Key cast members from School Rumble,along with a few secondary characters.
Okay, I'm labelling this one as a review as well as a Marathon report, because in some ways this ended up as being as much a discussion of one of my favorite series as a report on an anime marathon...
Harima Kenji is a notorious deliquent who is in love with his classmate Tsukamoto Tenma, but can't ever seem to get her to notice, no matter what lengths he goes to. Tenma Tsukamoto is a clumsy and ditzy girl with a crush on her classmate Karasuma, but can't ever seem to get him to notice, no matter what lengths she goes to. Karasuma... is more then a little strange, and seems to like curry more then anything else. Throw in a diverse mix of supporting characters, including Tenma's mind-reading younger sister Yakumo and the somewhat snobby Eri Sawachika (who finds herself falling for Harima after several dramatic misunderstanding between them), and let the fun begin, because School Rumble is one of the greatest comedy animes I've ever had the pleasure of seeing, and stood up very well to having it's entire twenty six episode first season screened in a single day.
School Rumble is a high school comedy anime, but its not like most other high school comedy animes, and because of this it manages to rise far above most of the rest of the pack. Combining the fast pacing and outrageous humour needed to make a show a laugh riot with enough characterisation and story to keep it from being just a string of gags, School Rumble manages to remain fresh far longer then most of the competition, and somehow captures the insanity of the adolescent experience in a way that no other show I've seen has ever managed to do. I've heard that many high school comedy animes are actually aimed at middle schoolers, but this one strikes me as one that many people who are in high school or even past it can enjoy. Certainly myself and the other three university students I watched the show with seemed to like it.
The artwork in School Rumble isn't as technically impressive as that of some other series, but it gets the job done and fits the show well, which I think is more important in many ways than whether its can win animation awards or not. There's a reason I like the artwork in this series a lot, but wasn't overly fond of the supposedly superior animation in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimaya.
It's a testament to School Rumble's entertainment value that the show's first season can be watched in its entirety in one day without making the audience seriously want to quit. Despite this, I actually don't think that marathoning is the best way for a newcomer to see this series. While School Rumble is far less repetitive then some other comedies like Love Hina, it does have some repeating gags, and some of the jokes can become a bit predictable if one watches the episodes too close together. For example, there's one gag that shows up twice in the series, once early on and once near the end. People from the anime club my brother first watched the show with (at the rate of about two episodes a week) were fooled by it. However, one of my friends who had never seen SR prior to the marathon (during which she saw the whole first season in one day) saw the joke coming. So while it's not the end of the world if you watch the series for the first time in one go, it may not be the best way to do so. Hold the marathoning for some time when you feel like rewatching the show.
2 comments:
I get the feeling that most people who like School Rumble don't realize why they like it. For me, at least, it's that the show hits close to home - it appears nonsensical and random, but that couldn't be further from the truth. It makes fun of things that most people are familiar with: misunderstandings, mistakes, and the hormonal cesspool of adolescence. It's funny because you can connect with the humour and search for the truth in it (I don't think this would be anywhere near as funny for someone still in high school). Not only that, but the series takes a lot of time to invest in its characters and develop their stories. There are a lot of 'tone poem' style moments here that just don't exist with other comedic series, and the result is a comedy with a soul. Part of me even wonders if the anime producers know what makes 'School Rumble' so good, given their work on the non-manga sections of season 2...
Quite possibly they don't. Ever compared the manga that the series was based on to the anime? It's obvious that certain shots of the anime were based directly on panels from the manga. REALLY obvious. I suppose that's one criticism that could be directed at the anime version of SR -it's a very, very direct adaptation (well, okay, I haven't read much of the manga, but some of what I have gives that impression).
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