Manga / School Rumble

School Rumble Forever!

Idiot delinquent (Harima) has a secret, obsessive crush on an even more clueless classmate (Tenma), who is in love with a complete oddball (Karasuma), who is in love with food (curry). Tenma's quiet, gentle sister Yakumo, her ojou friend Eri, and the hot school nurse may or may not have feelings for Harima, depending on the rumors you believe and the time of day. Also, both Tenma and Harima's cousin Itoko think Harima is in a relationship with Yakumo. Class rep Hanai is loudly in love with Yakumo (thus seeing Harima as his rival), while two or three girls may or may not have feelings for him. Also, there is Ichijo, who likes Imadori, who likes Mikoto, who likes one of her ex-sempais, who got a girlfriend since the last time she saw him. And so forth. Failed confessions, confessions to the wrong people, and relationship misunderstandings abound.

You will rarely take any of this seriously.

School Rumble is ostensibly a high school romantic comedy, but in practice it's really more of a Gag Series that relies more on character interaction than actual progress in relationships.

The original manga by Jin Kobayashi ran in Weekly Shonen Magazine from 2002 to 2009. It has an anime adaptation that consists of two 26-episode seasons, each covering a term of the school year, as well as two 2-episode OVAs: the first centered on the first term, and the second centered on the very end of their high school life. The second season ends with the characters planning the class trip that forms the first major arc of the third term. The second OVA ends with the characters having a class reunion some time after they have all graduated high school, but occurring presumably not beyond their first year of college .

The end of the manga was followed by a brief sequel manga, School Rumble Z, which is not quite a sequel but an alternate universe.

