School Rumble: Volume 3 (UK) (DVD)

Introduction

One of my petty annoyances is bad timing. It's not exactly a desirable quality in comedy, but even in something as mundane as the viewing of entertainment, it can be deleterious. There's nothing as dispiriting as watching a Christmas movie in the height of summer, and the big studios can afford to release their movies and shows at the appropriate points in the calendar. It's why blockbusters are released in summer, with DVDs following at Christmas, it's why every subsequent sequel released theatrically, is accompanied by the DVD boxset of the earlier films. It's something that smaller companies don't usually do through lack of resources, and it's especially true for anime. MVM tried it once with Love Hina, releasing the Spring and Christmas Specials at the appropriate times, but wound up releasing them in the wrong chronological order. When anime does get a seasonal release in the UK, it's more through coincidence than design, but it is still to be appreciated nonetheless. So just as schools will be closing for the summer holidays here, the cast of School Rumble will be off on their vacations when volume 3 is released in July.

School Rumble is a slapstick, laugh-packed comedy, something that the UK anime scene could always use more of in my opinion. What's more, it's not one of those 'teenaged boy, surrounded by a harem of girls, crossed purposes, compromising situations' comedies. It's the second year of high school for Tenma Tsukamoto, and it's time for her to confess her feelings to model student Oji Karasuma. Unfortunately he doesn't know she exists. Kenji Harima is a teenaged delinquent, known for his gangster tendencies, his aggressive attitude, and his motorcycle, who has up till now been a school dropout. That's until he fell for Tenma Tsukamoto. Now he's a full time school student, attitude and all, determined to make his feelings known to Tenma. Unfortunately she doesn't know he exists. The battle rages.

Revelation releases volume 3 of School Rumble. The next four episodes are presented on this disc, along with some extra goodies.



11. Nara! Karasuma! Harima!
A day out at a swim park gets complicated when Tenma's friends attract some male attention. She's feeling left out, paddling in circles while she deliberates whether to go over to them, when she bumps into classmate Kentaro Nara. To her delight, he asks her out, until she recalls that she is still in love with Karasuma. As these matters are prone to develop, the girls and the boys wind up having a swim race for dates. Following his recent sulk, Harima is back in school, re-energised and more determined than ever to declare his feelings to Tenma. He's just in time for the school holidays. But when he learns that the Tenma and her friends are going on dates to the beach, he determines to replace his rival for Tenma's affections on the trip.

12. Save Me At The Beach! Save Me, I'm Naked! Just Save Me! For Real!
Harima thought he had worked things right, and now instead of the original dates, he, Imadori and Hanai are escorting the girls to the beach. Except that Nara is still going, and he's the one who's interested in Tenma. Hanai has to contend with depression after it transpires that Tenma's sister Yakumo didn't come. The hotel is nice, only someone should have told Harima that naked callisthenics are a bad idea. He tries to get back into Eri's good graces by arranging for the boys to give swimming lessons to the girls, but it doesn't work out as planned. Akira is letting Hanai do all the work, Eri won't let Harima near him (who's spending all his attention anyway on stopping Nara getting too close to Tenma), and Imadori and Mikoto discover a new desert island.



13. Mission 1: Confession of Love! Mission 2: Night Offense and Defense! Mission 3: "Tweet!"
Crossed wires strike again. Tenma knows that Harima is sweet on someone, just not her. She's got it into her head that Harima is in love with Mikoto, and is stressing out over the time she is spending with Imadori. To help, she offers to be a target for Harima to practice confessing love to. If that isn't agonising enough, there are the night's sleeping arrangements to survive. Soon Mikoto's birthday is coming up, and as her friend from childhood, Hanai is called upon to make a presentation. The task puts him in mind of the past.

14. Have You Ever Seen One? Isn't She Cute? I Look Forward to Getting to Know You!
The aftermath of the seaside trip continues to take its toll. Tenma's AC is busted, and to avoid sweltering in the summer heat, she needs an electrician. Harima's got a summer job mending air conditioners… Eri is still stressing over her encounter with Harima, while Tenma still thinks that Harima wants Mikoto. It increases the tension to breaking point, when the friends get together to study, and in the heat, tempers fray, and everyone says something that they will regret. Heartbroken once more, Harima looks for another job, and finds one with Hanai and Imadori moving furniture.

Picture

It's a 4:3 regular transfer, with no immediate problems visible. Everything is clear and sharp, there are plenty of primary colours, and I noticed no compression, or even the aliasing that usually rears its head in the credit sequences. It's a fine transfer. The animation, as you would expect from a comedy, remains straightforward and simplistic, with pleasant character designs, and fairly non-descript artwork. It's all very energetic, and does more than enough to get the comedy across.

