School Rumble 1

October 11, 2004

Title: New Semester -- All excited and nervous!
Fansubbed by: Dash Fansubs

This is Harima Kenji, delinquent extraordinaire.

Harima likes Tsukamoto Tenma . . .

who, in turn, likes Karasuma Ooji.

The End

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RATING: B

Without a doubt, this season is full of anime titles that are completely serious -- whether one looks for pure shonen, seinen, or shoujo, almost all titles in the Fall 2004 roster take a staid approach to high ambition and romance. Amidst all this gloom, School Rumble provides a ridiculously distorted take on a classic genre, which is, just as Momotato points out, simply *hilarious*

Perhaps the easiest misconception to make about this series is the assumption that it's yet another version of the boy-meets-girl tale. Quite to the contrary, it methodically strips away every single tenet of the genre, leaving us with a stark-naked parody. Granted, this is a hit or miss proposition -- fans of shoujo will be horrified at its ravishment, while ingrates will revel in its downfall. While this genre-mockery forms the core of this series, there's a ton more spread out on the table.

The *real* strength of this series is its witty use of puns, wordplay, and comic situations. As expected, these are best suited to fluent Japanese speakers, but there's no denying the utter 4-koma purity of the inherent humor (hook, hook, punch-line, sinker) -- as a case in point, Harima's reverse-Engrish pun is a bit hard to understand, but once it connects -- god, it's over. The same can be said for the use of absurd situations - for anime newcomers, it might be slightly funny to see a pair of bicycles overtake a sports car, but for those who correctly recognized the Initial D cameo, complete with its unique camera angles and cheesy synth background . . . it's just at a whole different level.

In any case, School Rumble looks extraordinarily good. Like 2x2=Shinobuden, this series will probably be despised by anime purists, but for all the infidels who couldn't keep a straight face through Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, this title is a must-watch.

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