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School Rumble provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: Harima getting "engaged" to Eri while living with Yakumo, dropped after one chapter for the No Ending.
• The Ace: Subverted. The only thing Akira can't do is swim.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Many characters depicted with black hair in the manga have it coloured in the anime (for example Mikoto getting blue hair).
• Accidental Kiss: Strangely averted with Harima and Yakumo. Not long afterward, played straight with Harima and Imadori.
• Affectionate Parody: Of high school romance. It's exaggerated humor serves to emphasize the absurdity, the joy and the sadness of first loves.
• Airplane of Love: After Tenma leaves for America to go after Karasuma.
• All Just a Dream: The one where Hanai lands on a strange island populated by people who look like his classmates. The manga shows that is was just a story invented by Akira.
  • Although the anime leaves it more ambiguous. While it probably happened, it could have just been some crazy hallucination Hanai had. (Although that doesn't explain where he got the poncho.)
• All Love Is Unrequited: To the nth power◊...
  • Exceptions in School Rumble Z: Tenma and the brain-damaged Karasuma, Karen and Imadori, Mikoto and Hanai, and maybe Harima and Eri. It wasn't very concise..
• All Men Are Perverts:
  • Hanai is noted for lacking perverse thoughts towards his love interest, Yakumo, who can explicitly read his mind. This doesn't actually help him, though, as he still comes on way too strong. He is also once mistaken for a pervert by Yakumo, who saw him carrying off Nishimoto's Porn Stash, and assumed the worst without waiting to read his mind.
• Alternate Character Reading:
  • The reason why some people are led to mistake "Harima Kenji" for "Harry McKenzie" - their names use the exact same characters, but are pronounced differently.
  • Harima reads "Karasuma" as "Torimaru" due to the alternate furigana readings the kanji in his name have.
• Anguished Declaration of Love:
  • A very heartbreaking example is Karasuma to Tenma, whom he has loved all along - especially when the reader finds out he's hallucinating her, and by the time Tenma actually reunites with him, he's already lost his memories.
• Animated Actors: The end of the OVA shows Tenma and Karasuma in the recording booth.
• Art Evolution: There is a notable change in art style in the series, becoming more sketchy and detailed - compare the OVA episodes and last round of chapters (and School Rumble Z) to the first two seasons and the beginning of the manga.
• Art Shift: Tributes to Fist of the North Star, Initial D, Love Hina and the works of Osamu Tezuka.
• Ascended Extra: Characters who made very small appearances early in the manga/season 1 get more time later/season 2, such as Asou, Yoshidayama, Mai and Tsumugi.
• Author Avatar: Harima is Jin Kobayashi. It's also rumored that Eri is based on his wife. Jin Kobayashi claims that he has more in common with Suga.
• Babies Ever After: Eri & Harima, maybe. The presentation was dubious. Or is it? Also Hanai and Mikoto, in an Alternate Universe anyways.
• Back for the Finale: In the last episode of Sangakki and last (#) chapter, all the student characters attend a reunion in America.
• Badass Adorable: Karen, Mikoto and Lala - especially the former who is very sweet and gentle, yet can carry a piano all by herself with no effort.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: The Ni Gakki opening shows Eri has a lot of servants when she only has two.
• Balloon Belly:
  • Satsuki in episode 8 of Nigakki, after she eats family-sized meals in hopes that she will grow taller.
• Baseball Episode: 2C play it in a sports class.
• Battle Aura: Both Harima and Hanai get this often, especially when it comes to each other and a Tsukamoto girl.
• Battle Couple: During the Kibasen; Harima and Eri, Mikoto and Asou, Hanai and Karen, Harry and Lara.
• Beach Episode: In season 1 and Volume 3, where Tenma's group goes with Harima, Hanai, Imadori and Nara. It was originally meant to be with Nara and his friends until Harima beat up said friends.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Eri, Akira & Mikoto.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Harima and Eri, also known as the Flag ship. Despite all the heartwarming moments they share, they always clash and refuse to even act they're friends.
• Betty and Veronica: Concerning Harima, Yakumo & Eri respectively, while Tae is the Third-Option Love Interest.
• Between My Legs:
  • Loincloth-wearing Harima gets several shots between his legs during the Magical Girl parody episode. The other characters repeatedly urge him to stop standing at that angle.
  • Also in the pool-hockey episode, the camera zooms out through Mikoto's legs while Hanai rushes her goal.
• Beware the Nice Ones: In one early Yakumo-centric episode, Hanai attempts to show her the practicalities of martial arts. He attempts to grab her but can't due to her being able to read his mind. He then ponders out loud how she can be so smart when her sister is the biggest klutz in the school. Cue an incredibly sinister look and Hanai is suddenly made to eat the floor. One of the very few times she ever gets angry.
  • Revisited with a stiff left-handed slap to Eri's face in volume 17 for nearly the same reason.
• Big "NO!": Harima near the end of Season 2, in Gratuitous English, no less.
• Bittersweet Ending: Karasuma turns out to have loved Tenma all along, but pretended not to notice her because of his disease that caused him to have memory loss. While in his hospital bed, he pours out all his feelings to who he thinks is the real Tenma, but which turns out to be an hallucination caused by his illness. The real Tenma is in fact, just outside the hospital, and never hears it. But through Tenma's efforts, he is showing signs of regaining his memories, or at the least falling in love with her again.
