The Best Year in the History of Anime?

This is a follow up to a post I made at the start of 2026 where I made the case for 2006 being the best year of Anime History while doing my usual, “look back on Anime that turn 20 this year” thing I started doing in 2024.

The thing about years in Japan however is that in every way but nominally Japanese society really functions as if years begin with Spring and end with Winter, the first month being April and the last being March. 

So the thought entered my mind that maybe an even better year could be created by swapping out Winter 2026 for Winter 2027? 

It so happens that would correspond to exactly the year that Nana was airing.  So we could call it the Year of Nana, or Nana Year or Year Nana. 

I already said in that first post that the Spring season is where the argument for 2006 really kicked off. Some of what was airing in Winter 2006 were multiple cour shows still airing in Spring. 

So the full shows we lose from dropping Winter 2006 are mainly Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl and Neirma Kaidun Brothers. Both shows I like a lot but wouldn't call either the best of its genre, Kashimashi is closer to being an essential viewing of its genre(s) but is also arguably surpassed by later 2006 shows. 

On the subject of Detective Conan we do lose what I consider perhaps the single best episode of that show in 425. But the trade off is getting Shadow of The Black Organization and The Unsmashable Snowman. We also switch out the 6th OVA for the 7th, they are all about equal in quality. 

What we gain by adding Winter 2007 includes Shattered Angels which I consider a very underrated Jem, Hidamari Sketch which is a show I haven’t seen yet but know is considered important to the Slice of Life/CGDCT genre, and Venus Versus Virus which I haven't finished and haven’t seen what I did see for awhile.  Plus the start of Yes! PreCure 5, a show that proved important to setting the tone for Pretty Cure going forward. 

Looking more at stuff I haven't seen there is a Shuffle sequel called Shuffle Memories I didn’t know about till recently. And the start of that Les Miserables Anime.  

And then there’s Loving Angel Angelique which I should look into as an early Otome Game Anime, and it was a sequel whose first part aired in Summer 2006 so is a show I should have known about back when making the first 2006 Anime post, it looks like it was the first TV Anime based on an Otome Game adding more to the argument for this being a particularly important year for VN Anime.

And for Shounen fans the start of Naruto Shippoden (it occurs to me that means the closing arc of the original Naruto Anime must have also aired during this year). I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to care about standard Battle Shonen enough to find out what was going on in the other two of the “big three”.  Maybe someone else trying to follow up my thesis could do that. 

The other major Four Cour show connected to 2006 was Blood+, it changes from three fourths airing during the year in question to just the second half, but that’s still enough to matter. 

And we also gain the second cours of a lot of Fall 2006 shows like Kanon and Le Chevalier D’Eon. There must have been some delays in the original broadcast of Code Geass because I expected it to end in late March but it was actually in late April, same with Death Note, I expected episode 26 to air in the first week of April at the latest but it didn’t.  Still for both those shows adding Winter 2007 adds a lot of why they are considered great. Same with early Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, episode 25 aired in Japan on March 29th

In the OVA department Winter 2007 had the Burst Angel OVA and the first episode of Murder Princess. And some Maria-Sama OVAs.

Something I should have mentioned in the original 2006 post is Summer Days from June.  It’s not on the Anime Database websites due to how it’s released being a Visual Novel but like School Days the prior year it was Animated, seemingly even more so. I, like many Americans, have only been able to play the censored version of its later remake titled Shiny Days, but it seems a lot of what I like was already there in the original, but there is a lot of Shiny Days content that wasn't there originally (not just the Inori routes).  It’s the Anime where my favorite Anime character gets to be the lead, so it’s important to me. 

The annual Lupin III TV Special during this year was Seven Days Rhapsody in September.  But I haven’t seen it or most 00s Lupin specials since they aren’t among those Dubbed, so I can’t say if it was even above average for the time. 

I considered looking at what source materials for future Anime came during this year, but there wasn't much.  2004 might be the better year for that, containing a number of source materials for what got animated during this year as well as some that came even later.  But I didn’t think to look into that back in 2024.

Four of what I’m currently listing as my top 23 Anime on Anilist are from this year, no other single year is that overrepresented. Those are three shows I consider the best of their genre, Nana, Kanon and Higurashi, and one that in the past I’d labeled my second favorite of all time, Code Geass.  Add to that the importance shows like Haruhi, Death Note and Gintama have, and a few other best or most important of their genre candidates like Strawberry Panic, and the case for this being the best year is pretty easy to make.  [Update: Black Lagoon is another pretty popular Anime from Fall 2006 I forgot to mention before.]

Talking about all the hidden gems adds some nice flavor to the argument but every year has those so they aren’t the crux of it. 

Of the 2006 shows I consider the best of their genre, Kanon is probably the most controversial. Yes they’re all gonna be disputed by someone, Strawberry Panic is hated by people with very different priorities for what they want in a Yuri Anime (some of them might like Simoun the best) and Higurhshi is hated by VN purists who don’t like it being classified as Horror in the first place and others who think no Anime has ever been good at Horror. But with Kanon it tends to be nearly universally viewed as surpassed by its own spiritual successor Clannad and Clannad After Story. 

I do love Clannad and place it just below Kanon.  Some of why I prefer Kanon is more my personal tastes then anything remotely objective, but I also think getting the entire story in one single Anime instead of across two counts for something. Clannad fans I’m sure at least respect the fact that Kanon made Clannad possible both as a VN and an Anime. And with Kanon it has been argued the KyoAni Anime is an improvement over the source material while Clannad is still viewed as falling short of the VN. Since as an Anime specifically is the point of comparison here, I think you can even argue Knaon is better animated with a better art style. 

Haruhi, Death Note and Code Geass are important to Anime culture as a whole in ways that transcend whether or not they are the best of their "genre" or not. Haruhi created her genre, making her important regardless of if you think something like Bunny Girl Senpai has surpassed her. Code Geass and Death Note can’t be considered the best of any Genre simply because they aren’t pure manifestations of any Genre you could slap onto them since they are Genre Mixes ultimately, they are compared to each other more often then they are the rest of their genres. If any Anime is as important to the 00s as Eva was to the 90s it’s one of these three.  Clearandsweet has a video on how Haruhi is singularly important to redefining what most modern Anime looks like.

Radish Vacation Days

I’ve expressed before my feeling that the decision to reveal Kagura is dead now in the Inroi Route added to Shiny Days in 2012 was a retcon.  When Kagura is name dropped in the Summer Days routes it seems like a reference to someone still alive. 

My attempts to decipher the Timeline of the Overflow Universe lead me to placing Summer Radish Vacation 2 as no longer a Prequel/Period Piece but in fact set basically when it was released, the Summer of 2004.  Which would also make it either the year before or the same year as the events of School Days and in turn Summer Days.

Summer Radish Vacation 2 and the Days Series are both presumed to follow the same ending of Summer Radish Vacation, where Shun, Kagura, Youko and Mai form a Polycule but Rina and Rio are both taken by Tomaru. 

In Summer Radish Vacation 2 none of the main protagonists of the prior game are on screen characters, but according to the Wiki it is referenced that Kagura is still in a relationship with Shun and that Mai had left home, no reference to Youko seems to exist.  

That reference to Kagura is Summer Days can be interpreted as being consistent with her still being with Shun, the reference comes from Shun, someone playing this not knowing the full genealogy might well assume Shun was talking about his Mom not Mai’s.  And of course the entire premise of the Days series presumes Mai and Youko left the Polycule for some reason (what Setsuna assumes about why her Mom left her Dad may not be accurate given everything else she probably doesn’t know).

In my PureMail post I talked about the awkwardness of most people, especially in the West, referring to these prior Overflow games as if they’re prequels to School Days when the relationship was originally the opposite.  It’s easy for people to assume Youko and Mai are the Waifus who matter most in Summer Radish Vacation because it’s their involvement with Shun that created two of the most important Waifus of School Days/Summer Days.  But it was made first and foremost as a sequel to Snow Radish Vacation.  So it was in a sense Kagura who was originally thought of as the female lead, giving her a true Happy Ending after the sham of her supposed happy ending in Snow Radish Vacation fell apart is arguably the most important objective of the game.  Maybe she’s even the only one ever actually properly married to Shun (that they have the same father is probably not legally acknowledged, I'm not even sure if they know about it).

I view Kagura as the true most important protagonist of this meta franchise.  Her getting to finally live a happy life after the events of Summer Radish Vacation is kind of important to me.

But all that is assuming they all follow the same ending.  

I kind of wish more of these multiple ending games would have separate sequels for separate endings. What if we could pretend Summer Radish Vacation 2 and the Days Series are exactly that?

Originally Overflow released an “Adultery Chart” that said Tomaru not Shun was the father of Sekai and Setsuna.  This is clearly firmly retconned by Summer Days but maybe School Days was first written with that idea in mind?

In Summer Days it is contrary to what I first thought implied that Shun being Sekai’s father is also known to both Sekai and Setsuna, it’s just not explored as much because Sekai doesn’t interact with Shun.  

I already laid out what definitely is pretty consistent between Summer Radish Vacation 2 and Summer Days. 

If they follow different endings, perhaps it is the fate of Rina and Rio that’s different?  School Days does refer to there being an Inou who was about Makoto’s age in Grade School, which the Wiki presumes is probably Rio’s daughter Risa Inou who wouldn't exist if Tomaru didn’t take Rio since Shun as scummy as he can be sometimes I don't think would impregnate Rio at that young, in fact he certainly doesn't have the means Tomaru has to make it biologically possible. But what if this Inou could be a daughter of Shun and Kagura?  But if I'm correct on them somehow getting legally married their kids would probably be named Hazama. 

If there is actually a problem for Summer Radish Vacation 2 and Summer Days being in the same timeline it’s Itaru Itou. Itaru is supposed to be usually staying with Tomaru and SRV2 depicts Tomaru’s household seemingly during this same time period or only a year prior.  Maybe she’s absent because she spends a chunk of each Summer staying with Makoto and their Mom as seen in Summer Days, but not all of it.  Maybe Tomaru is only so interested in keeping Itaru around because he doesn’t have any Inous in this timeline?  

If they are separate timelines then perhaps Rideru Takatsukasa and Makoto Itou are in some cosmic sense different versions of the same entity?  Both are born after the events of Summer Radish Vacation, both are children of Tomaru by a Nurse, both are protagonists who start their debut games knowing who they want to romantically pursue but can still wind up with someone else. But for Makoto it’s the first choice who turns out to be a Rapist.  And Rideru does seem like a much less passive character then Makoto.

But they probably are the same timeline and some explanation for Itaru’s absence from SRV2 can be dreamed up. It could be the Itou family only wound up in this shared custody situation less then a year before the Summer of Summer Days, I don't recall if the games themselves mentioned a timescale for it. 

Makoto Itou's lack of Free Will

One mechanic that separates School Days and its sequels from many other Visual Novels is how making no choice serves as a sort of secret third choice further complicating the branching path system.

The Philosophical and Metatextual implications of that are further layered by how the player isn’t in control of every choice Makoto makes, or indeed even every important choice.  It reality it's more like we are merely being consulted on choices he can’t immediately make on his own.  For all my interest in apologizing for this guy, yes some of his decisions I can’t directly influence do frustrate me. He is sometimes a dumb horny teenager, but unlike seemingly most Anime fans I don’t think that’s a capital offense. 

Thing is, some of the results of choosing nothing do not look in universe like Makoto not making a choice, some do, sometimes it is as simple as him not answering a question he was asked.  But sometimes it seems almost functionally indistinguishable from what one of the offered choices were.  In fact the first choice of episode 2 is one of those, making no choice results in Makoto asking about the kiss, clearly that’s what he wants to do but his hesitation gives the player the chance to prevent him from asking. 

But there are also times when we’re only given one option, that is secretly two.  As I talked about when discussing Makoto as a Rape Victim in one situation the options for him are to say no or nothing to what Kotonoha is asking to do.  Remember the casual fanbase memes on him being a horny idiot who never doesn't want to have sex.  So the fact that in this case the player does not have the option of making him consent is a very huge oversight in the popular perception of him. 

I feel all of this adds up to making it a valid reading of the text that the Route which comes from the player making no choices is the most Canonical baseline for who Makoto is.  And that the player made choices are not quite equally valid representations of his personality but the player being an outside influence on him. 

Maybe you think that’s a reading one can only come to in a post Doki Doki Literature Club world, or before that in Japan You and Me and Her: A Love Story.  But the thing about a good metatextual commentary or “Deconstruction” is that it’s drawing attention to what was already there, making explicit a subtext that is in fact nothing new. 

A lot of my defense of Makoto is based on how in the VN everything that happens in the TV Anime can’t happen on one timeline and there are timelines where he does very little wrong. If you still think that every version of him should be judged based on the sins of the worst versions of him, that says a lot about you and how you view questions like Human nature and Free Will. 

One of the reasons why Calvinism and Arminianism are functionally the same to me is that if you have an absolute belief in human Free Will then inevitably you can conclude what choices a person makes reveals who they always were.  So Calvinism and Arminianism both result in simply believing Bad people just are innately Bad people. And as I’ve said before Existentialism is just Secular Arminianism.

I am a Materialist with an Optimistic view of Human Nature. I believe when people are at their Best they are being the closest to who they truly are, and that when people are bad they are succumbing to their material conditions and proving their lack of Free Will. But even that is not entirely the point of what I’m saying about Makoto in School Days. 

What I’m pointing out today is that who Makoto turns out to be when the Player doesn’t interfere is far from the worst version of him and may very well be one of the best.  

The ending that results from the player making no choices is With Honesty.  Making no choices isn't the only way to get that ending, the Overflow wiki at the top of it’s page says it’s a moderately hard ending to get,, which tells me one editor got it through a more convoluted means.  To be more specific the no choices route results in episode 2 being The Distance Between Us, episode 3 being Conflicting Desires, episode 4 being With Great Reluctance, and episode 5 being A Christmas Invitation.  I’ve affectionately nicknamed this The Luigi Route.

This ending is a Sekai ending, which feels very vindicating since I concluded Sekai is who Makoto should be with well before I learned this little fact about the game. But most importantly he never cheats at any point. The stuff that’s uncomfortable to watch in this route is mainly Taisuke’s behavior. 

Which does lead to the one thing in this route people are hard on Makoto for, his lack of intervention when he sees Taisuke’s lack of respect for Sekai’s consent. Makoto is clearly bothered by what he saw, unfortunately the way Japanese culture is about these kinds of things it is pretty expected that he’d conclude it’s not his business. And other cultures are like that too, including our own sometimes. This is not me saying it’s fine, but it is me saying its a product of society, of Material Conditions. 

Maybe you think it’s bad game design that what happens if the player does nothing is still a good ending, isn’t the point of a Video Game that the player saves this world from some bad fate it’s heading towards?  Of course a lot of RPGs and Zelda Games have a major element of McGuffin Delivery Service to how their plots are written, the player making things worse first is far from unprecedented. And even for players who want Makoto to get with Sekai, other Sekai endings probably feel more emotionally satisfying even when the route to get there involves more ethical misdeeds. 

The infamous Bad endings of the Game are themselves fairly difficult to get.  I can’t say they aren’t at all potential results of trying for a good end and failing, you can definitely be on a certain route long enough and wind up with a bad ending being what you’re most likely headed towards. There is a degree of High Risk High Reward where one Bad ending is closely tied to the route for the Threesome ending. But they are not from the start what you are most likely winding up on from simply playing the game badly. 

The most common endings one winds up with on a blind playthrough seem to be Christmas Eve if going for Kotnonoha or Setsuna’s Feelings if going for Sekai. Christmas Eve is in fact the Kotonoha counterpart of With Honesty in terms of the scenario leading up to it so it’s one where how much Makoto does wrong is about the same as that route, maybe even less.  Setsuna’s Feelings is one of many routes that involves Makoto cheating on Kotonoha with Sekai, but at least he doesn’t swing back later, once he realizes he’s happier with Sekai he sticks by that with a lot of the failure to break it to Kotonoha sooner coming down to equal hesitation from both him and Sekai.  It’s not good but hardly worth labeling him an irredeemable womanizer.

As I argued in other posts, going off just School Days I don’t think Makoto is ever as bad as people make him out to be.

It’s definitely unfair to hold against any Makoto of School Days the crimes he committed in different games, normally that’d be a given, School Days was clearly not written as something that needed a sequel, it’s a stand alone work of art.  But since vilifying Makoto as much as possible is everyone’s favorite pastime, the morally worst route of Summer Days has to be referred to as a revelation not an addition. I was at first gonna include a parallel analysis of Summer Days/Shiny Days but it looks like that may have to be a separate post some time in the future.

The Overflow Wiki has Birthdates including Gregorian Calendar Years for the School Days Characters.

On their Character Pages, but the Timeline page itself states no Year dates are definitively given.

And I don’t think the years given on these pages had enough thought put into them based on how Japanese School Years work.

You see in Japan the School Year is April-March So I’m pretty sure that means Setsuna being born in February and Sekai in December of 1988 would not actually be in the same Grade. Now if their Birthdays do come from Canonical Material then Setsuna is more likely to be born 2 months after Sekai rather then 10 month before. Maybe I’m mistaken and there is some nuance to how who is in what School Year is decided I’m missing.

Japanese High School is also only three years, and it seems you generally begin as 15 expected to turn 16 before that School Year is over and end it as an 18 year old.

So on this Wiki

Setsuna is February 14 1988

Sekai is December 7 1988

Taisuke Sawanaga is July 19th but a year isn’t given

Makoto Itou is October 16 1988

Kotonoha Katsura is January 4 1988 (Kokoro is November 28 but no year)

So they decided to put all the cast in the same Grade as 1988.

If School Days takes place in the then present of when it was released, then all these characters being in their First Year of Japanese Highschool would more likely have been born April 1989 to March 1990. Coincidentally the first year of the Heisei era. Their Conceptions would then be the the Summer of 1988 through Spring of 1989.

School Days dropped in April of 2005 however, so maybe it wouldn’t make it that much of a period piece to imagine it’s drama as being primarily set in 2004 moving those estimates down a year.

Setsuna and Sekai’s mothers were previously Heroines of the original Summer Radish Vacation. It’s heavily implied we’re supposed to assume that Setsuna and Sekai were conceived during or within a year following the events of that game.

Based on the title I’m assuming that game takes place during Summer Vacation. Summer Vacation from School in Japan is only 6 weeks not the 3 months we Americans are used to (and certainly not the 104 days of Phineas and Ferb’s OP), generally starting around July 20th and ending around the end of August. Neither Setsuna or Sekai’s proposed birthdays fit being conceived during those 6 weeks.

Regardless of what Gregorian Calendar Dates you choose to lynchpin the Overflow timeline to, Setsuna and Sekai being first years in School Days creates a contradiction between the Overflow Wiki saying Snow Radish Vacation is 30 years before School Days and Summer Radish Vacation is 17 years after Snow Radish Vacation. However it could be where ever they got that 30 year estimate from really meant over 30 years.

If the title of Snow Radish Vacation is implying the Winter Holidays, in Japan that’s usually December 26 through January 6. But it opens on a sequence set at least 9 months before the main narrative so that would be in March probably, maybe early April.

There is more then one example across School Days HQ and Shiny Days of Youko saying she’d “long” had Sekai already by the time she was Sekai’s current age. But if her and Mai are in Middle School during Summer Radish Vacation they sure aren’t built like it. Shiny Days also says Youko is exactly 30 if you go down her Route.

It would be really funny if the most logical timeline places the events of Snow Radish Vacation in 1969.

Shiny Days and Kokoro Censorship.

In my playing of Shiny Days I’m in fact using the Censored official JAST USA release. I’m not good with Torrents and stuff like that so haven’t tried to apply it yet, and since I’m not myself into what was Censored out I probably won’t bother.

I read this article about how Censorship isn’t great but JAST had no choice due to the law in countries like Canada.

https://sanahtlig.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-i-endorse-jasts-censorship-of-shiny-days.html

But I’m posting this not to comment on the IF of the Censorship here but the execution.

In my view if you have to Censor Shiny Days there are two correct ways to do it but JAST instead used an in-between route. Having it still possible for Makoto’s assault of Kokoro to happen however censored, but removing the endings dependent on that, simply takes away the consequences.

Even the nominally "Good" Kokoro endings have an absurdist quality to them. But even if they wanted to keep only Reign of Carnage I would have considered that better. But also the Gift from my Father Ending or the Paris for Two variant dependent on apologizing to Kokoro would still be endings that acknowledged this happened and was bad.

The additional Explicit Kokoro Content would be just as easy to edit around as that initial beach scene. Especially considering the existing Censored version still has you stare at Kokoro’s Panties for a minute.

As for the option of removing the assault of Kokoro entirely goes, I guess the only question is what’s then the consequence for not getting the Setsuna Meter high enough during the first act of episode 4? I’d just lock the player onto one of those premature non endings which is functionally what happens in the existing censored version anyway.

And if you think it’d be weird to include so much Kokoro set up with no follow through, I’d say just look at Yamagta.

Shiny Days Route Order

The most well known online walkthrough of Shiny Days, that is also used by people playing through the Game on YouTube and Lexa$! Video Essays on it, advise people to play the Inori Route branch first.

I hate this.

Shiny Days is a remake of an earlier game originally titled Summer Days.

The Inori Branch is 100% new to Shiny Days, the Setsuna Branch seems to have some new content but it all feels like it fits in with the original Summer Days material just fine.  

The Inori route may be narratively an alternate timeline but it’s metatextuality a sequel.

As someone who feels like they’re very savvy to this kind of thing, certain events and plot elements in the Inori storyline feel like specifically events Summer Days players are used to seeing play out differently.  They are Subverting Expectations.

And the only thing I’d really call a Twist in the Game is definitely treated like a shocking reveal far more when it happens in the Summer Days routes.  In the Inori storyline it’s treated with much more dramatic irony. 

So when I see people on YouTube play through the game being shocked and surprised by this reveal while watching the Inori storyline and then play Summer Days making fun of how they already know it, it definitely feels to me like they’ve gotten the intended experience inverted.

The Game’s own internal Route Map does place the Inori Branch up top and the Summer Days Branch on the bottom and I think that’s largely what caused this.  The original Japanese developers of the Game may not have considered how many people will wind up playing only this release of the Game.  But for us Westerners this is the only release we officially have in English at all.

The way unlocked H Scenes are organized on the menu for watching them on their own confirms that Summer Days does still come first.

The Inori route is also kind of overall more Wholesome and so maybe some people felt that should be a Normie’s first impression.  But no one is playing the Infamous Sequel to the Infamous School Days because they are looking for Wholesomeness.  If you don’t download the Deconseoring Patch you won’t get the most problematic content.

Which of these two branches you wind up on is decided by the first choice Makoto is given.  I’m not gonna say any other choices are more correct after that, such would defeat the point of this genre. I just want people to play Summer Days first.

So the first choice is Otome asking Makoto what he’s thinking about doing for Summer Break.  Select the top choice “I want to make lots of Memories” to get on the correct Summer Days path.

I do like the story being told in the Inori route, the only detail I dislike is the reveal that Setsuna’s grandmother Kagura is dead.  She was born in 1958 at the earliest in my needless overthinking of this insane universe’s timeline, so dying by 2005 is way too young.  And it does seem like a Retcon, when Kagura is name dropped in the Summer Days route it seems like a reference to someone still alive.

Update May 12th: While thinking about what I said in this new post I went and checked and Makoto choosing nothing for the first choice also puts you on the Summer Days Route.  So the Inori Route is meant to be actively chosen, Summer Days is where the story is heading by default. 

Anime with Messy Characters

There are a number of Anime I’ve watched where a lot of the appeal is how all the characters are very flawed making very human mistakes but ultimately no one is truly a Bad Person, (or very few at least).

But then I watch the YouTube videos about them and their takeaway is that they are shows where no one is a Good Person.  Clearly we are mostly seeing the same thing but they simply have a much more cynical baseline outlook than I do.

Take for example Shoji in Nana, I think one of the most compelling things about this show was their willingness to depict him so sympathetically even as he cheats on the main character in a Shoujo Manga adaptation.  But nope all the Antiubers feel they have to boil it down to simply him being a Jerk.  

Nana is a show where the only character I wouldn’t object to calling a bad person is Takumi (well there’s also Takeshi but I barely count him as a character) and even he has nuance.

Now maybe some will think my sympathy for Shoji is simply a biased result of my being an AMAB who identified as Male for most of my life.  But I feel the same watching Rumbling Hearts where Mitsuki cheats on the male protagonist in this Anime who’s source material is a male targeted demographic, anyone calling her a bad person I would also object to.

Heck I’ll go further than that.  What I find most unrelatable about the comments sections under most NTR Hentai is how harsh they are the female lead even though she’s usually being Raped.  I’m the opposite, even in the rare one where it’s completely Consensual I still sympathize with her.  Even if she’s literally cheating for no reason other than the other guy is bigger I still can’t consider that entirely hateable if it's executed well.

And it’s the same with Nana which kind of is a prolonged NTR in its latter half.

Both White Album Anime are also similarly messy relationship Melodramas that I quite enjoy.

 

I think someone is only a Bad Person if their behavior is consistently harmful and unrepentant.

Woke Leftists like to claim they have a purely Harm based understanding of Morality, but then try very hard to define Harm so abstractly that they wind up becoming pretty Puritanical.

And yes I do also put School Days in this category. 

Shy and Superhero Anime

One topic I talked about on this blog a few years ago is how as someone who was an American Comic Book Nerd for ages before Anime took over my brain, the Anime that to me have a similar appeal to my favorite DC Universe stories are not the ones explicitly drawing on American Superhero aesthetics like My Hero Academia and One Punch Man but rather shows like Code Geass, the Raildex franchise, Detective Conan/Case Closed, and I’d now add Durarara! which I watched this year, twice now.

However starting with the Fall of last year a new Superhero Anime has entered the fray, Shy who’s second season is currently airing.

While HeroAca and OPM put the aesthetic trappings of American Comic Book Superheroes onto a show that is essentially a conventional Battle Shonen, with Shy it is the Magical Girl Warrior subgenre putting on Western Superhero clothing.  That actually works far better because the Magical Girl Genre has its origins in part in western Superhero influences. 

Naoko Takeuchi has admitted to being partly inspired by Wonder Woman in creating Sailor Moon, something the recently re-adapted final arc makes more obvious with the Bracelets plot point.  But there’s also the additional indirect influence from how the Transforming Tokusatsu Superhero genre was inspired by Shazam and the 60s Batman show and so forth.

So Shy kind of winds up feeling like the Genre returning to its roots in some ways.

90s Magical Girl Warriors like the Sailor Senshi and Wedding Peach wear costumes that fit in with how we typically think of American Superhero Costumes from the Golden, Silver and Bronze ages in that it would not feel inaccurate to describe them as some form of “tights”.

Today however your default parody of a standard Magical Girl is more likely to be wearing a frilly or fluffy dress of some kind and that is largely the influence of Pretty Cure which in Japan has long surpassed Sailor Moon as the most popular Magical Girl franchise, (but it's Anthology nature means no single team has had as many canonical adventures as the Senshi).

And so Shy wearing a Western Superhero style costume coincidentally looks more like a 90s Magical Girl then any new Magical Girl Anime we’ve seen in 20 years.

But Shy is not completely removed from the subsequent history of the Magical Girl, it definitely shows some influence from the Post Madoka era of the genre, with what the villains are doing reminding me of Daybreak Illusion more than anything else.

The main difference between Shy and other Magical Girl shows, in fact the main reason it’s probably not officially going to be considered one, is that there are Male Superheroes.  Of course the Nanoha franchise also had males who had essentially the same abilities.  The British Superhero keeps reminding me of the antagonist of Superman Vs The Elite for some reason.

All of this kind of makes Shy the antithesis of how I’ve been thinking about the 2008 OVA School Days: Magical heart Kokoro-Chan.

As one of the very few American Otaku who loves School Days both unironically and not because I view it as some kind of “deconstruction” I was very curious to see what it’s take on the turn the little sister character into a Magical Girl spin off trend would be.  And what I got kind of confused me.

First it starts off by also having a sort of Sentai parody, which would be fine.  But then we get to this classroom scene where everyone starts talking about Superheroes.  And Makoto and Sekai started saying things that sound like J. Jonah Jamenson, in my head I was like “I dedicated one of the most overly long posts on my blog to defending you two and this is how you repay me?”.  Then Setsuna starts talking and I think “finally my Waifu will bring some sense to this” and then she starts spouting a “Superheros cause Villains” monologue.

Basically this Magical Girl Parody decided to have the metatextual commentary of a Western Superhero Comic.  In Magical Girl shows and Super Sentai the villains come first and the heroes are a reaction to them, the exact opposite of what Setsuna just said.

Yuno Gasai and the Yandere timeline

Yuno Gasai from the Anime/Manga Mirai Nikki aka Future Diary is the single most well known Yandere, or at least she was when I fully joined the Anime Community in the mid to late 2010s, so much so that Gigguk’s Yandere video could make a Joke out of pretending she’s the only one who matters.

But unlike most characters who have become virtually synonymous with their Archetype she is not the first or even the first really popular one, or even really among the first.  I would dare say by the time of her creation the Yandere was already becoming an overplayed Cliche.

Now when I started researching this thesis I was shocked how much older Mirai Nikki’s source material is, I’m not used to popular Manga taking over 5 years to get an Anime.  But it was still not old enough to destroy this premise.  It started publication on January 26th 2006.

Now I’m someone who is fairly strict in how I even define a Yandere, I talked about elements of it in a post I made earlier this year.  So for example the character from Shuffle who some call a Yandere (I’ve heard she’s more of one in the Anime then in the original VN) I’m iffy on counting.  But if we count her then Shuffle’s Anime ended on January 6th 2006.

Amelie Doree has a video on the 2003 Visual Novel Cross Channel, from it I can conclude it has a character who can be considered a Yandere.

Most of Higurashi was released by the end of 2005 including the two most Yandere relevant chapters.  Getting back to the relative strictness with how I define a Yandere, Sonozaki I consider a Yandere even if atypical in some ways, while Ryugu is not a Yandere, when she acts Crazy it has nothing to do with romance, apparently she's considered a Yangire a term I know less about.

The original School Days Visual Novel was released in 2005.  And in my opinion Kotonoha is still the best Yandere.

The first Durarara!! Light Novel came out in 2004 and the second came out in 2005.  They feature even by my strictest definition multiple Yanderes.  And if you loosen the definition it might just be possible to argue this is a saga where (almost) everyone is a Yandere.

And that’s the key to my thesis really, it is particularly the role Yanderes play in Durarara!! that even in these early novels makes it feel like it’s already a cliche, like the author is on a Meta level joking about how arguably overused this character type is.

All that and I still have a hunch none of these is where the Yandere trend began.  It’s difficult to research because characters who technically qualify have always existed, with some even suggesting the first Anime Yandere was a character from Uresei Yatsura or Ranma1/2 or something like that, or even Jojo.  And Gaijin Goomba of course wants to connect it to some pre-modern Japanese Folk Tale.

But when I ask who the first Yandere is I mean the beginning of this trend in Otaku oriented Visual Novels and Light Novels of the early 2000s which may have actually began in the mid to late 90s.  There may not be a definitive single first one, but I get the sense that even the oldest of the ones I’ve discussed above were already part of a trend.

But let’s return to the mystery of why Yuno Gasai was able to steal the spotlight from all these predecessors.  Is it because she’s the best?  I already said I consider someone else the best.  But this is one of those tropes where so many people want to argue why the one they like is the only one who was written with a complex Psychological profile that makes their insanity not truly only about the person they are romantically fixated on, but the truth is they were all written with depth.

Maybe why Yuno overshadows the rest is because of the Anime adaptation, because of how well she was performed by Tomosa Murata and later in the English Dub Brina Palencia?  

Glass Reflection I remember said in his Future Diary review that he didn’t like Brina as Yuno and that ticked me off.  One of Brina’s unique talents is to sound vocally more "normal" then most Anime characters even while still having an eccentric personality.  And for the Bipolar quality that a good Yandere is supposed to have that kind of voice is actually perfect.  

Cross Channel still doesn’t have an Anime, but besides that all those Pre-Yuno Yandere also made their Anime debut before her.  Mirai Nikki started airing in the Fall of 2011.  School Days technically was an Anime in its source material but got its TV Anime in 2007.  Higurashi had its Yandere Arcs in its first season in 2006.  And both of the first two Durarara!! LNs were covered in the first season of its Anime in the first half of 2010. And they all had good VAs who did a great job bringing their character's Insanity to life.

It honestly might be more that Yuno was the LAST notable Yandere as far as actual Japanese media goes.  The shows that copy everything else about Future Diary make their female lead very much not a Yandere. Instead for the terminally online the Yandere has been kept alive by a perpetually in-development American Indie Video Game and ASMR videos.  And maybe there's some V-Tubers who's gimmick is that they're a Yandere I wouldn't know.

So when Anitube as we currently know it started Yuno was the freshest Yandere in everyone’s memory.  And for plenty of newer Anime fans she may have been the only Yandere recent enough for them to have seen in action when she was new.

Update February 13th 2026: I recently learned of a 2000 Visual Novel called Silver that has who can perhaps be considered the first Yandere of VNs named Sasai Yuuna.

PureMail OVAs

PureMail is a 2 episode Hentail OVA from 2001 that is an adaptation of a 2000 Bishoujo Game/Visual Novel made by Overflow the same studio that made School Days and its “sequels”.

It is also in the same universe, the character named Miki Sawagana is the older sister of Taisuke Sawagana.  That’s the familial connection that is made obvious by surname, but I'll get to the matter of Overflow Universe world building and it's associated family tree later.

First, what do I think of this OVA as a stand alone work of art?

The thing about Erotic Art that wants to be more than just Porn is that I want it to be more than just a Good Story with good fappable Sex Scenes, they need to inform each other, to be firmly integrated.  There are lots of mainstream movies where it’s part of the Plot that sex happens, but it doesn’t need to happen fully on screen.  In Erotic Art it has to be more than just that Sex happens but the specifics of the Sex have to matter, some of the character development has to be tied to how they do or do not enjoy it.

And it’s that test which PureMail fails.  I find the story and characters very interesting and I found at least some of the H scenes Fappable.  But those H Scenes also feel like they’re interrupting the story rather than enhancing it.  There are times when the conversation happening after the sex directly picks up where they left off before, but because it’s separated by 5 minutes of mindless humping I lost the train of the conversation.

I’ve watched two versions of PureMail.  I watched its English Dub unedited and uncensored on a Hentail website I won’t name here. And I watched an English Subbed version on YouTube that has the explicit parts edited out.  And it demonstrates my above criticism that the edited version actually felt like it had better pacing.  It removed vestigial organs while in ideal erotic art removing the sex scenes would be removing the heart and soul.

Unfortunately that edited version is no longer on YouTube, I neglected to download it and I don’t remember the name of the Channel, so it looks like it's probably now Lost Media that only I care about.

School Days and some of its “sequels” are known for not being presented how most Visual Novels usually are but being basically interactive Anime.  PureMail as far as I can tell wasn’t like that, it was a more normal Visual Novel.  I bring that subject up here because it means the actual source material for the Days series can be compared to PureMail’s adaptation at being an Erotic Anime.  Now I currently have not seen all the Erotic content that School Days HQ and Shiny Days have to offer, but I’ve seen some that definitely do succeed where the PureMail OVAs failed.  Even if it would be hard to argue everything is specifically absolutely necessary; they still convey things about the characters which those so easy to edit out PureMail scenes did not.

As the title of PureMail implies it involves some characters communicating via Email, so it’s perhaps one of the earliest Hentai to feature the Internet as a plot point.

One thing that I feel vindicates my vocal interpretation that Otome raped Makoto in episode 9 of the School Days Anime is that that Women Raping Men is a theme in these prior overflow Overflow works.  The MC of Large PonPon was abused by at least 2 older women.  And in PureMail at least in the OVA version Kei is Blackmailed and Raped by Yumi Matou, and it’s framed as traumatizing not comedic or harmless.

So yeah there is good material here, if that edited version were the official version I’d probably give it a higher rating.  But I also imagine like many VNs adapted with so little runtime the storytelling was also hurt by being condensed and trying to make everything fit one timeline.

Now let’s return to world building.  

The Overflow Universe Family Tree is a bit of a Meme to those of us who know it exists.  But in a way PureMail’s connections to all that shows how perhaps not well thought out it actually is.  Again I like most English speakers have no first hand information about these games, I’m mostly trying to draw conclusions from the Overflow Fandom Wiki (I wish I didn't have to use Fandom but no one’s cloned this content on an alternative Wiki network.) [Update: A way around using Fandom kind of exists now.]

These PureMail OVAs are technically the only onscreen Anime appearance of Tomaru Sawagoe. In the games his onscreen appearances are all in the Radish Trilogy, only they have character designs for him, and even the first of them came out after these OVAs.  Going off the OVAs Kei’s father isn’t mentioned by name and there isn’t even any hint at that father not being who he gets the surname Ogata from.  The OVAs felt they needed to actually animate a flashback and in it the character design of Kei’s father has a generic White Trash Wife Beater type look and seems to be “Lower Class”.  Tomaru in the Radish games has a more distinct and flamboyant style and is very wealthy owning the titular restaurant chain and a hospital.

Basically Kei’s father being identified with the villain of the Radish series feels like a Retcon.

Online discussion of all these Overflow games focus on how they relate to School Days because only it ever became truly infamous in the general Anime community, especially in the Anglosphere.  So Tomaru Sawagoe is defined first and foremost as Makoto Itou’s father and all the games set before School Days are talked about as if they are prequels to School Days even though they were all made before School Days.

Snow Radish Vacation was made as a prequel, but to Large PonPon, Overflow’s first game.  The Inou and Sawagoe surnames originated there and then become the focus of Snow Radish Vacation; no surnames you recognize from the core cast of School Days are in either of those games.

Large PonPon, PureMail and School Days all seem like they are set in the then present of when they were made (1999, 2000 and 2005) like the average Visual Novel.  It’s only the Radish Vacation games that have to be period pieces for the Timeline to make sense.  But I have no way of knowing how good they are at feeling like period pieces, or if they even bothered to try.

Summer Radish Vacation was a sequel to Snow Radish Vacation, but Summer Radish Vacation 2 is in some ways more of a spin off then a sequel.  School Days I think was originally made without how it connects to the other games being all that set in stone.  In fact I’ve learned there was originally a family tree chart published by Overflow which made Sekai and Setsuna children of Tomaru rather than of Shun.

Summer Days' relationship to School Days is more of a completely alternate timeline rather than a Sequel or a Prequel.  But thanks to Shun’s role it’s actually more of a direct sequel to Summer Radish Vacation then Summer Radish Vacation 2 is.

Point is, the core world building starts with Large PonPon then goes through the Radish Games to end with the Days series.  PureMail and other Overflow games mentioned on the genealogy are largely afterthoughts.  The genealogy makes Ayumu the father of multiple PureMail characters (and Taisuke) and I really doubt the game was originally written with that in mind.

Update: Here's some more Timeline Speculation

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-overflow-wiki-has-birthdates.html

Male Sexual Assault Victims are not just played for Laughs

The YouTube Channel Pop Culture Detective has a video titled Sexual Assault of Men Played for Laughs Part 2 Female Perpetrators.  It’s a pretty exhaustive and seemingly thoughtful analysis of all the ways Male Sexual Assault is played for Laughs in media. 

However it is unhelpful in actually making progress on how Male Sexual Assault Victims are thought about and treated in society by only focusing on when it’s played for laughs.  Because he denies that it’s actually a “Double Standard” in any way while also emphasizing how allegedly rare it is.

Like by saying “Rape of Women isn’t taken seriously either” followed by a Quagmire clip. That Family Guy scene is an example of Dark Comedy, like most comedy involving women being raped by men, I don’t like these kinds of jokes but I’m not gonna pretend they are something aren't and deny that what’s happening is something everyone considers horrible and traumatizing is vital to the joke working as intended.  All these men being raped by women scenes the video documents are not Dark, they are instead treating the the entire idea of this happening as an absurdity.

But early in the video came the real warning sign of the video's problem.  Yes all these scenes are acknowledging that what the woman is doing is morally and ethically wrong.  Therefore he concludes the problem has nothing to do with people refusing to condemn a woman’s actions.

The problem is there is plenty of Male Sexual Assault in media that isn’t played for Laughs, sometimes a scene happens that almost everyone would call Rape if the genders were reversed, but instead is not only not considered Rape but if any moral judgment is passed on what happened at all it will entirely be that the Man did something wrong to the Woman.

The big example of this in my mind is episode 9 of School Days, which I've talked about before.  Early on it shows how a Girl inviting a Boy to the “rest area” is supposed to go.  Otome doesn’t do that but drags Makoto there, confesses and then assaults him before he can fully respond and then his eyes go weird, the Hentai visual language of Mind Break.

This is very obviously a Rape scene to me.  But because the popular narrative around this show as a whole is that Makoto is a selfish indecisive womanizer who deserves what happened to him at the end no one is willing to even consider the possibility that he was ever the Victim in the first 11 episodes.

That’s just the most blatant example, he had previously been kissed while sleeping and I frankly consider his consent to everything he does with Kotonoha in the last episode questionable at best.

Then I often think about the movie Poison Ivy: The New Seduction, where in one sequence Violet seduces Joy’s boyfriend by taking advantage of his Drug Addiction.  And one online review I read a long ago found laughable the notion that we’re supposed to feel sorry for him when he calls her out on that later.

DC Comics is filled with examples of Villainesses raping Superheroes but the writers being very inconsistent on if they want to acknowledge his lack of consent.  Most notoriously being how Grant Morrison retconned Talia.

Update July 2024: Going back to School Days, in the VN it's Kotonoha who rapes Makoto.

In the scenario that comes from episode 5 being The Video Tape Kotonoha repeatedly assaults Makoto on the train against his protests, and once starts jerking him off while he's still asleep, and more.  Twice in these scenes a prompt will come up for the player but our options are only say no or nothing, no option to actually consent.

In a scene leading up to Bavarois/Lust after he tells her he loves Sekai and wants to break up she undresses in-front of him and tells him to touch her and when he doesn't she walks over and forces his face in her breast.

The issue today with how society treats Female on Male Rape is less a denial that it's theoretically possible and more having a different barrier to considering that's definitely what happened.  When it's a male assaulting a female at least most self described Feminists understand that any Consent given after an encounter begins as non consensual is dubious at best.  But in the scene I just talked about will go "look how easily he starts sucking on them" but I'm like "he barely even looks aware of his surroundings".

Then there is the matter of SA victims themselves often not being willing or able to recognize that's what happened to them.  And for male victims an added reason for that is this very double standard.  But because people enter this franchise with such a baseline cynical view of Makoto it's easy to go "even he admits he did something wrong...." when that's not how human psychology works, people feel guilty about things that aren't their fault all the time.

Update November 2024: Makoto is also a victim of Statutory Rape in Summer Days/Shiny Days.  And at first I thought the Game wasn't taking that as seriously as the examples from School Days I talked about.  But then I realized the parallelism in Futaba seeing Makoto with Youko in the MILF route timeline and Makoto seeing Futaba with Shun in most timelines if you make it to episode 4.  That tells me the writers do see them as the same.

The MILF routes are locked behind some very specific choices that it's unlikely anyone would make by accident. I truly believe all scenes in them were written with the expectation that you've probably already experienced a version of Episode 4 including Makoto seeing Futaba with Shun. So Futaba seeing Makoto with Youko I believe is what's written to echo the other scene even if it technically takes place sooner on the timeline.

Futaba never admits to seeing herself as a victim in her relationship with Shun, in fact in the present she's the one actively seeking to continue it while he's seemingly trying to cut it off, which makes it easy for a cynical viewer to see her as some pervert's fantasy of a totally willing underage girl.  But we don't see how her relationship with Shun started, it's the content locked behind the MILF routes that hints at the true subtext.  Specifically the version of the "Captivated by the Twins" ending predicated on Futaba answering Karen's phone and Makoto at first assuming it's Kazuha.

Futaba's interpretation of what she saw is that Youko is seducing and taking advantage of Makoto.  So no matter how much she pretends she's consenting in the relationship with Shun when she sees the same thing happen to someone else she can only recognize it as predation.

But what's really telling and kind of sad is why she chooses to frame this plan as just helping Kazuha get with Makoto, why she seems to feel only Kazuha can Love Makoto enough to Save him.  The obvious subtext to me is that like many rape victims she sees herself as tainted and unworthy of love.  She returns to Shun in episode 4 (which doesn't happen if the Twins Seduce Makoto in episode 3) because she thinks that's her only option.

But it is worth criticizing that this one element of Subtext is it.  A casual play through not looking for this kind of thing will easily see the Milf routes as just unironic fun while there is no way to miss the negative framing of Shun and Futaba or what in some routes happens to Kokoro.  

Update June 2026: I want to confess that the systemic forces that lead to this effects even myself. I have found female character likable for things I could not still consider a male likeable if they did them. It's a pervasive issue I'm not pretending to be above or immune to. 

The Toxic Masculinity of Hating on Male Anime Protagonists

I mean a certain kind of Male Anime protagonist here but I didn’t want to make the title too long.  Thing is, the protagonists meant to be morally hateable are often the ones people like as characters, Light Yagami being the big one.  

I kind of felt like specifying “Bland” in the title, but some of these are hard for me to consider that word as even an accurate description of how their haters view them.

Sometimes people who self identify as Feminists and people who more uncritically accept traditional Gender Roles as they currently function sound shockingly the same as each other, not when talking about Politics directly but when critiquing fiction.  That includes male characters being critiqued for being too Passive, for not “making a move”, for being Romantically indecisive and so on.  

And in the context of Anime, partly thanks to Mother’s Basement, two posterchilds of the kind of Male Anime Protagonists unfairly hated in this way in my head are Yuki Amano from Mirai Nikki aka Future Diary and Kazuya Kinoshita from Rent-a-Girlfriend. Both those shows and a lot of the other shows whose protagonists I’m defending here are flawed shows that don’t always do what I like about them perfectly and sometimes drop the ball in close proximity to the very scenes I praise.  But at their core I think they are good entertaining shows including their protagonists so how their protagonists are hated on bugs me.

Yuki is as passive as he is to contrast with Yuno Gasai, and I already talked about the innate Gender subversion of the Yandere.  One part of the show I often think about is the part where the antagonists they are facing are this weird couple, and the guy keeps insulting Yuki’s masculinity for being protected by his Girl, telling him he’s supposed to be the protector, but not even in quite the most cartoonishly obvious Sexist way you’d expect either, they’re framed kind of like the villains who’s advise the Hero will actually take later on.  So I loved when at exactly the point when it seems like now is when that will happen, instead Yuki doubles down, he embraces the fact that in this relationship the Girl is the fighter, the Protector, and so he should actually just leave the frontline entirely so she can focus, completely placing his trust in her.

I know a lot of people are going to think there’s something inherently Patriarchal about my love of Polygynous Anime like Isekai Smartphone and Girlfriend, Girlfriend.  But the thing is the Internet Neoreactionaries who defend specifically Patriarchal Polygyny as what should be the norm have specific ideas about what kind of Man is supposed to attract multiple women that those Anime and even the Harem Anime unwilling to go for Non-Monogamous resolutions don’t play along with, to them it’s not supposed to be Soft Gentle Kind Hearted Beta Males who have Harems.

