Sigh...

I was really really pumped up to read this manga, considering I loved the School Days anime. Thus I was expecting an emotional drama filled with several memorable moments. Instead I got two memorable quotes. Which were in the final two chapters. The rest? FLUFF!

School Days the manga is based off of a visual novel that also has a rather infamous anime adaption. For those of you who are unaware, it tells the story of a boy named Makoto. The girl who sits by him in class, Sekai, finds out he likes a girl called Kotonoha and helps Makoto become Kotonoha's boyfriend. But Sekai happens to have a crush on Makoto. Lame premise, I know, but the anime was able to take it and make it work really well.

The anime however, had these three episodes of fluff at the beginning. It was needed to set up the characters and help the emotional impact in the later scenes. Not to mention it was entertaining fluff. School Days the manga has eight, arguably nine chapters of pointless romantic fluff however, that isn't funny or cute. It's just fluff. Romantic, shoujo-like romantic fluff, and there are few things in the world that I find more annoying than shoujo romantic fluff. These chapters are pointless. Anyone familiar with School Days could just skip to chapter eight with little problem. So School Days, for the most part, is a straight up romantic comedy instead of a drama, which makes the ending laughable.

Don't worry, anime fans! School Days also has that kind of ending to it, and it is the best part of the manga by far. However, it feels very tacked on. I mean, you've been reading comedic fluff for however long it takes you to read the early chapters, and then suddenly a knife gets pulled out. It's not scary, it's not dramatic, it is hilarious. You can't just pull out a knife out of fuckin' nowhere, you need build-up, which the anime had. And the manga had zero of.

The characters also took a step down too. Makoto lost most of his lovable idiocy that makes him one of my favorite of the male romance protagonist types (yes, I liked him in the anime a lot, I have strange tastes, okay?) and is now just a, well, just another dull male romance protagonist. Yippee! Sekai also takes a step down in this, pushing herself way too much on Makoto. And Kotonoha is still Kotonoha, whiny and too shy. (I never really liked her...) And both girls suddenly go crazy at the end for little reason. Shock factor barely redeems it, but still. All of the other characters are merely turned into side characters, most of them don't even get their names dropped. Which is good and bad. All of the forgettable ones are gone but the memorable ones are also gone.

The art is very cutesy, but doesn't really work out. It looks very messy and at times it's tough to tell Sekai and Kotonoha apart. While everyone suddenly looking a lot more moe compared to the character designs in the anime (which were as generic as generic can be) threw me off for a bit, in a way it does fit the more light-hearted tone for the manga.

If you like romantic fluff, sudden twist endings, and can't get enough of anime like Myself Yourself and H2O Footprints in the Sand, then this is the perfect manga for you. School Days fans like me will be disappointed. I don't recommend this manga. Watch the anime instead, it's really good.