School Days is a 2005 AVG from Overflow that featured fully voiced and animated gameplay. Thanks partly to its infamous blood-soaked “bad ends”, the game achieve cult status in otakudom and can be said to be the first and, thus far, only hit for the obscure studio. A sequel starring Setsuna Kiyoura, the most popular sub-heroine in the original game, called SummerDays was thrown together in less time than it takes for snow to melt in an August afternoon, and the result wasn’t very good. At all.

Anyway, the first episode of School Days 2007 aired this morning and I managed to obtain a copy via Bittor… Haitian black voodoo magic. The first episode is pretty much a blow-by-blow remake of the first chapter of the game with a few minute changes. So, how does it compare? Continue reading for my expert fanboy opinions.

Despite the royal screw-up that is SummerDays, the original School Days is still popular enough to warrant an anime adaptation. Being a huge SD fan (I own both games and even attended a pre-launch SummerDays event in Akihabara), I feel conflicted about an anime adaptation. On one hand I am happy about having more Sekai and Setsuna, but on the other hand lies uncertainties and doubts. The original SD, especially the first chapter, had a certain magic that caught my attention when it was first released as a 22-minute WMV demo, something that SummerDays and the other SD spin-offs failed utterly at recreating. I am almost certain that the anime will suffer the same fate… It’s still too early to tell, though. Anyway, moving along…

Basically the story is about a love triangle (or square or pentagon or hexagon) between a bunch of carefree high school students. It’s a little bit more complicated than that but that shall suffice for the purpose of this post. The main character is Makoto Itou and the two main heroines are Sekai Saionji (yay) and Kotonoha Katsura (boo).

Taking a page from my own “advice“, here’s a whole bunch of screenshots from the first episode! As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words. Or was it, JPEGs are a lazy blogger’s best friend. Anyway, here goes 26,000+ words…

WARNING: No (real) spoilers but lots of fanboy jokes!

“Why did I enroll in a school of faceless monsters?”

Glad to see the story still takes place in the same setting.

Split-screen face-closeups faithfully ported from the game.

PANTSU DASSHU!

I am cute, innocent, pure and I don’t carry knives with me. *eyes sparkle*

Do Not Disturb. Professional stalker at work.

Makoto has bigger eyes now.

SEKAI 4EVA!

Character designs are pretty close to the original.

“Wanna make out on the rooftop after school?”

“Ok, but only if Kotonoha can join us too. She is pretty hawt for a fellow girl.”

“Note to self: this guy will stab me in the back one day.”

“Don’t mind me, please continue with your hawt yaoi sechs.”

Sekai’s trademarked 120-degree head turn!

“I have nekkid pics of Kotonoha, you want?”

“Hand them over!”

Best 3 seconds of the entire episode.

“You lied… those were Paris Hilton pics. I had to pour acid into my eyes.”

“I am just an innocent girl. No knives at all. No siree.”

I like this expression.

“Look at me laugh innocently. I am such an angel. *sparkle*”

Yes, the awesome train station scene is in this episode. Rejoice!

Emo…

The ending is just not the same without “Still I Love You” by KIRIKO. :(

And that concludes my 26,000+ words… now for a few more.

The first episode tries to take the safe path by remaining generally faithful to the original and taking very little risks in terms of new content. Although the original game was billed as fully animated, the reality was that only crucial scenes were properly animated in the normal anime series while a good potion of the regular dialogues was done using mouth overlays and a combination of facial close-ups from various angles. This saves a lot of money and effort by greatly reducing the amount of actual animation in the game. That of course does not work very well for a real anime which is why the anime only uses split-screen close-ups for the occasional dramatic effect. So, I guess it’s an improvement over the psuedo animations of the original… right?

Paradoxically, I actually prefer the original. I admit that it’s cheapskate and mostly a cost-cutting decision, but it actually helps to make the emotional scenes stand out more. I thought that the climax scene in the first episode didn’t work nearly as well in the anime because of this (and because of the lack of the awesome game theme song). But maybe it’s all just the irrational fanboy in me speaking.

Moving on… It’s great that the cast is the same because I like it with the exception of Makoto. Sekai Banzai! Setsuna Banzai!

And did I mention that I really, really miss the theme song from the original game, “Still I Love You ~Mitsumeru Yori wa Shiawase~“? I mean rino has a great voice and all but the new ED just doesn’t do it for me. BTW the anime ED theme is Usotsuki (Liar) by CooRie (aka rino).

All in all, the anime was better than I had expected, but not quite the “ZOMG I MUST STOP EATING TO PREORDER THIS GAME NOW” level of pure goodness that was the original episode one.

By the way, I’ve uploaded the legendary Paikia-Fansubs translation of the original 22-minute promo video in all its crappy-editing galore to YouTube. I would’ve re-encoded a new version with better translation but the original soft script has been lost in the labyrinth of time. FLV quality FTL. And yes I do realize that the subs are pretty much unreadable… blame it on YouTube and the typesetter. I do have a copy of the untimed and unedited translations if it helps.

