School Days/YMMV

• Adaptation Displacement: How many people even realise that that most of the game's endings are very conventional good endings? Including one ending where The Tenchi Solution that is so brutally Deconstructed in the anime is played completly straight with Sekai and Kotonoha, now best friends, happily talking to each other like sisters in the snow about celebrating Chirstmas with Makoto by having a threesome and announcing that they are both carrying his childeren as a present. No Nice Boat here.
  • A more basic version of this trope would be the notion that the anime came first, or that some fans don't know of the visual novel at all.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Makoto just a poor guy who got caught up in the thrill of having so many women willing to sleep with him, that he lost sight of what was really important? Or is he a Jerkass who cared for nothing but his own pleasure, and only went back to Kotonoha because she was the only one besides Sekai who would take him? The fact that his Manga Character is VASTLY different from his Anime Character doesn't help.
  • This troper's played the original visual novel. In the visual novel, he's MUCH nicer than in the anime, plus he has a different voice actor in the original visual novel so he sounds less like a jerk and more like a shy boy. But he's not a saint in the visual novel, either: the problem is that his character flaw is different in the game and in the anime. In the anime, his character flaw is that he's a jerk who really likes sex. In the GAME, on the other hand, his main problem is that he's too indecisive and can't make up his mind. And part of what made him so attractive to girls in the game (specifically that he's a really nice guy who once rescued Setsuna from bullies for example) actually works against him in situations where it would be better if he was blunt. So he ends up dating both girls mostly because he doesn't have the heart to break things off for good and hurt their feelings. Which is still a stupid move, but not for as evil reasons as his behavior in the anime.
• Bile Fascination: This game/anime/manga is confusing, frightening, maddening and depressing. Not that it will stop you from playing/watching/reading.
• Complete Monster: Taisuke. Just Taisuke.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: "Kanashimi no Mukou e", which plays during Makoto and Sekai's deaths.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Kotonoha and Sekai's happiest endings can be seen as this. Probably "Two Lovers" as well, where if you play your cards right, Makoto ends up with both Kotonoha and Sekai as his lovers. They're all on good terms with each other and plan to celebrate Christmas together. The "earn" part of the Two Lovers happy ending comes into play because in order to achieve the "Two Lovers" ending, you have to play a path that causes Kotonoha and Sekai to corner Makoto on a rooftop and force him to pick a girl right then and there. And then you have to either let the timer run out on the choice or pick Sekai, because picking Kotonoha at that particular point will get Makoto eventually stabbed in the stomach by Sekai.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Yuki for numerous reasons. The main reason is that he's the Nice Guy to Makoto's Jerkass personality and probably the Only Sane Man that is Genre Savvy enough to realize what's going on. He can call Sekai out on everything she's done to Kotohana and punch Makoto for being a dick. Finally he's the cross dresser that many guys have deemed more attractive than the girls of this series.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Surprisingly, Yuki and Makoto. Yuki is the only person that stands up and calls him out for cheating on the girls where Taisuke and his friends praise him for getting multiple girls and "becoming a man". Since at this point of time, he's already in over his head and is out right annoyed that he of all people punched him. However, he falls for Yuki's counterpart Yu because she's different from the other girls he's dated. "She" is the only girl that outright cares that he is going out with multiple woman and because of Yu, he's able to think better and realize the error of his ways. His love for Yu gets to the point where he's willing to stand up to Taisuke for "her". And of course, in the true ending, he shouts at the top of his lungs that he loves Yu. Even when he finds out that Yu is a boy, he realizes he doesn't care about the gender because Yuki and Yu are the same person and Yu changed him.
• Fetish Retardant: The second half of the series kicks this into overdrive, like Kotonoha and Makoto french kissing in front of Sekai who starts to have a mental breakdown.
• Fridge Brilliance: How come Otome's friends get away scot free? They don't. See Karma Houdini or the WMG for the reason why.
