Let's get this out of the way: I love school days. The anime is on my favorites. Trust me, as much as you want to avoid this manga anyway, it's twice as shitty if you're actually a school days fan.

The first thing that you have to understand is that this is NOT an "addition" to the franchise. It doesn't add extra detail to the original plot or anything like that. It takes place on an alternate timeline where the school days harem ending occurred, effectively killing any drama there and creating a stupid anticlimax. This series is actually pretty big on anticlimaxes. There's at least 3.

There was actually a happy ending. Yeah. A happy ending. In a part of the school days franchise. The worst part is that it looked like the ending would be tragic and slightly redeeming, although the tragedy seemed kind of forced in the first place, but tragedy was somehow (it was literally physically impossible) averted and it was shit.

School Days is known for not following conventions of the industry, but this manga did just that. The two MCs were inexplicably shipped by the MC's sister for the sake of the plot. The MC dressed up like a girl after an extremely convoluted line of reasoning convinced him it would somehow help his situation. Why? For the sake of the plot. School Days was a clever deconstruction. This is a cliché shounen romance slash gender bender.

The characters were empty and dull. The main character was a pathetic loser with no redeeming qualities and the heroine was a very typical tsundere. The characters from School Days were simplified or just changed completely. Makoto became a generic villain, Taisuke became a cliché and possibly homosexual bromantic foil, which is the very archetype he originally deconstructed, Sekai became nothing but a slut, and Kotonoha was as boring as always except she never really went yandere. Setsuna was my favorite character in the anime, but here she is reduced to an unimportant plot-device. None of the characters were good, realistic, or redeemable in any way, form, or shape.

The ending of School Days is the best part for most people. Well, in this manga Makoto is an even bigger douche, and a rapist to boot, but he ends up fine. One funny thing about the original series was Makoto's flawless skill with the ladies despite being a bland loser. It was satirical and entertaining. Him losing this aspect of his character, and not being able to seduce the female lead really made him less entertaining.

I would have honestly preferred it if Makoto ended up NTRing the main character and subsequently adding the trap version of him to his harem, or just making him kill himself. The best part of this manga was the protagonist's reactions to Makoto's sexual escapades and the one of the best parts of the original series was the tragedy. This series ultimately failed to capitalize on either of these things and just ended up with wasted potential.

Really, the whole thing was nothing but wasted potential, which completely kills the enjoyment factor. The art was quite lackluster. The characters were dreadful. Overall it was a bad experience that, despite its length, I wouldn't recommend to anybody, least of all an actual fan of the franchise.

Story: 1/10
Art: 3/10
Characters: 1/10
Enjoyment: 3/10
Bonus: 2/10
Overall: 10/50 or 20%