ANIME

ANIME REVIEW . School Rumble vol. 5

Here’s another series I’m coming to the party a bit late in, but despite my complete lack of background the show still provided a surprising amount of fun. If you’re familiar with School Rumble you can skip on down to the fourth paragraph. If not, read on.

School Rumble is a high-school romantic comedy revolving around an unrequited-love triangle between an oblivious boy, a peppy sophomore girl, and older high-school delinquent. The girl, Tenma, likes the nerd, Karasuma. The delinquent, Harima likes Tenma. And Karasuma? Well, I guess he likes his guitar.Anyways the situation leads to quite a number of impassioned misunderstandings, misplaced affections, shamed cover-ups, and more rapid-fire hilarity than you can shake a stick at.

If you watch School Rumble, the first thing you will notice is how insanely fast paced the episodes are. Within the span of ten minutes a whole subplot can be introduced, built up, explored, and resolved, making a single episode seem more like the joining of two. This is due in no small part to the comedy, which itself is similarly fast paced. Anime romantic comedies often exhibit an unfortunate tendency toward lame setups and lamer humor, seemingly crafted with a target audience of shut-ins and abnormally sheltered teenagers in mind, but School Rumble’s comedy is fairly universal in appeal. Really, there’s something here for everyone. Guys will enjoy the slapstick and the offensive exchanges. Girls will enjoy the comedy centering around the stupidity and inherent perversion of males. Both sexes will enjoy the aforementioned misunderstandings, and the completely absurd situations that form as a result.

The episodes on this disc had a number of choice setups. Apparently Harima has been trying to grow a beard in previous episodes, and in the first episode on this disc it gets cut off, much to his surprise and chagrin. Harima’s also working on a manga to present to Tenma, but he wants to keep the work a secret — a manga obsession would ruin his tough guy image. He eventually finds someone to critique it, but that leads to more misunderstandings of his playing the field. Around school rumors are spread of a teacher’s posing for a nude portrait, which itself turns out to be not quite as expected. A Brazilian exchange student picks a fight with Tenma, a new delinquent enters the scene, and two whole classes compete for a prize in a series of strange athletic games. It’s a whole lot of material for four episodes, but the show does an admirable job of juggling all the scenarios.

Since this is the first disc I’ve reviewed of the series, some discussion of the animation style is in order. Character designs are actually pretty fun and funky. For the most part the individual characters and locales are drawn in a normal everyday style (bright, clean, not too realistic, but not too cutesy either), but depending on the situation, perspective and size relations will shift, and details will be enhanced or completely dropped (like in the scenes of the faceless drooling male classmates, resulting from the announcement of their teacher’s “nude” portrait). At some times the story looks like a fighting anime, while at others it looks like a straightforward teen comedy. While I usually don’t care for such shifting in styles too much, as with the unbalanced strangeness of Trigun or the crack-addled insanity of Excel Saga, with School Rumble it fit the overall tone nicely.

In the end, I quite liked School Rumble. I’ve not seen the previous four volumes, but after the fun I had with this set of episodes, I am very much interested in checking them out.

The DVD

Funimation presents the four School Rumble episodes in your choice of English or original Japanese audio tracks. Like the earlier reviewed Shogun Assassin 4, this disc was also a rare case where the English dub was surprisingly well done. In fact, I watched all the episodes in their English language version. Pretty cool.

The DVD also has a reversible cover, allowing you to choose between the new American and original Japanese cover art. Also included is a cool set of magnets featuring characters from the show dressed in animal suits. I only recognized one or two of the characters (ie: Harima as an ape), but the magnets are still pretty cute.

Included as extras on the disc are interviews with the original voice actress for Anegasaki, a lengthy television commercial for the series, the usual textless song offerings and Funimation trailer gallery.

All in all, a decent disc for a cool comedy. If you’re interested in a romantic comedy with broad appeal, you’d do pretty well with School rumble.

About the Author

Chris Nelson has been an off and on anime fan since the days of Streamline Pictures. A former film and English major, he is now a Software Engineer and contract Technical Writer living in the Silicon Valley.