Friday, November 16, 2007

School Rumble Volume 1

Overall Rating: D+
Synopsis: Created by Jin Kobayashi, the series is a romance comedy that follows Tenma Tsukamoto. Tenma attends Yagami High School, and is in love with the stoic Oji Karasuma. Meanwhile, the male protagonist, Kenji Harima, a delinquent, has developed a crush on Tenma. Both Harima and Tenma have difficulty telling their respective crushes how they feel, and so (of course) hilarity (supposedly) ensues.

There is also a large cast of supporting characters, and I could go into great detail about all of their various relationships to the main characters, but unlike Cromartie High School, the supporting cast doesn't consist of a robot, a gorilla or Fred Mercury (at least not that I've seen).


When I picked up volume 1 of School Rumble, I was hoping that it would be in the same vein as Cromartie High School. A large cast of interesting characters that I wanted to read more about and made me laugh. Not so much. Volume 1 utterly failed to get me interested. I didn't hate the characters, or the plot, but I just didn't care about either. I'm wondering if, like Cromartie, this one's better as an anime. For its sake, I hope so.

2 comments:

Bunny-chan said...

Normally I'm more of a manga fan, but this is one series where I watched the anime. It captivated me right away and by the second episode I knew I'd be following it nearly religiously.

Admittedly, I have not yet picked up the manga, so perhaps it is translation (from screen to print) issues that are the problem.

Nick said...

That's definitely a possibility, and the first volume of the anime is in my Netflix queue, so I'm hoping I like it better. It definitely feels like it might be more engaging on screen.