School Rumble is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Jin Kobayashi  

Saturday, October 17, 2009

























School Rumble (スクールランブル, Sukūru Ramburu) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Jin Kobayashi and serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine. The final chapter was released on July 23, 2008, and the 283 chapters were collected in 22 bound volumes by Kodansha. The sequel, School Rumble Z, is published in the monthly Shōnen Magazine Special. The series ended in May 2009. School Rumble is a romance comedy that focuses mostly on the Japanese high school students' relationships with each other; the main focus being a love triangle involving the two protagonists. The series often discards reality in favor of exaggerated comical elements.
School Rumble has made the transition into other media. A twenty-six episode anime adaptation was broadcast on TV Tokyo between October 2004 and April 2005. In December 2005, a two-part original video animation (OVA) titled School Rumble: Extra Class was released. Between April and September 2006 a second season titled School Rumble: The Second Semester was broadcast on TV Tokyo. Finally, two more episodes, titled School Rumble: 3rd Semester were released bundled with the Japanese manga volumes twenty-one and twenty-two. Three video games have been produced; two were released for the PlayStation 2 (PS2) in July 2005 and July 2006 one for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) in 2005. Two light novels written by Hiroko Tokita and illustrated by Jin Kobayashi were published in April 2004 and December 2007. Four official guidebooks, written and illustrated by Jin Kobayashi, have also been released.
School Rumble is published in English by Del Rey Manga. Unlike other Del Rey releases, the manga uses the original Japanese naming order to preserve the puns in the manga. Funimation Entertainment has published the first and second seasons as well as the Extra Class OVAs. School Rumble has been adapted into other languages around the world. The final two episodes, the video games and guidebooks have yet to be released outside Japan.
School Rumble is a romantic comedy that depicts the daily lives of the students attending Class 2-C of the fictional Yagami High School, as well as their friends and families. The manga uses exaggeration for comedic purposes, often disregarding reality or indulging in a prolonged build-up to deliver a joke.[citation needed]
The main female protagonist is Tenma Tsukamoto, an unremarkable second-year high school student who secretly admires her eccentric, enigmatic, nice-guy classmate, Oji Karasuma. She struggles to confess her feelings, about which Karasuma appears to be oblivious, preferring instead to find contentment in a plate of curry. Complicating the narrative is the main male protagonist, the delinquent Kenji Harima, whose desire for Tenma has developed to the point where he attends school solely to be near her. Like Tenma, Harima has difficulty declaring his love, and whenever he summons the courage to do so, circumstances conspire against him. The misfiring attempts of the two to make the objects of their affection aware of their feelings are a running comedic theme throughout the series.
The love triangle evolves through mistakes made by Harima and misunderstandings by Tenma and their classmates. Harima becomes involved with Tenma's close friend, Eri Sawachika, because the pair are thrown together in mutually-embarrassing situations. Later in the series he develops a relationship with Tenma's younger sister, Yakumo Tsukamoto, who becomes Harima's assistant while working on his manga. The basic plots of these manga put Harima-like character as a hero fighting to save a Tenma-like damsel usually in a battle against Kurasama. These settings can be based on manga events or fantasical situations. After the Harima-like hero saves her, she falls in love with him. The misinterpriation over Yakumo's relationship with Harima causes problems with Class 2-C's student representative, Haruki Hanai, who has a crush on Yakumo. The sisters' shared surname causes Harima and Hanai to misinterpret each others' infatuations. Despite the romantic situations Harima manages to engineer with Tenma, her relationship with Karasuma progresses while Harima's bonds with Eri and Yakumo grow stronger. Eventually Tenma musters the courage to confess her love, but shortly thereafter Karasuma loses his memory. His amnesia gives a purpose to Tenma's life; she concentrates on her studies in order to become a doctor and help Karasuma.
Although the focus of School Rumble is on Harima and Tenma, a number of supporting characters are developed. These include Tenma's friends Mikoto Suo, who runs a kenpō dojo where her childhood friend Hanai, trains, and Akira Takano, a mysterious and uncannily perceptive girl with who leads a double-life. As the story progresses, more major characters are introduced into the relationship web.
The series ends with Class 2-C's graduation ceremony. While most of the plot-lines have been settled by this point, there is no clear resolution for the main protagonists. Karasuma still suffers from memory loss, and although Harima attends the ceremony with Eri, the status of his relationship with Yakumo is uncertain


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