School Rumble

Information of Anime

Tenma Tsukamoto has a secret crush on one of her classmates at school.  His name is Oji Karasumaru.  When news broke out that he was transferring soon, Tenma quickly wrote a secret love confession letter to him & left it in his show locker.  Because Tenma didn't write her name on it, Karasumaru didn't know who it was from which causes pain to Tenma.  However, he decides to stay & Tenma gets another chance in confessing her feelings.

Kenji Harima, a delinquent of the school, has a secret crush on Tenma & tries to confess his love to her.  Because she's too thick headed, his messages don't get across.  He tries to get Tenma to notice his feelings for her.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The show doesn't have a solid main storyline.  However, it follows the love triangle between Harima, Karasumaru, & Tenma.  There are times were Harima gets confused that Tenma is actually giving her love signals to Karasumaru who sits close to him.  When Karasumaru & Tenma get together for lunch & Harima sees it, he feels broken down & leaves school.  He pursues a lot of careers such as a animal fortune telling & manga artist.  He does this to get Tenma off his mind.  The reason why he likes Tenma so much as the time when he saved her from some bullies.  But, he disguises himself with facial hair & sunglasses to avoid Tenma remembering him as a bad boy that picked fights.

Later on, Harima will come back to school again after he & Tenma notices that Karasumaru doesn't really have feelings for Tenma; causing her to cry.  Chasing her after to confess his love, Harima wrongly confesses to Eri Sawachika as he confuses her for Tenma.  This causes her to think differently about him.  From here, a lot of mini stories pop up here & there.  They are mainly the high school boys trying to confess their love to girls they like.  Also, we learn about the different backgrounds of the characters such as Yakumo Tsukamoto being an Esper & Kyosuke Imadori being a D-cup freak.  Also, we get a lot of ups & downs between the characters due to confusion, rumours, & plans that didn't work out.

The show doesn't have an ending as everything is left as is.  There is no advanced in terms of love relationships between characters & everyone still go about their own ways.

My Personal Review

School Rumble is basically a comedy anime that you just sit back & relax.  You don't need to worry about storylines since there isn't any here.  But you should pay attention about the relationships between characters. 

Animation

The character designs are pretty cute.  Almost no two characters are drawn alike in terms of their facial appearance & shape.  Some have round faces, some have sharp eyes, etc.  They are times where the characters have this SD appearance, but don't go into SD mode in terms of small bodies.  They sometimes have no mouths, even they are talking which is kind of funny.  Also, the changes in Harima's appearance are hilarious. 

The animation movements are usually strange superhuman types.  In order words, you get bodies flying around, people getting beat to a pulp, & people lifting super heavy things with ease.  Although it's not realistic, it's quite funny & entertaining to watch; especially with the sound effects that comes with them. 

Sound

The sound effect fit the actions very well & the volume is just right.  Although a lot of them are on the childish side, it really helps create that anime mood the show offers.

The seiyuus here perform their character counterparts well.  They really give off the energy of their characters & aren't hurtful to my ears.  I'm glad this cast lineup was selected.

The music is on the cute & childish side.  Although a lot of them are catchy, they don't stick to your head very long.  However, the ending theme song seems to stay in my head quite well.  Also, I like the lyrics to that song.  There are some insert songs in the show that all pretty much sung by Harima's seiyuu.  They are all about Harima's love for Tenma.

Story

The anime splits it's episodes into three parts.  Sometimes there are linked to one another & sometimes they aren't.  It's cleverly done to distinguish the mini-episodes from each other.

There's no storyline to follow here.  You just need to focus on the relationships that occur between characters.  The characters that you should pay attention to are Tenma & Harima as I feel these are the main characters in the series.  But, this shouldn't make you stay clear from the other characters as this anime is mainly designed to be watch without worrying about storylines or plots.

Overall Conclusion

School Rumble really lives up to it name based on the amounts of laughs you can get from watching it.  Even though it's silly with little realistic things you can relate to, you should just let yourself go & enjoy.  I highly recommend watching this if you are into comedy with strange love elements involved.

I give School Rumble a nine out of ten on its report card.  It's filled with a lot of laughs that I can't contain myself at times.  There are some scenes that made me burst out with loud laughter.  I couldn't stop myself from watching one episode & had a need for more.  The lost point comes from it's lack of a true storyline.  Thinking if a solid storyline will improve the series is questionable, but I will still enjoy watching this if it will never have one.

Last updated on January 14, 2008