And yet even critics who supposedly have more Left of Center perspectives on Gender watch these shows and express bafflement about how these “spineless” men are so attractive to women.  They don’t want to say that Traditional Masculinity is the thing these characters lack that makes them find it so unbelievable they’d be so popular, maybe they don’t want to admit it to themselves.  But that is what it is.

A lot of the time people hate these characters not for anything they do but for what they assume about the intended audience.  They are characters who aren’t Perverts but are put in Perverted situations so the Perverted audience can project onto them guilt free.  And yeah a lot of the time I do think that’s what the writers are thinking.  I however don’t like watching these characters I like put into situations that make them uncomfortable.  I would prefer the Nudity in Anime be characters unashamed of being Naked disrobing in front of characters who are equally totally comfortable with it.

Then there’s the “Nice Guy” and “Friend Zone” discourse, I really don’t want to have to explain what that is, if you’re somehow reading this and don’t already know what it is just google it.  I do not disagree with the Tumblr Feminism critique of these ideas. But I am annoyed at how it’s resulted in a hatred of every fictional character a self described “Nice Guy” might identify with rather than explaining to these people why they aren’t like these Actually Nice fictional characters.

Of course the focus of this post is on Protagonists of Harem or Harem adjacent Anime, where these men aren’t being “Friend Zoned” if anything it’s them “Friendzoning” the girls. But that’s the thing, once a character is deemed to have the vibes of a “Nice Guy” the critique becomes that their getting the girl is a wish fulfillment fantasy.  At that point I think critiquing a show for such Meta reasons is the embodiment of Bad Media Literacy. I never get the sense any of these shows are trying to tell the audience who’s entitled to love, they just want to write romances that start out being built on kindness.

I could go off on a tangent about how the characters in Anime that actually resemble a self described “Nice Guy” are a certain type of character in Yuri Anime who some of the audience will root for over the protagonists intended endgame, like Yaya from Strawberry Panic.  I’m not even the first to say this, I’m basically borrowing a talking point from the old WhiningAboutYuri Tumblr Blog.

I currently identify as Gender Fluid with Any/All pronouns on Social Media.  But I was assigned male at birth and saw myself as Cis until less than a decade ago.  And I still mostly live as a Cis-Het Male offline.  And that makes me very hesitant to write something so predicated on disagreeing with other Feminist and Queer Media Critics. So I’ve been thinking about all this holding off on actually writing it for a while.  But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these are the only non Crossdressing Cis-Male characters I’ve at all related to while sitting on the fence about my gender identity.

However the Feminine Side of my personality also disagrees with the notion that it's unrealistic these guys would be so popular.  To whatever extent there is a Straight Girl inside of me, this is the kind of Boyfriend she would want.

So I want to finish by briefly bringing up School Days again. But I don’t want to retread stuff I already covered in my huge School Days post titled Sekai Did Nothing Wrong.  At first glance Makoto doesn’t seem relevant because he can’t really be called innocent of any wrongdoing.  But he’s relevant mainly because those who think of School Days as a “Deconstruction” see Makoto as this type of Harem protagonist actually suffering the consequences of their “indecisiveness”.  Of course for most of these characters the indecisiveness results in getting truly intimate with no one not everyone, and in the VN Makoto doesn't get with everyone on a single timeline.  But even Makoto in the Anime isn’t as bad as people make him out to be, mostly because they downplay the times when he is a victim of Sexual Assault.  He is a flawed character who makes dumb decisions as a horny Teenager, but a lot of it comes from his not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings.  And I’m sick of seeing every few years a new School Days Video on Anitube that just repeats the same shallow reading of his character and Sekai’s, they’re always so boooring.

Update January 2025: Sometimes the male characters who get this treatment aren't even the main character.  For example I recently learned that some people inexplicably hate Kazuki from Wixoss, how can anyone dislike Kazuki?  He's adorable?

It seems whenever a Male Character is liked by more then one Female Character a lot of people just go "I don't see what his appeal is" and leave it at that.  When Anime Girls I respect like a Boy I make an effort to see him through their perspective, and it's usually not that hard to find the appeal when you actually try.

Update May 2025: I recently stumbled upon a Hentai Doujin geared towards a female Audience where the Male lead very much resembles the Generic Isekai protagonist look.  So yes clearly that look does appeal to Girls at least in Japan. 

Sekai did Nothing Wrong! (An overly long School Days analysis)

This is my attempt to adapt my random thoughts from this long Twitter thread into a proper Blog post where I express some things better.  And I’ll add stuff I forgot to include in the Twitter Thread.

To me even in the timeline of the 2007 School Days Anime it’s apparent that Kotonoha is the antagonist.  But I can see why going off the Anime alone it’s easy to miss her wrong doings and focus entirely on Makoto and Sekai’s dumb teenage mistakes.  But once you’ve actually learned about the other timelines of the Visual Novel it’s difficult not to conclude that Kotonoha is an emotionally abusive and manipulative even when she’s not a killer.

The Visual Novel originally only had 3 Bad Endings (bad in the sense of involving Death, some others are indeed not exactly storybook happy endings).  The ones added by the remakes muddy the waters of characterization.  I still try to make even them fit my interpretation, but it’s difficult.  Basically the remakes wanted to add endings where Sekai kills Kotonoha because some fans simply wanted to see that.  But there were in fact good character based reasons why that was not originally possible.

Originally Sekai never became a true Yandere, she only ever became a Killer when dealing with the stress of a Teen Pregnancy.  And she never targeted her rival, she only killed Makoto and immediately regretted it.  There were no Laughing Mad scenes for her.  And only the Anime ever even plants the suggestion that she wasn’t actually pregnant, it is in fact clinically confirmed with doubt only ever being placed on the timing of it.  And in some timelines the baby is born.

VN Kotonoha does morally questionable stuff even on timelines with no fatally bad ending, like blackmail.

But the ending that makes me hate Kotonoha the most is the one where she kills herself.  And I know that sounds harsh out of context, but she intentionally does it in front of Sekai & Makoto when he chooses her, with the premeditated intent of ruining their happiness, and it worked.  Suicide or the threat of it is absolutely a tactic Emotionally Abusive people will use, and it's the type I have the most experience with.  So discovering this ending really kind of triggered me a bit.

Neither of the Bad Endings that are a result of Makoto choosing Sekai ends with him concluding he loved Kotonoha and should have chosen her.  But the one original Bad Ending that results from him choosing Kotonoha does indeed have him concluding he really loved Sekai.  He spends his dying moments concluding he is in love with the person who just killed him.  That is strong evidence the Story itself wants us to view Sekai as his true love and Kotonoha as an Enchantress coming between them.

Some of the Kotonoha endings really do come off more as bad endings for Sekai even regardless of the information relayed above.  In one it seems like her blackmailing worked, in another Sekai gets blamed for a bullying campaign she had no connection to.

Look I firmly believe Kotonoha is like this because of circumstances that are not her own fault, she is also still only a teenager and I am certainly not an existentialist. But as far as the narrative at hand in School Days is concerned, she’s the antagonist.

The Anime’s main problem is trying to condense into one timeline most of the worst things that can happen in the VN.  The Manga also has a unique Bad Ending but till then it’s much closer to conveying the experience you should be going for when playing the VN.

Condemnations of Sekai begin with the whole “let’s do it as practice” thing, with even other Sekai apologists conceding that as her one dumb idea.  But that itself is encouraging a very conservative attitude towards Sex, maybe that kind of thing should be more normalized.  Part of the perspective she’s coming from here is how society tells girls to expect the guy to be more experienced. But even in an ideal world with no Gender double standards, I think doing it for the sake of experience shouldn’t be shamed. 

I’m also not as hard on Makoto as other people.  That’s a more uphill battle to fight but I’m ready, and I'm not gonna say he did Nothing wrong.   To start with in the VN there is no one timeline where Makoto has sex with all the girls.  Someone outside the main two is only ever an option at the very end of certain routes besides one special case that will be elaborated on later.

His main sin in the early part of the Anime is that he should have simply ended it with Kotonoha a lot sooner when he realized he wasn’t that into her after all.  And ideally before starting a relationship with Sekai.

However most people talking about this Anime aren’t condemning him just for not doing that.  In fact when they are aware of VN differences they still condemn him even on routes where that’s exactly what he does.  They condemn him for wanting Sex more then Kotonoha does in the first place. Some people want lots of sex, some people want no sex, some people want it in moderation, none of those is anything to be ashamed of.  But if your partner isn’t on the same page as you simply end it, don’t try to pressure them and certainly don't do anything they didn’t explicitly give you permission to do.

To me one of the ultimate signs of fake wokness is “puritanical sexual morality is fine when it’s men being shamed”.  And yes at least when critiquing fictional scenarios I do see people be explicit hypocrites on this issue.  The same media critics quick to condemn any male character who wants sex more then his female partner, when a show swaps that dynamic are all for rooting for the girl to dump the guy not giving her what she wants while calling him Gay because even many SJWs don’t know that Asexuals exist much less that straight men can also sometimes want to wait.

Makoto at the very least is one of the few characters who never violates anyone else’s consent (in School Days, the other VNs of this franchise I am not required to consider canon to how I analyze School Days).  The worst things he does in the Anime are after his own consent has been violated more than once.

The problem with discussion around School Days is both the people simply calling it bad and most of those calling it a "deconstruction" are using the same superficial face value readings of the characters.  If it’s criticizing the Harem genre, it’s criticisms aren’t the same as yours.  If anything, the kinds of viewers who think Makoto deserves what happened to him in the last episode are who the show is condemning.  That’s right, the “ain't it cathartic watching this teenager face consequences for his actions,” viewers I’m equating to Fight Clubbers.

