StoryI didn't hold a lot of expectations coming in for the School Days OVAs, the Valentines special no different, and it's really more for people who want more of a silly, situational take on the series, almost like an extra episode, and to be honest, I did find it somewhat entertaining, but as for rememberance value...not really.There's really no essential story to School Days OVA, hence why the score's so low, save for the fact it takes the characters and places them in a parody presentation that's intended more for humor purposes than actual character development. If you're looking for any of the seriousness the series presented or extra character development, you're not going to find it here. The basic senario is this: it's Valentine's Day and Makoto finds his hands more than full with offers of chocolates from the girls...and it's not as sane as it looks. I found the scene where the girls were chasing Makoto with butcher knives humorous, it made me laugh because even considering how much I didn't like the TV series, at least it puts the humor as tongue in cheek and makes fun of itself, and I think fans of School Days might appreciate seeing this as long as they don't take too much of a critical eye to it. One could almost say it's an omake episode like the DVD extras you see for other series such at the Picture Book sides of Code Geass or Infinite Illusion on the Infinite Ryvius DVDs.In short, if you watch this, don't expect anything added on to the original story, it's pretty much a filler episode.AnimationThe animation standards are kept generally the same as the TV series, so there's not much to comment here. The only additional comment I could make is about the SD characterization used for humor: if you've ever seen the School Days side game when Kotonoha and Sekai are battling it out against each other with cleavers, it will remind you a lot of what to expect in the SD animation aspect. I think the animation does a fair job of enhancing the humor, SD animations with some sides of humor can sometimes promote (such as Azumanga Daioh) or harm (Paradise Kiss), and if you're more of a situational comedy fan it works, but it just struck me as average. SoundI can't comment much on the music for this because the same opening and one of the ED sequences are used in this, so one could say it's of the same quality as the series.The Japanese VA cast were kept the same for the series, and I think the reason why I found this series more entertaining than it otherwise would have been were that the cast members could overemphasize, effectively, in the shell of their characters, a humor that was duplicated even in the original series, but overshadowed to lend way to the story developed there.CharactersNo character growth or development to be found here, and like my previous review, I didn't have much like or connection with the characters. Makoto seems to receive his just desserts (that was an intentional pun), but there were no markers or anything remotely about this OVA that made me think any better of the characters than I did before.OverallOverall, not so much a memorable watch unless you're just looking for a side story that separates itself, rather randomly, from the series and something more for romantic comedy. It's more of a subjective watch, and all in all, I couldn't see it having a value of watching multiple times, it's short, situational, and, to be honest, below average.
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