Sound

You get a choice of DD 2.0 English and Japanese, along with translated English subtitles and a signs only track. The show gets a catchy and quirky set of themes that are impossible to get out of your head once you hear them. The dialogue is clear, and the stereo sufficient for the show. Which language you choose depends on your usual preferences, but for what it's worth, I found the show much funnier in Japanese, the timing and the flow just seemed to work better.

Extras

On the disc, you get the usual extras like the jacket picture, the textless songs, and trailers for other Revelation releases (Hell Girl, Tsubasa).

Once again there are two interviews, the first lasting 6 minutes with Akira's voice actress, Kaori Shimizu, and the second with Sara's voice actress, Yukari Fukui lasting 10 minutes. These are pretty standard EPK stuff, with questions about the show, and their characters repeated for both actresses

Conclusion

School Rumble very nearly turned out to be a Christmas gift of an anime. You start off all excited and enthused with your new toy, and you just won't put it down. By Boxing Day, the shine has gone off the thing, it's looking a little grubby, and the batteries are running out. By New Years, the dog's gotten hold of it, bits are falling off, and quite frankly the packaging is more interesting. I fell head over heels with the first volume of School Rumble, and quite confidently pronounced it as the best thing since seedless grapes. The second volume wasn't quite as stunning, which means according to the rules of Christmas gift decay rates, I should be more interested in the Amaray case of this third volume than I am in the disc itself.



Fortunately that isn't the case, as I found volume 3 of School Rumble to be just as enjoyable as the preceding one. It may not be anime's gift to comedy as the first volume so tantalisingly promised, but it is still very funny, and if it has settled into a rather familiar and well traversed comic furrow, that's no bad thing as long as the laughs keep flowing. This volume sees the chuckle floodgates opened with a return to the relationship mishaps that typify School Rumble. The final episodes of volume 2 saw Harima taking a break from his pursuit of Tenma when the competition grew overwhelming. While he tried his luck as a manga artist and then a mystic, the focus turned to the supporting cast, and the show began to drift. At the start of this volume, Harima is back, re-energised and re-enthused when it comes to his passion for Tenma. And we're straight into the slapstick from there as the summer holidays beckon.



It's a rare anime that doesn't have a swimsuit episode, and School Rumble has two, as the girls get asked out to the beach, after a day at a swim park. This isn't the sort of show to linger on the fan service though when there are laughs to be had. Tenma picks up another suitor in the form of Kentaro Nara, who turns out to be another target for Harima's ire. Nara is also an improvement on the nondescript Karasuma (who only occasionally appears in these episodes), as he has more of a personality, and actually interacts with the other characters instead of drifting off in his own curry heaven. He has to take his life in his hands as he tries to court Tenma, while avoiding the heated gaze of Harima. In addition to this new triangle, there are other holiday romances desperately being avoided. When Yakumo doesn't go on the trip, Hanai almost loses himself in depression, but he's still entertainment value when he tries to teach Akira how to swim. Serial womaniser Imadori tries and fails to impress Mikoto, while the list of misunderstandings, crossed wires, and awkward moments between Eri and Harima just keep on growing.



It's not all slapstick and giggles though, as we get quite the sweet story when Hanai looks back over his friendship with Mikoto. Also Yakumo has to find a traditional way of cooling down when Tenma gets aggressive with the air conditioning unit. A little bit of drama and character development comes in at the end when Tenma has her friends over for a study date, and tempers fray when it comes to misunderstandings and Kenji Harima. The cast of characters keeps on growing as well. We meet Nara early on, and later in the volume we meet Ichijou, a girl from Tenma's class who is big on wrestling (taking part, not watching). Imadori certainly bites off more than he can chew when he professes an interest in her, and it also turns out that she is the removals company's star employee, which comes as something of a shock to Harima when he starts competing with Hanai in a contest of strength.

Once again, School Rumble's strength is at the same time its weakness. The short gag format ensures that you don't have to wait long for the next laugh, and keeping the skits short and sweet means that you aren't likely to be distracted by the weaker jokes. Conversely it does mean that the characters aren't developed as easily, and when something interesting does happen and you wish that they would stay with the moment to let it develop naturally, the scene invariably shifts to some other, less interesting characters. Still, the ratio of good to bad is heavily weighted towards the good.



Ok, I got a little overexcited when it came to the first volume, and School Rumble isn't the revolution in comedy that I thought it would be. On the other hand, the deflated feeling that I subsequently got with the second volume has worn off. School Rumble is just funny, even if it is funny in a traditional comedy anime way. The situations are silly, the characters are all likeable and the majority of the punchlines are entertaining. In an anime world of apocalyptic doom and gloom, giant mecha, bloodsucking vampires, and five hundred episodes of Gundam, it's nice to indulge in a little frivolity. School Rumble is the perfect anime dessert.