My obsession with School Days this last year is pretty weird in the grand scheme of my history with Anime.  I first watched it years ago and expressed basically the same contrary opinions I have now, but did so to spite certain people I’d seen talk about it and didn’t really care that much, and as such didn’t make my arguments as eloquently or well thought out as I'm trying to here.  Now I have been drawn to revisit it for reasons that escape me and have become utterly fascinated by it.  The show as a whole is still not 3x3 material but Setsuna has become my favorite Anime character period.

I’ve self identified as a Kuudere for awhile now, my self insert characters in stories I never finished were basically Kuudere before I knew the term.  But I lacked a specific Kuudere I considered worthy of being my social media Avatar.  I liked Setsuna when I first watched the show but took her crush on Makoto at face value and was rather disappointed by that since I liked seeing her as Yuri for Sekai.  Now that I’ve dug deeper into VN information I realize she is basically me.  

My main justification for actively shipping Makoto and Sekai is their dance in front of the bonfire at the festival.  They looked genuinely happy there, happier than anyone else ever is at any point in the show.  It’s unfortunate what the Anime intercuts it with, I don’t think that’s the timing of those two events in any VN timelines.  But the fact remains that that is the most genuinely romantic moment in the show.

If only Makoto would have broken up with Kotonoha before or at the start of episode 6, she probably would have moved on just fine.  However the character flaw that led to Makoto making that mistake is a perfectly believable and relatable one, he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings and is uncomfortable in difficult situations. Logically it’s obviously better to do it sooner, but humans have trouble acting logically when emotions are involved.

What makes episode 6 the turning point here is that the happiest Kotonoha ever was in this relationship was not any time actually spent with him.  It’s the moment where Otome’s crush on Makoto became known to the rest of the class.  In that moment Kotonoha instantly goes from being this shy timid girl simply taking her bullying to having the confidence to stand up for herself.  Out of context I can see that as an empowering moment that viewers who’d been bullied in similar ways may have latched into.  But in the context of this being a show about relationships, I really do see it as evidence Kotonoha doesn’t love Makoto at all, she became invested in the relationship when it became a source of power.  Even before this the investment she had came off merely as investment in the social status upgrade of having a boyfriend and not Makoto himself.

This quote from Makoto’s conversation with Setsuna in episode 8 is so often glossed over by those who want to paint Makoto as preferring Sekai only because she’s the one giving him the sex.  “No, it’s more like I can be myself more with her, I can relax”.  I feel like if we were analyzing any other relationship melodrama we would all agree the person you feel more comfortable being yourself with is the healthier option.  

Again I fully agree that he should have formally broken up with Kotonoha well before this point.  But so many people are not mad at him only for that.  Half of it is men who would themselves prefer Kotonoha not liking that this MC has different preferences than they do.  And then there are the people who are like “he couldn’t handle that relationships take work” and I’m like “your American Capitalist ideology is showing”.   Why should it be a given that relationships take “work” why does everything have to revolve around some platonic ideal of being “earned”?

But more importantly the “work” being expected of Makoto here is very much the product of Patriarchal norms where the “work” of a relationship is supposed to be all on the man while the woman is a prize to be “earned”.  I certainly feel it’s unfair to claim Makoto wasn’t putting effort into this relationship but Kotonoha was.

Now to elaborate on my seemingly most unique School Days hot take, that Otome raped Makoto in episode 9.  Because I’m unsure if the writers of the show know that’s what they made happen, but it is. 

First off early in episode 9 we’re shown how inviting a boy to the “rest area” is supposed to go.  And I kind of like it. But the important thing here is how that should make us note that what Otome does is explicitly NOT that.  She doesn’t ask Makoto anything, she tells him to grab her hand, he’s from a different class so doesn’t even know what this is supposed to mean, then she gets mad and grabs him and drags him into the Rest Area.  Then she confesses and what he says in response seems to get translated inconsistently (I’ve watched different subs of this same scene). But to me exactly what words he says is irrelevant anyway, he’s stammering and shocked to be in this situation and not being given time to think about what he’s saying.  At any rate the Subs on the official BluRay I now own look like he’s turning her down but trying to be nice about it, again his hamartia is really not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings.  Then she pushes him down and starts kissing him, and his eyes have a weird expression, which in Hentai is constantly the visual language of Trauma caused by Sexual Assault.

If the genders were reversed no one on Tumblr would read this scene as consensual.  But because he’s a Generic MC-kun many Anime fans hate for being so “inexplicably” popular with Girls everyone clings to him not explicitly saying no.  

What concerns me about how this scenario is written is that after the sex is over he seems fine.  Maybe in real life when boys are raped by girls this way they cope by pretending they liked it as much as they’re “supposed to”.  But on a  Doylist level I feel kind of like the time constraints on the Anime version of the story needed him at the Bonfire dance right away and that scene wouldn't look right if he seemed traumatized.  In the VN Makoto having sex in the rest area and dancing at the Bonfire can’t happen on the same timeline.  Also in the VN it’s with Kotonoha not Otome and how it plays out is different, I do consider VN Kotonoha a Rapist but not based on the Rest Area scene.

Thing is acknowledging what happened here as Rape changes how we read everything Makoto does after this, how he suddenly becomes more aggressive then he ever was before.  

Now for how the Anime deals with Sekai’s pregnancy.  Is there a literary term for “fake twists” where a story pretends to end on a reveal but when you analyze the evidence that reveal was clearly a Lie?  Paul Feval’s John Devil as interpreted by it’s English Translator Brian Stableford is perhaps the ultimate example of that.

We the audience see Sekai alone by herself way too much for the possibility that she lied about the Pregnancy to have any credibility.  There is no ambiguity that she believed she was pregnant.  Maybe she had a false alarm, but given what we know from the VN I find that unlikely.  Kotonoha is not a trained medical professional, she is in that ending a mentally unstable teenager seeking to confirm what she already wants to believe. 

This is different in the VN where doubt is only cast on the pregnancy's timing.  But even there Sekai didn’t have sex with anyone else, the VN is just taking advantage of how most people don’t get that “conception” doesn’t necessarily happen the same day you had sex, the sperm can linger.  

Another character I kind of like is Hikari but the reasons for that are largely VN only.  The only issue I have with the Hikari ending is that you’re cheating on Sekai.  I like how Hikari gets over her crush on dickface right after having sex with him and then does it with Makoto.  I like that she’s open and unashamed about only wanting sex from the relationship.  And I also like the part about her deciding it would be selfish to keep him to herself.  The Anime should have had Hikari initiate the Orgy, instead the three named extras just doing it on their own.  However all that is my glossing over how she’s a Pimp and a Blackmailer, so she’s also a villain but a likeable one. Not like Kotonoha or Otome who I’d be terrified to be in the same room as.  

The official Family Tree of the Overflow universe implies Bavarois+Watermelon is the canon ending.  It’s not officially classified as a Harem ending because there is no Threesome scene.  But emotionally I think the route to get that ending is the best Threesome story the VN offers.  It’s on a route where Makoto is preferring Sekai and the Kotonoha ending of that Route is considered a Bad Ending being called Lust.  

But Makoto and Setsuna do have sex along the way, and it’s not at all like how they wind up doing it in the Anime.  They develop a deep emotional connection that isn’t solely based on but is tied to how much they both care about Sekai.  You can have a Threesome relationship where all three never have sex at the same time, so yeah I feel like that is a stealth Makoto/Sekai/Setsuna route. 

Meanwhile the official Threesome ending of the VN bothers me.  I want to like the Non Monogamous resolutions of Dating Sims and VNs as a Polyamory advocate. But this one has issues.

First, Sekai and Kotonoha have no relationship with each other outside of Makoto, Sekai first befriended her to help Makoto.  That alone could be overcome, they could develop a bond, but….

Second, Kotonoha is acting like a Yandere even in this ending.  Just a Yandere who’s taken a different strategy than usual. She says Makoto can sleep with as many girls as he wants as long as he says he loves her the most. That kind of confirms my conclusion from episode 6 of the Anime, that what she really wants from this relationship is to use Makoto to feel Superior to other women.  

And then there is the way she’s still accusing Sekai of malicious intent, even as she’s trying to pressure her into this threesome.  “You thought I was some innocent naïve girl you could easily deceive”.  If that’s how you actually feel about Sekai then I don’t trust you with her well being.

So this ending kind of feels more like something Kotonoha is seducing Sekai into.  Even when Kotonoha kisses Sekai right after she has an orgasm it looks like Kotonoha was an evil genius who knew exactly the perfect moment to do that.

And the start of this ending is also the same as one of the ways to get the ending where Sekai snaps. One wrong decision on that rooftop results in Sekai being brutally Reverse NTRed.  

I shall return to Otome’s role in all this, this time in the VN where she isn’t a Rapist on any timeline but is still a Bully.  There is one timeline where Kotonoha will mistakenly think Makoto is dumping her for Otome.  She will actually confide to Sekai how she had intended to just kill her rival, but she apparently has no confidence in her ability to overpower Otome because she’s “fit” athletically speaking.

That explanation is BS, Otome being good at Basketball will not be useful to defending herself against Kotonoha coming at her with a Knife.  It’s clearly really because Otome has been bullying her since well before all this started, she is irrationally afraid of Otome in a way she isn’t of anyone else. In Kotonoha’s head here she is experiencing the reverse of episode 6 of the Anime.  She feels defeated by Otome in the worst way possible and helpless to do anything about it. And I’d feel bad for her if it wasn’t for everything else.

