Bumping because I watched the series too. I was moderately intrigued by the premise, then I was simply hooked in.
I agree that Clay listening with pauses to the tapes is a plot device, but I'm 99% that an even more blatant plot device was his bike accident at the beginning so that you could see Clay without the little scar in his forehead / Clay with the scar to dumb down for the audience which scenes were in the past, and which one in the present.
Also, someone tells him at a point "Why do you wait? I listened to them, like, in a single evening". Unvoluntary ironical meta comment about binge watching?
I also think that the difference between some of the reasons and the rape was too much. It's bad what she went through, no denying it from me, but teenage quarrels like the Alex / Jessica triangle and an actual, brutal, horrible rape??? to quote Pulp Fiction, "they're not even in the same ballpark". Hannah 90% killed herself because she was raped, she went home after that horrible fact and compiled the list of people who hurt her, circling Bryce's name three times, and planned her suicide. Sure, there were aggravations - her sense of being hurt by his other friends, and the counselor not doing all he could do, but the rape was the clear and blatant tipping point.
And poor Clay torturing himself over their intimate moment... I get that a kid in that situation would blame himself, I really do, it's not bad writing or anything. But... they were making out. She stopped. She said FOUR TIMES, clearly and unequivocally to his face while visibly upset, that she didn't want him there. What was he supposed to do but leaving? should a kid in that position magically acquire the wisdom to find the exact right words to confort a girl that told him 4 times straight she wanted to be left alone? poor guy...
Also I found a bit weird how the other guys were discussing Jessica's rape... while seemingly completely ignoring that also Hannah herself was raped. It was like they wanted to save the dramatic twist for the 12th episode, and this required the other guys, who listened to all the tapes, forget that Hannah described two rapes in her tapes.
Her suicide scene was brutal and and gut wretching. I'll admit - I'm a big pussy when it comes to see blood. I actually didn't watch the scene, I turned my head away, and I cried. No girl should die like this, she is a fictional character but there are many girls in her same situation, and if anything, watching this at least gave me a big burst of emotional empathy. Not that of course I didn't care before, but not-really-watching the scene of her death I was thinking something like "No more. No one should die like this. No one". And her mother founding her... horrible.
These terrible moments and plot inconsistencies, I liked it. Also, it's not that I'm right and everyone else is wrong, these are simple cultural differences, but... I scratched my head many times at how certain things work in the overseas schools.
At a point someone says "So Zach is good at sports, who cares?" ... PRECISELY! Why anybody would care how good are some teenagers at school? why everyone is interested in watching them play? why making skinny or unfit kids "unworthy" of the praise and the attentions the jock "deserve" for what they do with a ball in their hands? why there are cheerleaders? why teenage girls have to dress in a uniform which surely is not provoking or revealing, but they have to dance around while girls not picked for the role think they're fatasses while maybe they even aren't? why there are winter and summer dances, and why everybody assumes that any teenager 1) Likes danceable music 2) Enjoys the physical act of dancing and feels comfortable doing it 3) can find a person of the opposite sex wanting to join them?
It's like unwanted awkward situations forced upon kids at their most emotionally vulnerable age. The only thing that lacks here in the old continent (at least in Italy and when I went to school) is a counselor, that is a very good idea... but the specific counselour of 13 Reasons Why basically convinced Hannah she was right to kill herself. D'uh.