• Jerkass Woobie: It's easy to feel sympathy for Sekai throughout the story. But considering that her actions were pretty much the reason the entire plot happened, Your Mileage May Vary. Not to mention that it's even worse in the manga.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The bloody bad endings are the main reason why people buy the game. Justifed in that that was intended from the start to be the series primary gimmick.
• Harsher in Hindsight : Likely what the writers had felt when they heard a scene from the finale actually happened in real life before the episode aired. You know the one...
• Nightmare Fuel: The finale of the anime and a bad ending of the game. The ending of the manga as well.
  • This anime/manga is one of the freakiest ones that doesn't involve monsters, and magic/tech gone wrong. It's just about human nature and how we can really go down the slippery slope into insanity.
• Ho Yay: Seems that the newly released Cross Days has quite a bit of it. One of the sex scenes features Makoto and the male lead Yuuki, who's also a Wholesome Crossdresser. And in another, Yuuki is gang-banged by his male friends, one of them being Taisuke.
• Idiot Plot: Several of the decisions taken by the characters make the viewers wonder if they were dropped or kicked on their heads as children.
  • The manga seems to have everyone act a little more sanely. (Well, at first anyway.)
• Memetic Mutation : "Nice boat." In fact, the meme was such a hit that the creators of the original game sold Nice Boat related merchandise at a past Comiket event.
  • There is a solid Shout-Out regarding this meme at the end of the Magical Heart Kokoro-chan OVA, where Kokoro is rowing in an inflatable raft specifically labelled "Nice Boat" on its sides.
  • The remake made a new meme out of one of the [PS2] endings. "Nice train".
• Moral Event Horizon: Everyone!
  • Makoto: Pick your poison, but one good choice is tongue-kissing Kotonoha in front of Sekai just to hammer the point home that they're through...when she's (apparently) pregnant with his baby!
  • Sekai: Murder, natch. While Makoto's actions throughout the anime provide for her a Freudian Excuse that makes her action here more forgivable than those of others in the anime, in the manga she has no excuse whatsoever when she murders Kotonoha without a hint of remorse and even mocks her for calling out for Makoto's help. Or in one of the new bad endings, where she succesfully kills Kotonoha via tossing her in the path of a speeding train in front of Makoto and a huge crowd and laughs about it... while being completely sane, meaning she's in full control of her actions. (Compare with Kotonoha's case down there).
    • YMMV on the sane part.
  • Kotonoha: Double murder (probably), plus the contents of her bag (Makoto's severed head).
    • And she also has a shocking one in the original visual novel: At one point in the visual novel, Makoto's with Sekai. She seduces Makoto and gets him to promise that if Sekai leaves him, she'll be the only one he'll look at. Next, she takes a picture of them together and shows it to Sekai, while verbally bullying her. This makes Sekai break up with Makoto. That's right, she had Makoto promise her and then purposely upsets Sekai into breaking up with Makoto to make sure that he keeps his promise, thus having him all to herself. And no, Kotonoha has not gone yandere here; this is her being a manipulative bitch and showing that, at very least not in this route, she's not innocent as everyone makes her out to be. Whether she gets away with it or not is up to the player's decisions. If you do have Makoto refuse her, then you get one of Sekai's happiest endings overall.
  • Taisuke: Raping Kotonoha when she's at her lowest point.
  • Natsumi, Kumi, and Minami: Taking advantage of a school tradition to tape couples have sex... and then show the footage to the whole school. The victims include their supposed friend Otome, whose feelings they then ignore again by having sex with Makoto just for the hell of it, and Sekai's friend Nanami, who gets taped and exposed by them while having sex with her boyfriend and has her reputation completely ruined among the other students..
    • In one of the visual novel routes, we also have them cornering Kotonoha, knocking down and stepping over the lunch she made for Makoto with LOTS of effort, and laughing over it. Not only that, but they even plan to treat her worse and at some point corner her to beat her up. Again, depending on your actions, Makoto can stop them, which triggers one of Kotonoha's happiest endings.
• Narm: For some reason people didn't take the seriousness of the drama and murders all too serious.
  • And neither did the creators, or so it seems.
  • The entire idea of cutting open someone with a butcher knife to check to see if she's pregnant will likely be completely laughable to those who don't find it completely disgusting.
• High Octane Nausea Fuel: The anime's finale. Sekai stabbing Makoto to death was one thing. Kotonoha cutting off Makoto's head, stuffing it in a bag, and showing it to Sekai was another (then cradling it on a Nice Boat) was another thing. The High-Pressure Blood from Kotonoha killing Sekai was yet another. But Kotonoha cutting open Sekai's uterus to confirm whether she was pregnant... Wasn't like I was planning to eat...for the next few years or so...
• Never Live It Down: The original visual novel has Makoto and Kotonoha as the Official Couple with Sekai as their friend being canon, but since the anime and the manga expands on the worst endings possible, anybody who knows of the series will always know Kotonoha and Sekai as a couple of psycho love-stricken bitches with Makoto as the idiot in between whose actions sparked the flames.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap : Makoto's manga incarnation, as well as in the OVAs. He remains an idiot in these incarnation, but is also quite less of a Jerkass and does care for the girls.
  • Playing the original visual novel video game after having watched the anime may also contribute to the rescuing. He's not really a jerk in the original game either when compared to his anime self. (He has a slightly nicer voice in the game, too.)
• Ron the Death Eater: While the hatred towards Makoto and Sekai may be understandable to a degree, it's really blown out of disturbing proportions, with Sekai having it worse. Yes, they both have their flaws that can in ways affect the story, but people very often ignore their positive and/or redeeming qualities. One common reason is that most fans have seen the anime first and immediately transfer those portrayals onto the visual novel counterparts, biasely treating them as horrible people from the very beginning while treating Kotonoha as a Purity Sue, forgetting her flaws that can make her just as horrible as the other two.
  • Also, Kotonoha herself. Some people seem to ignore Kotonoha's positive qualities and blow her Yandere traits out of proportion, ignoring the fact that she's constantly subjected to Break the Cutie and that she only shows her Yandere traits on the bad endings in School Days and Cross Days and the Anime/Manga adaptations.
• The Scrappy: There's quite a few actually, but Makoto, Sekai, and Taisuke stand at the top of the heap. Makoto for being a manwhore, Sekai for seducing Makoto in the first place, and Taisuke for being a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and a Karma Houdini.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat : Averted. It may actually be mocking shows that intentionally incite this.
• Shocking Swerve: In the manga, the girls' emotional breakdowns, culminating in Kotonoha trying to kill Sekai and Sekai killing Kotonoha aren't as built up as in the anime.
• Snark Bait : Ohohohoho...
• Take That Scrappy!: Makoto, and how.
  • Sekai in Cross Days as well.
• Tear Jerker:
  • In Cross Days, failing to get the true ending on Yuki's route results in the above scene of Crowning Moment of Heartwarming happening but instead of Makoto grabbing Yuki's arm before he runs off, he misses and Yuki flees the scene. Realizing that his feelings for the person he loved was denied, Makoto goes into a Heroic BSOD and shows the Dull Eyes of Unhappiness. Yuki then acts like they've never met as they pass by but then you see that Yuki looks ready to cry because he still thinks Makoto didn't accept him for who he was.
  • In the manga, the scene in which a hysterical Kokoro calls Makoto to tell him that her older sister is bleeding to death.
• Wangst : Kotonoha's response to being dumped is perhaps a tad overdone. Then again, she might have had some mental disorder to start with.
• What an Idiot! : So, so many instances. Watching the anime is potentially hazardous to your intelligence. And that's the point.
• The Woobie : Sekai and Kotonoha. They were both victims of some really, really dicky moves.
  • Kotonoha still gets extra points for being fucked around with by her fellow upperclassmen.
  • Yuki too is a major woobie, because he is the' Nice Guy in the entire series and how sometimes the things he do to prevent the tragedy backfire on him.