I bet Otome’s the kind of Bully whose Bark has no Bite.  And that in truth just the sight of Kotonoha pointing a knife at her would have her falling to her knees begging for mercy like Rick Flair in a match with Ricky Steamboat.  But she’s successfully traumatized the second most iconic Yandere in all of Anime to feel powerless against her, because bullying isn’t as easy to simply get over and deal with as many conservatives and liberals want you to think.

I know some people may be planning to respond “you sure are glossing over Kotonoha’s rape in order to vilify her”.  First of all in the VN she can become a murderer or a blackmailer or a rapist all in routes where the VN version of that rape doesn’t happen. And even in the Anime she was showing manipulative and morally questionable tendencies already before then. 

Like the scene on the Train where she can tell Makoto is about to break up with her so she uses her body like she never had before to get him to agree to dance at the festival.  She also basically blackmails Setsuna after she catches her kissing an unconscious Makoto in episode 8.

Kotonoha’s rape scene feels particularly gratuitous and unnecessary to me.  All we needed to set up Kotonoha’s mindset in the closing episodes was her seeing the Bonfire dance.  Otome’s rape of Makoto feels far more important to explaining his future behavior.

Back to the VN, there Kotonoha being raped by Taisuke doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the morally worst version of her.  In fact I don’t know how to feel about the way her being Raped actually seems to decrease the odds of her becoming a Supervillain.  Oddly enough the only ending that depends on that rape happening is the Hikari one where Kotonoha winds up in a relationship with Taisuke, which doesn’t sit well with me either.  Of course Kotonoha can also wind up dating Taisuke seemingly without even being rapped first, so maybe those jerks are just meant for each other.

In the VN Taisuke can also wind up raping Sekai on routes where you are preferring Kotonoha.  And again that is not really a factor in whether or not she ever gets homicidal.

Now I’m gonna talk about the Anime’s ending.  A lot of it can be reverse engineered to how one looks at the two original VN endings it’s combining, just remember in the VN these murders don’t happen on the same timeline.  Though Sekai snapping can still be preceded by Kotnoha becoming a Yandere with a different tactic.

So in the episodes leading up to the finale Makoto had started doing a lot of sleeping around but I’ve explained the reason for that already. His main sin is distancing himself from Sekai when she tells him she's pregnant.  That is messed up, but remember he’s not an adult, in fact now is perhaps the time to ask “where is everyone’s parents”.  Well according to information you’d get from the larger universe the original VN was a part of, all of these teens seem to be the product of teen pregnancies themselves.  So their parents probably don’t know what they’re doing either.

The fact I already emphasized that originally Sekai can only Snap if she’s pregnant (and aware of it) is important because one detail the Anime forgets to mention is her resentment of her father for abandoning her mother when she got pregnant.  Setsuna’s obsession with taking care of Sekai is also tied to her knowledge that they are half sisters, maybe even some guilt that she’s the one their father at least kind of helped provide for.  But the problem with the greater Overflow universe family tree is that my desire to ship Makoto with Sekai and Setsuna is shot in the foot by the knowledge that he is unknowingly their uncle (I want to see UsefulCharts do a video on it, I think it would break him, it makes the Habsburgs and Ptolemies look normal).  So I’d rather pick and choose what to acknowledge from there.

Makoto is himself also very stressed by the end of episode 11, and the way Kotonoha approaches him at that point, I really feel like Makoto’s own consent to anything he does with Kotonoha in the last episode is dubious at best, he seems really zoned out through all of it.  But critically thinking about Makoto’s own mental state would distract from everyone’s desire to just go “Harem protagonist gets killed for being a man slut, take that Otaku perverts”.

Another thing Sekai’s breakdown in the Anime has in common with at least one route to getting that in the VN is her being Reverse NTRed.  And I guess I’m a bit messed up in that after everything I’ve said in this post, I find that scene hot.  I am on Sekai’s side here, she’s who I’m empathizing with the most, but I also have a thing for Reverse NTR and so this scene that is about emotionally and mentally destroying a character I like, I have fapped to multiple times.

The thing that cuts even deeper however is everything Kotonoha says to mindbreak Sekai here isn't just about calling her a Slut who manipulated Makoto (really the standard reading of the show kind of is just people believing what a clearly unreliable Kotonoha says here), she also brings Setsuna into it and convinces Sekai she was a bad friend to Setsuna.  Setsuna obviously doesn’t feel that way.  If anything, and I'm saying this as a huge Setsuna Stan, Setsuna was the one in the wrong in her handling of her relationship with Sekai (in both the VN and the Anime).  Her hamartia was always placing Sekai’s wants and needs over her own and allowing Sekai to become way too emotionally dependent on her.  When she kissed Makoto in episode 8 was the one time she ever acted selfishly and tragically Kotonoha just happened to be there.  But of all the things Kotonoha could have done with that dirt she had on Setsuna, using it to convince Sekai that she had betrayed Setsuna is worse than any more conventional blackmail tactic.

I would really like to get someone like LegalEagle to look at the scene where Sekai snaps.  I really do feel like it ought to fit the legal definition of Temporary Insanity, I really don’t think it was premeditated, I think even seconds prior Sekai wasn’t planning to do that.  And like in the VN she regrets it instantly, and again she's dealing with the stress of a teen pregnancy and now being accused of lying about it. Every version of Kotonoha killing Sekai however is clearly premeditated, she may be acting more conventionally like a “crazy person” but that’s because whatever mental illness she has isn't temporary.  Her crimes are always way more methodical and well planned.

To me the Anime ending is all about Kotonoha becoming the most successful supervillain of all time, even Palpatine in ROTS got less of what he wanted.  The circumstances that lead to Sekai killing Makoto was the result of Kotonoha’s intentional premeditated actions.  She was evil and she won.

Update July 2023: I eventually played the VN myself some, and I found the VN basis for that scene in episode 6 of the Anime I fixated on so much.  The Anime version feels better executed in presentation because of more precise Animation and use of Music.  But the Dialogue confirms my interpretation of what this scene tells us about Kotonoha even more blatantly.  Kotonoha goes beyond just saying "we're dating so I can talk to him if I want", there really is an even more clear catty "He loves you not" subtext to it.  God I really did love that song.

Update July 2024: I'm now even more intimately familiar with the content of the Visual novel then when I first wrote this.  And over all I feel nothing but vindicated.

If anything my focusing so much on Otome as a Rapist in the Anime is unfair to her in the context of how it's Kotonoha who does equivalent stuff in the Visual Novel even more blatantly.  VN Otome is still a Bully and her role in inspiring Taisuke's actions is much more intentional.  But as far as the issue of Female on Male Rape goes it's all Kotonoha in the VN.

In the scenario that comes from episode 5 being The Video Tape Kotonoha repeatedly assaults Makoto on the train against his protests, once start jerking him off while he's still asleep, and more.  Twice in these scenes a prompt will come up for the player but our options are only say no or nothing, no option to actually consent.

In a scene leading up to Bavarois/Lust after he tells her he loves Sekai and wants to break up she undresses in-front of him and tells him to touch her and when he doesn't she walks over and forces his face in her breast.

The issue today with how society treats Female on Male Rape is less a denial that it's theoretically possible and more having a different barrier to considering that's definitely what happened.  When it's a male assaulting a female at least most self described feminists understand that any Consent given after an encounter begins as non consensual is dubious.  But in the scene I just talked about will go "look how easily he starts sucking on them" but I'm like "he barely even looks aware of his surroundings".

Then there is the matter of SA victims themselves often not being willing to recognize that's what happened to them.  And for male victims an added reason that is this very double standard.  But because people enter this franchise with such a baseline cynical view of Makoto it's easy to go "even he admits he did something wrong...." when that's not how human psychology works, people feel guilty about things that aren't their fault all the time.

Leaving that issue I also hate Kotonoha for how the pregnancy storyline plays out in the VN, because in the VN she isn't even in full "Yandere Mode" for that.  Makoto had little interest in questioning if he was the father before Kotonoha pressed the issue.  And no this isn't me blaming her for Makoto's actions, what she does here is vile and despicable whether Makoto would have acted on it or not.  She's doing this to try and get Makoto back even though he left her for Sekai before he was even told about the pregnancy.

For anyone still questioning the parentage of the child, the fact that Sekai only gets pregnant when she has sex with Makoto early in the game even if she is with Taisuke for the same period proves the baby is Makoto's.  He simply must have really potent Sperm.

I also learned recently how the ending you get for making no choices at all is With Honesty a Sekai Ending.  If the Bad Endings are really consequences for Makoto's indecisiveness then how come the most maximally indecisive route has a good ending?  No that being the ending that happens if we don't interfere at all vindicates my belief that Sekai is who he's meant to be with.

I'm incredibly hard on Kotonoha but I also sympathize with her when the focus is on Otome and Nanami's bullying of her.  But I can also sympathize with them sometimes.  The game just is really well written with nuanced characters.

Update May 2025:End of The Folly

This extension of the To My Child ending that is only in the LxH version of the game not the original or HQ implies Taisuke is the father, as it involved both Kotnoha and Sekai raising kids officially considered Makoto's and Taisuke having one with Hikari and it's observed that the three look alike. Problem is they don't look in a way them makes them look more like Taisuke then Makoto.

What those of us familiar with broader Overflow know is that Taisuke and Makoto have close paternal common ancestry to begin with, Makoto's father is Taisuke's grandfather. So yes their kids could easily look alike. 

Also it seems like this is the only release of the Game where it's even theoretically possible for Sekai and Kotonoha to have both been inseminated by Taisuke on the same timeline.

This scene is clearly just a thoughtless tack on for this release to appeal to the Otaku community's growing NTR fetish, as shown by removing it for HQ.

It again reinforces that Sekai was certainly not faking the pregnancy, but the original version of To My Child without this addition already confirmed that showing very visibly pregnant.