In picking up School Rumble, Second Semester, I expected to enjoy further laughs and mayhem with a romantic twist, just like I did in Season One. I also expected some answers to the copious amount of questions piled on in Season One.

School Rumble, Season One is all about hopeless teen drama, puppy love and crushed expectations. It’s funny throughout most of the series, and downright dramatic the rest. The first season is authentic and sweet. In short, School Rumble, Season One is a great romantic comedy with heart. School Rumble, Season Two, is, not so much….

School Rumble

Plot Summary

It’s the same ol’ teen drama for Class 2C as they kick off their sophomore year: Tenma is still clueless, and in love with the enigmatic and odd Karasuma. Harima still can’t confess his true feelings for Tenma, and Eri has some unresolved issues for how she feels about Harima.

But Harima has become a rising star in the world of manga, and with his increase in stardom comes an increase in confidence. Will his new found self-esteem help him profess his love to Tenma?

Review

School Rumble, Second Semester was plain bad. It was a serving of more of the same from Season One, but without the zest and freshness. The gags were old, the lines were tired and the characters were stale. I’ve found fresher things at the day old Hostess store.

The writers must have been giddy from their successful run with School Rumble, Season One, and hammered out a formula for what they thought brought in the ha ha’s. Why don’t we say that H (Harima) times (T) Tenma plus F (filler) equals cha ching! So (H)(T) +F =$$$. And thus fans are rewarded with a seemingly endless loop of garbage and the studio raked in cash with minimal effort. The only problem is this formula= Hard Fail. Infinity.

Filler episodes and scenes abounded and actual plot was gunned down so that romantic anarchy could rule.  I knew when the first episode made me shudder a bit in my critical thinking lobe that trouble wasn’t far behind. My instsincts seldom let me down. Two full episodes were dedicated to a cop-out  story arc, and a lame one at that. This series has more dream scenes and dodgy explanations than are allotted for a romantic comedy. It was cute at first, but like a child who doesn’t know that adorable little version of “I’m a Teacup” is getting on Auntie Rae’s nerves, so was School Rumble unaware its gags were frustratingly tired.

I would say there were three episodes worth of progressive plot. But it was a downer since it made less sense than the wacky limit the anime set for itself. It was uninspired and ubiquitously bad. The characters I grew to empathize with were stunted in their growth, though some development managed to to squeak by.

Character Development

Further decent character development was absent, a night-and-day departure for the series.  Tenma stayed stupid, Eri stayed rich but Harima had a change in his confidence level. Poor guy can’t catch break, though that’s partially his own fault. I would have ditched chasing after Tenma eons ago. The girl is a waste of air time and ink. Harima has his hang-ups and Tenma is one of them. Guy needs to go to rehab for hopeless infatuations with loser women. Harima was the only saving grace of the anime, but a tiny one.

Character Design

Blah, what can I say about things that don’t change? Nothing visually departed from the first season, but why should it really.

I’m lumping in Animation, Music and Voice Acting  with my critique of character designs. There’s something to be said about consistency, so no points are taken off for the average-ness of the rest of the series’ features.

Conclusion

School Rumble, Second semester went nowhere. I might have well just watched Season One and called it a day. I didn’t though, and flushed nine hours of my time down the kamode. It’s a shame that this series took a nose dive in its quality of storytelling.

School Rumble Season One was good.  There was no reason for Two to have been so different from the first, none. The ending of Second semester was the real kick in the teeth, though. It sucked harder than all the shifty, cop-out scenes combined, and that’s saying a LOT.

School Rumble has a third season coming up. I really don’t want to take another bullet for School Rumble fans since I’m still digging shrapnel out my funny bone from Second Semester.  If you’re a fan of Season One,  I recommend  you avoid Season Two if you can, you’ll only be let down, and who needs that?

Rating

School Rumble, Second Semester gets 2.5 outta 5 Hammies!

Retail Info

• Publisher: Funimation
• Release Date: October 14, 2008 (Part One) and December 16, 2008 (Part Two)
• Retail Price: $59.98
• Number of discs: 2
• Episodes: 1-13 (Part One) and 14-26 (Part Two)
• Run Time: 305 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Language: English, Japanese
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Format: Animated, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled,

School Rumble “ends” with this last volume in the series, but why does it feel more like a “See You Soon” than a “Sayonara“?

plot summary

Class 2C and 2D are locked in a battle of brawn as the two compete for school supremacy at the athletic meet. Harima steps up to the plate in order to save the class from a smack down, but is really only doing so to thank Eri for saving him from humiliation.

Harima is still struggling with Eri’s weird feelings towards him, his misunderstood relationship with Yakumo and his unrequited love for Tenma. In a bid to forget it all, the delinquent takes to the high seas.

Tenma has decided she will tell Karasuma her feelings, and sets out to do so, only to find herself caught in a dream, or is she?

The soap bubble which is the class’ adolescence seems ready to pop, but not before it floats some more along the Milky Way of teen love.

review

Gah, School Rumble really is a soap opera! It has just as many convoluted twists, turns and “gotcha!” moments as All My Children. There were two, count ‘em two, cop out scenes which turned out to be dream sequences or something similar. Why would the studio pull this on the last volume in the last two episodes?!

It was a given the series wouldn’t have anything resembling a tidy ending due to the path Volume Five was going down. I wasn’t as miffed as I normally would have been at the thought School Rumble wasn’t going to “end”, because the story still kept moving forward and was still building character and story development. But c’mon, why would they choose to dodge the chance to get more story lines resolved by substituting dream sequences for concrete storytelling?

The minute the story started getting really weird, I knew what I was seeing was a dream sequence, then again, weird stuff is always cropping up in this series so I wasn’t 100% sure until the sequence became even weirder. The minute I figured I was seeing a dream, I resigned myself to watch about ten minutes of fluff. Afterwards, I thought that would be the end of made-up sequences, but then BAM! Is this a dream too? Gimme break! It’s not to say the sequences sucked completely or weren’t entertaining, but the series appeared to be offering closure and then pulls it away. That was a mean prank, especially so close to the end.

Music

The last episode had a new ED song, “School Rumble 4 Ever“, by Go Takahashi. It was a very cheery, hip hop flavored tune, and wrapped up the series on a happy note. It’s always good to go out with a positive impression!

Conclusion

If this volume was supposed to be the absolute end of School Rumble, it was disappointing. However, the anime never built itself up enough to start focusing on a stopping point anyway. The series kept gathering steam, even adding more characters, but neglected to mention, “Yeah, we’re planning on ending.” So this series didn’t actually end. It didn’t even trail off. It simply shut down and will reopen shop in Season Two. Which isn’t bad, especially seeing as it never promised to end to begin with.

Volume Six was just like previous volumes: funny, entertaining and sweet. Unlike previous volumes, it had those two irritating, time-consuming dream sequences.

Rating

School Rumble, Volume Six gets 3 outta 4 Hammies!

Series Conclusion

Stepping back and looking at the anime as a whole, School Rumble is a great series. It’s funny, touching, human, weird, dramatic and all together entertaining. The anime has a touch of randomness which keeps each episode fresh. Yet it also has the feeling of a romantic comedy, so it resolves issues and story lines which come up in previous episodes.

I recommend the series for all who wish to remember (or commiserate with) the pangs and joys of teen puppy love. Except this time, you can laugh at the pain!

Series Rating

School Rumble, Season One gets 3.5 outta 4 Hammies!

Retail Info

• Publisher: Funimation
• Release Date:March 18, 2008
• Retail Price: $29.98
• Number of discs:1
• Episodes:23-26
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Rating: TV-PG
• Language: English, Japanese
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Format: Animated, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen