Review of Cromartie High School: Vol.3 - Sailin` Fools

Introduction

Volume 3 of Cromartie High School was one I approached with a little trepidation, given the slightly deflating experience of volume 2, a show that was funny, but not quite funny enough. But comedies develop and grow with time, they find a groove, settle on their voice, as well as pummel their audiences into thinking they are funny (see The Fast Show). So there is hope for Cromartie High School yet.

Cromartie High School is a school for delinquents, and delinquents alone. There`s only the one character stereotype here, and they all compete to see who can be the most delinquent of them all. That`s except for Takahashi Kamiyama, a regular, hard-working student who finds himself in the wrong school. Now he must find his inner antisocial to fit in, although in a school full of hardcases, the wimpiest of them all earns some unexpected respect. Street thugs and brutes abound in this school, battling for supremacy against each other and all the other delinquent high schools in the area, among them a boy with an emotive purple Mohican, a luckless thug who gets no respect due to his lack of a nickname, a bruiser laid low by motion sickness, a robot, a massive gorilla, and Freddie Mercury… On a horse…

This third volume of four from ADV comes with 6 episodes.

Video

Cromartie High School gets a fair 4:3 regular transfer, which is free of significant artefacts, while remaining clear and sharp throughout. It`s a very stylised pencil sketch type anime, heavy on the character definition but not all that animated. It`s understandable given that it is a comedy more suited to wordplay and verbal gags. The approach of style over dynamism works just fine for Cromartie High School.

Audio

You get a choice between DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese, with optional translated subtitles or signs. Given the amount of on screen captions that need translating, they`re practically obligatory on the English track, but the way they are implemented, overlaying the original text, is well done.

The running gag with the Japanese dialogue is that that in a school of delinquents, the losers all speak a formalised form of Japanese that is polite and clean to the point that the thugs exercise self-censorship when it comes to overly aggressive language. That`s lost in the English dub, which to be fair would sound a little too daft with a similar spin. That does mean that there is an extra, if minor level of profanity in the English track. While the surround does have a little extra presence, it isn`t all that big a leap from the stereo. Either way, as always Japanese remains my language of choice when it comes to anime.

Features

Yet another vinyl influenced cover that pays homage to a classic album. The vinyl influence extends to the disc`s label art. But this time the animated menus take a different tack, they are utterly literal, and feature a speech synthesiser explaining what menus are, what the options are, and how to use them (The jacket picture is a page of text explaining what jacket pictures are).

Inside the case you`ll find an eight-page booklet, offering interviews with the creators, character bios, behind the scenes notes, and more.

On the disc, the usual suspects apply as for most anime titles. You`ll find the clean credit sequences, comprising the opening and the three end credits, as well as the one-off end credits for episode 19. There is an original Japanese TV warning, and trailers for Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu, Gilgamesh, Area 88, Excel Saga and Azumanga Daioh. There is also a preview for volume 4, as well as the Japanese commercials for the DVDs the CDs and the PS2 Game.

More substantial are the Cultural Notes and Comments, 15 pages in all, which offer insight into the jokes and gags that have a distinctly Japanese perspective in the show, and could use a little extra translation to really be appreciated.

Conclusion

Cromartie High School has two approaches to humour in its episodes, it either uses the comedy equivalent of buckshot, throwing random gags at the screen in the hope that one or more will stick, or it takes a daft idea and develops it over its 12 minute runtime, in an effort to build as many gags from it as possible. I`m more amenable to the latter approach, and the episodes in this third volume of Cromartie High School tend more to that philosophy than the other, meaning I enjoyed this disc more than the previous volume.

What also helps is that rather than apply a clumsy reset button at the end of each episode, there is a degree of continuity to the series. Developments in earlier episodes impinge on the later stories, characters introduced earlier will reappear, and jokes are able to mature over the course of the series. It all means that Cromartie may gain from repeated watches.

In this volume, we meet Kichi Fujimoto, a ruthless thug at his high school, but a polite and kind person on the Internet, we learn of the Boss Championships for the toughest delinquent, while Hokuto`s lackey tries to tell someone, anyone his name. Of course the unlikeliest of people wins the Boss Championship, leading Takeuchi Noboru to challenge the winner to a comedy quiz for supremacy. The Pootan television show returns, and with its star resting on his laurels, it gives Freddie a shot at fame and glory. Bikers racing at Keough Pass take centre stage next, and it`s a good thing that Mechazawa is still in his motorbike form. It proves to be an unfair advantage at school sports` day though.

Most of the episodes on this disc shy away from the random gag approach and offer something approaching coherent stories, albeit with the odd surreal interjection, and this disc is all the better for it. I still don`t find it the laugh riot that it is hyped up to be, but it is enough to keep a smile on my face, and elicit more than the occasional chuckle. If deadpan daft surrealism tickles your fancy, then give this series a try.