Random Curiosity

Summary:

Walking together through the streets, Makoto is feeling cold, so Kotonoha puts his hands on her chest to warm them. The two then go to a restaurant to have dinner, and in the middle of it, Makoto gets a call from Sekai who has already cooked for him. She wants him to come home, but Makoto says that he can’t immediately. This causes her to wonder if he’s averse to her cooking, and when he claims that that’s not it, she demands to hear the real reason. She knows that he’s lying when he claims that he’s got things to do, and she soon starts suspecting that he’s being unfaithful again. When she tries to use the child inside of her as a reason why he should come home, Makoto feels that Kotonoha wouldn’t say something like that. The fact that he mentioned Kotonoha alarms Sekai, and when Makoto doesn’t immediately answer, she realizes that this is who he’s with right now. Makoto then voices his frustration over the baby and how she blurted it out in front of everyone. After he tells her to go home and hangs up, Makoto gets a message from Sekai apologizing and saying that she’s going back.

A short time later, Sekai has just gotten off her train when she turns around and sees Kotonoha hugging Makoto’s arm on the train on the other track. Because of this, she rushes back towards his apartment. Makoto and Kotonoha get there before her, and Makoto sees the mess that Sekai made when she threw everything she cooked onto the floor. As he boils some water for tea and starts to clean up the mess, Makoto thinks about how he was content with just sitting next to her and having lunch with her. He now realizes that his own selfishness is at fault. Soon after he burns his hand on the tea kettle, he hears the doorbell ring, but Kotonoha answers the door first. Sekai immediately slaps her and is furious over why Kotonoha is here. She wants Kotonoha to go home, and when Makoto tries to get between them, Sekai points out that he had broken up with Kotonoha and wonders if he’s going to abandon her now that she’s pregnant. Sekai tries to get Makoto to say that he doesn’t love Kotonoha anymore, and she wants to believe that it was Kotonoha who initiated this.

Kotonoha, however, calmly notes that Sekai was the one who tempted Makoto. She accuses Sekai of attempting to pull her and Makoto apart, and when Sekai tries to say that she and Makoto are in love, Kotonoha feels that Sekai just wants to think so. Kotonoha then changes the topic to how what Setsuna did was requested by Sekai. Since Sekai doesn’t know what she’s talking about, Kotonoha reveals that Setsuna liked Makoto too. She also recalls how Sekai had once told her that Makoto would cherish her, and she feels that Makoto has always been at her side waiting for her. That’s why she’s not hesitating anymore, and she proves it by kissing him right there in front of Sekai. This causes Sekai much grief, and she screams and leaves. As she walks home, Sekai remembers how she had once told Setsuna all about Makoto, but her memories suddenly turn into a dark setting with characters similar to those in the play that Setsuna saw during the school festival. The masked figure in front of her accuses her of having used the flower to get close to Makoto as well as of being a hypocrite. Sekai denies it, so the masked figure questions why she did everything she did. The masked figure also feels that none of this would have happened if Sekai hadn’t sat beside Makoto and hadn’t introduced Kotonoha to him. Taking off the mask, the figure turns out to be Setsuna.

The next morning, Sekai gets a message from Makoto mentioning the hospital of an acquaintance of Kotonoha’s and implying that she should get an abortion early on because it’s less stressful on the body. Sekai messages Makoto back saying that she wants to meet with him alone at home. During lunch, Makoto tells Kotonoha about Sekai going to the hospital, and after he says that he wants to spend his time with Kotonoha from now on, the two kiss. Makoto meets with Sekai that afternoon, but after a long and uneasy silence, he decides to go make some tea. Sekai gets up to do it instead, and after she starts boiling water, she notices all the ruined food she cooked the previous night that is now in a garbage bag. She then sends Makoto a message via her cell phone consisting of a sorry, numerous blank lines, and a goodbye at the very end. Right as Makoto reads the goodbye, Sekai charges him and stabs him. Calling him cruel, she proceeds to stab him repeatedly until he’s very much dead, at which point she finally realizes what she’s done when she looks into his eyes.

Sekai is gone by the time Kotonoha arrives at Makoto’s apartment, leaving Kotonoha to discover the body by herself. In her own room later, Sekai is shocked to get a message from Makoto saying that he’s waiting for her on the school rooftop. When she gets there, she finds a duffel bag sitting on one of the benches, and it’s actually Kotonoha waiting for her. Kotonoha asks if she went to the hospital, but because Sekai hadn’t, Kotonoha accuses her of trying to win Makoto by pretending to be pregnant. Sekai claims that she really is pregnant, so Kotonoha points out that she should have gone to the hospital. Kotonoha then goes back to saying that she’s Makoto’s girlfriend, and this prompts Sekai to tearfully admit that she wanted to become his girlfriend, so she let him do what he wanted. To Sekai’s shock, Kotonoha says that Makoto is with them and refers to the duffel bag. Inside of it, Sekai finds Makoto’s severed head, and it grosses her out to the point of wanting to throw up. Kotonoha then pulls out a cleaver and wants to confirm if what Sekai said about being pregnant is true.

Sekai attempts to pull out the own knife in her pocket in response, but Kotonoha knocks it out of her hand and slices Sekai’s neck. This quickly kills Sekai, and afterwards, Kotonoha opens Sekai up and sees nothing that would indicate a baby, which she thinks confirms that Sekai was lying. The next day, Kotonoha is out on her family yacht by herself, with only Makoto’s severed head in her arms. She feels that it’s finally just the two of them.

After watching this, I can understand why the episode was delayed due to the axe murder. It was much more violent than I thought it’d be, and that’s even with the black blood censorship (which made things look kinda weird). Actually though, according to the people who went to the special screening of the final episode that Overflow held, the AT-X broadcast was edited heavily. In the uncut version, not only was the blood was red, but there were also no flashbacks during the Makoto stabbing scene (a lot more of where she stabbed him were there), they actually showed Makoto’s head in the bag, and there were apparently some more sounds added to the baby-confirmation scene.

Speaking of which, it’s not entirely clear about whether Sekai was really pregnant or not, but I tend to give her the benefit of the doubt because Kotonoha was completely messed up by that point, and I don’t think Sekai had been pregnant long enough for Kotonoha to be able to just cut her open and find a dead baby. That scene was just one part of what ended up being one of the most disturbing episodes I’ve ever seen. If you think about it, there were two violent deaths, a severed head, an opening up of a girl up to see if she’s pregnant, and a hugging of that severed head. I certainly wasn’t expecting a good ending or anything, but this was off the charts since they essentially combined two bad endings from the game. The sad thing is that they could have gone for a clean sweep of all three bad endings by having Kotonoha kill herself by jumping off the building. I think that the yacht scene probably had more dramatic impact than that would have though.

Final Thoughts: This series started off so innocently like it was going to be any other harem show, and even though a lot of us knew that there was a potential for a bad ending like in the game, I don’t think that many people seriously thought they were going to end that way. That is, until Makoto started sleeping with everything that moved - putting himself in an unredeemable situation - and Kotonoha started showing signs of being mentally ill. Overall though, I still think the production team did a remarkable job building up the suspense and portraying each of the characters’ raw emotions. The story isn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser, but with an ending like this, I can honestly say that I won’t be forgetting about School Days anytime soon.