Being a huge fan of the original School Rumble anime, I was really looking forward to the second season. To gear up for it, I even bought the import manga (which I can barely read)! So does School Rumble Ni Gakki suffer from the sophomore jinx, or does it continue the awesomeness of the first season?
I won’t lie; School Rumble Ni Gakki is awesome. In the first few seconds (after the samurai period intro), Harima Kenji explains everything that happened to him in the first season of the anime. This includes receiving the shrinking fishbone pen from the giant sailor dude. After that, it’s all new, all insane School Rumble action!
I usually don’t do recaps, but since I took a pretty large number of screencaps, I gotta fill in the space somehow… Basically, Tenma still thinks that Harima and Yakumo are an item, and scolds her sister for lying to her about spending the night with Harima. I think it’s really cute; even though Tenma is technically older, it’s funny seeing her lecturing her “bigger” sister.
Harima walks in and is promptly accused of trying to bribe Tenma with bananas! Seriously, all the cute anime girls are getting into bananas these days… Tenma gives Harima her blessings, which is like kryptonite to Superman!
At this point, I’m thinking, “Harima, you’ve got Yakumo in the palm of your hand! Get her!” But Harima thinks otherwise. I really don’t understand what’s wrong with the guy. Yeah, Tenma is super cute, but Yakumo is hawt, and untaken! I have a feeling that once he realizes this, it will be too late…
Fast forward, and we have some Tenma-Kurasuma weirdness. Honestly, what does she see in this guy? Oh, wait, I figured it out: He plays guitar. Tenma receives a turtle from Kurasuma, which causes her to play a word game. This leads her to believe that the turtle was a message telling her to be sleeping beauty in the school festival play. Hmm…
The rest of the episode has Hanai flipping out (but not killing people) about Harima and Yakumo supposedly going out. This is made worse by Tenma’s scheming to have Yakumo give Harima a bento during lunch. At the end, both Hanai and Harima are in zombie mode because of the misunderstandings (though Harima really has nothing to be sad about!). Oh, and there’s a last minute class challenge from Harry McKenzie and company!
After the ending credits, there’s a secret meeting involving data on the newest Sakuran ladies. There’s the basketball player, the meganekko (finally!), the freckle girl, and super tanned girl. Nice additions, though I hope the existing cast doesn’t get ignored in lieu of the fresh bunch.
The OP and ED are both new, and sung by Ami Tokito, a super-kawaii meganekko herself! In my opinion, the new OP is better than the old one (though I could do without the yelling of “BOY!” every five seconds), and the new ED is worse than the old one (because the old one simply can’t be beat!). That said, the ED is still okay.
Download the OP: “Sentimental Generation” by Ami Tokito
Download the ED: “Kono Namida ga Arukara Tsugi no Ippo to Naru” by Ami Tokito
The outlook for School Rumble Ni Gakki is looking really good. The animation is still great (with lots of exaggerated stuff), the characters are all still there, and most importantly, the anime is still funny! Now if only Harima would realize that Yakumo should be the goal…
Further reading: School Rumble Manga!
6 replies on “School Rumble Ni Gakki – Anime First Impressions”
I TOTALLY agree with you, except for the OP and ED part. I think they’re both worse than first season ones.
I agree with you also, although I like both the OP and ED. =)
To be honest I was abit dissapointed, it just didn’t seem as funny as the first series. Maybe the wait set my expectations to high?
[…] Ouch… I attribute much of the series dropping to this past semester, where I wanted to do well so I could graduate (which I did). I’m also not including anime that aren’t finished yet, though I’m seriously behind in a lot of the current ones. Also, School Rumble Second Semester doesn’t count because it got licensed. […]
I never get disappointed with sequels even if they’re worser then the first series because if a first series was great then the second cant be too bad. I’m just happy that there is another whole season of fun with the kick-ass characters again!
I agree with Roninnico the second series is no where as funny or entertaining as the first this is a loss but I’m glad they came back for another kick ass season