P.S. In case I haven’t already made it crystal clear: SEKAI & SETSUNA ROX MY SEKAI! :)

Here’s an update to the announcement for the upcoming anime adaptation of School Days. While it is not stated on the image, it appears, judging the from lighting and layout, to have been taken during the Tokyo Anime Fair 2007 which just ended on Sunday.

The series will start airing in July on Chiba TV and will contain a total of 13 episodes.

Director: Keitarou Motonagake (Yumeria, To Heart: RMM, GetBackers, Amaenaideyo!!)

Series Composition / Script: Makoto Uezu (Utawarerumono, Ah! My Goddess S2, Amaenaideyo!! S2)

Character Design / Overall Art Director: Junji Gotou (original character designer for School Days)

Animation Production: TNK (Kyoushirou to Towa no Sora)

Production: Marvellous Entertainment Inc.

Nothing unexpected, though I can’t say that the staff list so far instills much confidence. Well, I guess it will probably be fine if they remain faithful to the game…

TVシリーズは全13話構成で、原作のどれかのエンディングを再現ãã‚‹ã®ã‹ã€ã‚¢ãƒ‹ãƒ¡ã‚ªãƒªã‚¸ãƒŠãƒ«ã«ãªã‚‹ã®ã‹ã¯ä¸æ˜Žã ã‘ど、何らかのバッドエンドになるのは確定だそうで。

According to the above line from Moon Phase Zakki, it is still not confirmed whether the ending will follow one of the paths from the game or a original anime path. But apparently, it will be a bad ending. (WTF? I hope it’s just rumours.)

[ Source: ASCII.jp via Moon Phase Zakki ]

Character design will apparently still be Junji Gotou, but Moon Phase suspects that while there is a high probability that a School Days project is in the works, the list of staff that has been leaked is probably inaccurate.

So, who still remembers the mysterious “School Days episode 1” released by Paikai-Fansubs—a group worse than Doremi—last year? That was actually the first chapter of the game (which is, technically, fully animated). If the anime turns out to be anywhere close, it will be really awesome.

I think I speak for everyone who has played the game when I say that I can’t wait to see Makoto being stabbed with a knife! And of course, Setsuna-chan! :D

P.S. I was the translator for Paikia-Fansubs. Sorry. orz

We would like to express our gratitude for your support of our company’s products.

Our company released the PC Windows game “Summer Days” on 23rd June 2006 (Heisei 18). We have determined that the game contains files that were not meant to be in the final product.

A portion of the data needed to play “Summer Days” in the production disc is of an older version number. We have determined that this causes various errors during gameplay, such as problems with voice overs and scene display and inability to proceed through certain game routes. This is due to a mix up between the master data and some old data, which we failed to notice when we shipped the product. As such, a huge portion of the master data has been overwritten by older data and it is taking us some time to get everything back and to release the correction patches. There was a huge confusion in the company between the time we detected this mistake and when we finally determined the amount of data overwritten, and this slowed down our response. We sincerely apologize to everyone who has purchased the game.

Currently, we are mailing out DVD containing the patch to everyone who has contacted us through e-mail and phone and also to those who have mailed us the feedback card included in the game box. At the same time, we are distrubuting the patch through our BitTorrent server and various mirror sites. Patch DVDs will also be prepared for stores to distribute and will be ready sometime between the 29th of June and the 2nd of July.

We plan to send the complete and fixed master disc, as soon as it’s ready, to everyone who has registered through the feedback card.

We sincerely apologize for all the troubles we have caused for our customers and distributors. We strive to improve our company’s management structure to ensure that such an incident will never happen again. We seek your kind understanding.

28th June Heisei 18
0verflow

I’m not sure if I buy the reason given here. Even if it were true, the damage has already been done. Well but I guess we can be certain that they won’t repeat this again.

Summer Days

Summer Days is a story based on Overflow’s fully-animated School Days. There doesn’t seem to be a tragic love triangle this time, instead it has been replaced with Setsuna and more Setsuna! I’ll get this out of the way first before I elaborate: Whoever thought of this is a goddamn genius!

Although Summer Days shares the same setting as the original game, it is actually one of those “What if?” alternate universe stories. According to the FAQ:

Ｑ：どんなゲームでãã‹ï¼Ÿã‚¹ã‚¯ãƒ¼ãƒ«ãƒ‡ã‚¤ã‚ºã¨ã¯é•ã†ã®ã§ãã‹ï¼Ÿ

Ａ：誠が、２学期が始まり世界や言葉と親しくなる前に、もしも刹那と出会っていれば・・・というお話でãã€‚
ゲームシステムは「スクールデイズ」と同様のリアルタイムフルアニメーションシステムでãã€‚

Basically, this is what would have happened if Makoto met Setsuna first and the love triangle with Sekai and Kotonoha never happened. Setsuna tied with Sekai as my favourite character in the original game, so you can guess that I’m pretty damn happy with this new arrangement.

The current release date is January 2006. But considering how the original game was delayed for months, I’m guessing it’s probably closer to March. This is going on my preorder list… D: