 Following in the footsteps of Azumanga Daioh and Sensei no Ojikan, it's another highschool comedy - and despite the name, School Rumble! has nothing to do with boxing...
It's Tenma Tsukamoto's first day back at school, and she's in love,
bless her. She's trying to work up the nerves to confess to her
boy-to-be Karasuma, but it's not quite going to plan - he's due to be
transferring out the next day, so she has to move quickly. When she
does eventually write him a confession letter, she forgets to put her
name on it - but that works in Tenma's favour, as Karasuma gets
permission to stay on while he finds out who wrote the letter. Not that
that makes her any better at expressing her feelings. To add to her
problems, school delinquent Kenji Harima has fallen in love with her
himself...
2 - The Test that could Not be Understood! The Toilet you Can't Emerge From! The Impossible Physical Examination!
Harima's new dedication to school is making people wonder - not that
he's about to admit that it's all down to his new-found love for
Tenma-chan. It's not really helping him in class, either - he's too
busy trying to remind Tenma to write her name on her test paper to
bother doing the test himself. Later, she's afraid to come out of the
bathroom (I feel a song coming on there), for fear of letting Karasuma
notice she has to deal with basic biology as much as anyone else, while
the school physicals give her the chance to find out Karasuma's 'vital
statistics' - except her plans for getting hold of his 'data' go wrong,
as usual...
I swear, it's Mahoro reincarnated, complete with little sticky-out twitchy bits on the side of her hair. Kawaii! :)
With highschool comedy being one of the 'in' genres with anime at the moment, School Rumble!
has to try hard to stand out from similar shows - and I have to say it
doesn't really manage it. It's slightly wackier and more frenetic in
tone than either Azumanga or Ojikan, but past that there's very little here that hasn't been done before.
Which isn't to say that it's a bad show - far from it, I had a
pretty much permanent grin on my face throughout these two episodes -
but with so many shows and so little time, I don't know if it was good
enough to be worth sticking with for the full run. I'll be watching the
next few episodes, at least, but School Rumble! will have to keep me smiling to stay on my 'watch' list. |
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