Overflow for the final episode contained red blood, with more emphasis on the stabbings as well as sound effects, which for once, I'm looking forward to the DVD rips not for omitted fanservice.

Umm, Sekai, that's not what I had in mind when I said "Girl on top."

Anyway, Sekai who comes to realization of what had took place flees the scene, with Katsura discovering the corpse later. Judging from her reaction, my suspicions on Katsura being broken as well came true, and she seem unfazed and displayed not even the slightest ounce of shock.

Later on, Sekai is asked by Katsura to meet in school for unknown reasons. Unaware of the terrible danger that awaits her, Sekai proceeds to the meeting point and comes across a bag on a bench... Katsura then approaches Sekai and asks whether she went for the abortion already, which Sekai quickly dismisses. Katsura proceeds to accuse Sekai further by claiming the entire pregnancy thing was just a ruse to lure Makoto away. Sekai insists otherwise and says that she let him do whatever he wanted to her because she wanted to be his girlfriend too. With an empty look on her eyes, Katsura then asks Sekai to find out what he thought about it herself. Attention is then turned to the bag, which contained Makoto's decapitated head. OKAY I DID NOT EXPECT THAT!111

Katsura then tells Sekai that she wanted to know if she was really pregnant or not and takes out a cleaver. Sekai never stood a chance.

Surely, a pregnancy test kit would have been better?!

What an aesthetically pleasing marine vessel.

The following scene is symbolic and meaningful in many ways, as we see Katsura, with Makoto's severed head in arms, curling up on board a yacht drifting into the sunset. At the end of it all, I must really hand it out to the team for producing this fine piece of work, which seemingly at first looked like any other harem anime. And while some are aware of the bad endings, we never really know which one to expect or whether or not there was going to be one at all. Good job building up the story and at the same time managing to cram in enough character development for people to actually empathize. Not the greatest of storylines around but I'll always look back at School Days and think to myself "That was some Nice Boat." Shin out.