Remember School Rumble? That comedy comic and TV show about unrequited love from the early 00s? I never found it very funny. Not even on a rewatch a while back. Was it 2019? 2020? Time is an illusion anyway.
As a quick disclaimer before going further: I grew up in an environment where there was a snappy quip delivered every few seconds. Since humour derives from that which is unexpected yet provides a perspective that brings joys, this means a lot of jokes just don't make me laugh. My diseased brain can only find the unthinkably absurd, meaningless and dadaist jokes funny. Elaborate wordplay tied into a clever depiction of a life experience? I maybe smile and think "that was a good joke."
This nonsense?
So with all that in mind I think there's two main factors within School Rumble as a text that turn me off: where it stands on the horny scale and the complicated portrayal of its lead foil.
The issues with the series and sexual jokes are obvious: it's a comic published in a magazine aimed at 13-16 year old boys. The age bracket where "lad finds a girl's underwear" or "guy trips over and lands face-first into boobs" are genre staples. School Rumble is better than that, but is still heavily restricted from doing purely adult comedy in the topic. It can't rely on the vulgarity of a work like Cumtown nor the coy dick jokes of, say, a Carry On film or Are You Being Served? An awkward demilitarised zone where sex jokes go to die.
My other problem from memory is the lead character. This guy in the top left.
Kenji Harima. A goofy delinquent who tries every sketch to impress Tenma, the girl he has a crush on only for her to both ignore him and focus on a guy with zero personality beyond a desire to eat curry. The jokes write themselves here. Perform outlandish acts to impress someone only for it to fail every time. Fate and the divine conspire to prevent a relationship from forming, whether it should or not.
My problem with Kenji is he's one of those cartoon characters that lives in several periods at once. He's simultaneously 17 years old and 38, depending on what the joke calls for. As an adult, this creates a sense of intense discomfort for me. Is he a rough lad doing his best in a society that codes him as a villain? Is he a rough lad who deserves to be punished for not respecting Tenma in a healthy way? Is he just an old nonce pretending to be young to do horny hijinks? He's all of this and none if it at any one time. Much like the sexual tension or its absence, Kenji's plasticity in his role makes him both difficult to root for and difficult to mock.
There's other characters and other gags but those are the things that stick out to me from memory. It's nearly the end of a work day and I'm writing this now because I likely won't get home until it's very early Saturday morning. Have a good weekend.
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