Name: School Rumble
Licensed in US: Yes
Series Length: 26 episodes at about 23 minutes each
Type Watched: Fansubbed
Overall Rating: 9.5 out of 10
Date Written: December 18, 2005

    School Rumble is basically a romance story about a girl, Tsukamoto Tenma, who wants to, but can’t, confess to this one boy, Karasumaru.  Of course, the point that School Rumble is actually a Romantic Comedy and not just a Romance adds a little to this classic storyline.  Tsukamoto Tenma may really like Karasumaru, but he seems to show no interest in her at all, and well…frankly tends to show no interest in anything.  Even worse, Karasumaru will be transferring schools, giving Tsukamoto Tenma only one chance to express her feelings for him (this doesn’t exactly turn out how you may think).  Of course, a romantic comedy isn’t complete without a third person!  Tsukamoto Tenma doesn’t know, but Harima Kenji has always liked her, but hasn’t been able to express his feelings towards her.  Will Tsukamoto Tenma ever express her feelings to Karasumaru?  Will Harima Kenji be able to break the competition and confess to Tsukamoto Tenma?  Why am I ending a paragraph like this?  Find out by watching School Rumble!

    School Rumble has fell into the category of one of my favorite humorous animes, having a funny storyline and unique characters.  However, School Rumble has a lot of unique characteristics that I don’t see much in anime.  First off, the ending credits don’t always mean the end of the episode.  It seems to be this series’ style to end the episode at the most abrupt and unexpected point you could imagine, usually having every episode end in a laugh.  However, there are a few episodes where they appear to end an episode near 3/4^th of the episode and then continue the rest of the episode after the end credits.  In a lot of these instances they will show the “rest of the episode” in a different style (for example, one time they added a funny manga style ending after the end credits).  So, a rule of thumb for School Rumble…expect the unexpected!

    Unfortunately, I have probably lost a lot of my ecchi haters, but for those of you still here, you will be pleased to know that School Rumble is not ecchi!  It is purely a Romantic Comedy!  Of course, there is very lite ecchi here and there, but most people wouldn’t even consider these instances ecchi.

 Graphics
    All of the characters and scenery are drawn above average and there really isn’t anything I can criticize about them.  However, the makers of School Rumble seem to take a lot of shortcuts by having full scenes where there is only a 2 or 3 colored background.  I’m guessing they did this a lot for affect, but they do tend to use it a lot.  Personally, I thought it added to the mood of the scenes, but other people may think different.  You just have to remember that School Rumble is a comedy and the storyline is what makes School Rumble great, not the graphics.

Sound
    The music was absolutely wonderful and in no way did I dislike any of it.  All the music was fun to listen to and went with the current event very well.  In fact, I even got a hold of the OST and was just as impressed with that.  However, unlike most anime OST’s, they combined a lot of the tunes into one big “super song”, which isn’t a bad thing, but just annoying if there is one particular tune you want to hear.  As for sound affects, they were above average and I have no special comments for them.

Characters
    School Rumble definitely had a lot of unique characters with Tsukamoto Tenma being the sort of dumb and happy-go-lucky character, Karasumaru being just plain weird (I have yet to find out why Tenma likes him so much), and Harima Kenji being a character that changes throughout the story.  In fact, Harima Kenji is probably the only character that changes dramatically, by going from an evil delinquent bully to a super silly guy in love to a fortune teller who …ok…I better stop.  Anyways, you are in for an excellent storyline mixed in with some very funny characters.

    If you haven’t already seen School Rumble, GO WATCH IT RIGHT NOW!  Unless you don’t like comedy or you are some guy who thinks guys aren’t supposed to watch romantic comedies (if so, you are so wrong)…then still watch it!  There is absolutely no excuse for anyone not to watch School Rumble (it’s that good ;-)