• Bland-Name Product: Doubling as an In-Joke, the Honda NSX in episode 22's prologue gets this treatment, with a shot of the steering wheel instead featuring the logo to the episode's animation co-producer Triple A.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Eri, Yakumo and Tae all like Harima.
• Bowdlerize: The anime cuts the manga's instances of underage drinking (for example Tenma being drunk while eavesdropping on Harima's story of meeting her). Fortunately, it does this by replacing the lost gags with new ones that mostly work just as well.
• Brick Joke:
  • At the end of episode 22 Harima mentions that he has to go feed Napoleon. The next episode starts with a student tripping over a pig. Harima's reaction? "Oh there you are, Napoleon."
  • In the first episode, Yoshidaiyama tells Harima he saw his name on the D-class roster. When Harima checks, he sees that it's another student's name. Many, many episodes later, we get to meet that other student, Harry McKenzie, a homophone for Harima Kenji in Japanese. We meet him as Hanai is making the same mistake, thinking the name he heard was Harima's.
  • While checking the boards for his name, Harima is confronted by a teacher. That same teacher's face is later seen much later as the face of the "Flunk-Out Phantom".
• Bridal Carry: Harima does this to Yakumo during her and Hanai's mock wedding, thinking she's Tenma.
• But Now I Must Go: Eri invites Harima to her house overnight to work on the school album. To get him to reveal his feelings, Eri's butler cosplays as a character from Harima's favorite show and fights him. Harima leaves the house without revealing his feelings because that's how the episode ended.
• Cannot Spit It Out: A key trope in this series. Also some other ones from the Super-Trope Poor Communication Kills including One Dialogue, Two Conversations and That Came Out Wrong.
• Celebrity Paradox: The video for the opening song appears in an early episode meaning Eri and her voice actor Yui Horie both exist in the School Rumble universe.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The original manga has noticeably shifted from random comedy to tear-jerking drama in the later chapters after the revelation that Karasuma is suffering from a terminal illness.
• Christmas Episode
• Class Trip: To England - but due to reasons, the plane lands on Kyoto instead. Hilarity Ensues when the students mistake the sights on Kyoto as English landmarks.
• Coincidental Broadcast: When Yakumo is staying over at Harima's house, they hear a radio DJ say a blackout is a good time to have sex.
• Collective Death Glare: During the sports fest, as the men's relay is about to start, Tougo refers to the guys from class 2-C as "pansies obsessed with women". Their response is to give a collective Death Glare and pull a Let's Get Dangerous!.
• Comedic Work, Serious Scene: It's a zany slice-of-life high-school romantic comedy. That being said:
  • In one episode, Eri is planning to make dinner for her Father, and has bought all of the ingredients. Just as she's about to head home, her Father's limo pulls up alongside her, and he tells her that he's very sorry, but he's being called out of the country on business. He offers her a ride home, but she states she's fine walking. The limo drives off. Cue Gray Rain of Depression. Harima happens by and offers to share his umbrella with her, if she's not going far.
  • Yakumo is menaced by a ghost in one episode (actually her own subconscious manifesting through her psychic powers), that asks her if she hates men, or actually likes them. It's not played at all for laughs.
  • Mikoto finds out that the tutor she was crushing on went and got himself a girlfriend when he went off to college, and she has to pretend to be happy about it, even as her heart breaks.
  • Mikoto comes across Harima, locked out of his cousin's apartment for the Christmas holiday, and pulls a Batman Gambit to get past his pride and get him to stay in her family's dojo for the holidays. This is at the same time that she's also hiding Eri from an Arranged Marriage.
• Comic Role Play
  • Tenma helps practice Harima confess to his crush... which is her. Harima understandably is too embarrassed to say his confession to her properly, and Tenma berates him for being a wimp. She then tries to pretend to be him by sporting a fake moustache/goatee and stealing his sunglasses.
  • Harima does this a few times with Yakumo when thinking about his manga plot.
• Comic Trio: Yoshidayama, Nishimoto, and Nara become one somewhere around the end of the first season. Harima, Hanai, and Imadori whenever they're all together, as well.
• Conveniently Seated: Tenma sits in "that" seat, with Karasama right in front of her and Harima to her right. However, it's Karasama who spends all his time looking out the window.
• Covers Always Lie: The page image, which shows Fuyuki among the main characters, when he has very little relevance compared the others and only has appearances in 2-3 episodes max.
• Creator Cameo: Jin Kobayashi voices one of the fishermen who initially opposed Harima (wears a cap with the letter "F" on it). He also narrates the caveman episode in the OVA.
• Darker and Edgier: A subversion; the anime's version of the Survival Game story was played much more seriously than the manga version. Unlike in the manga, none of the students ever broke character, acted like they were just playing a game, or acknowledged that they were only using airsoft guns (compare a bit in the manga where some girls get ambushed from behind and go "You're kidding! I've been shot! By who?!", while in the anime they simply fall over "dead"). The whole thing is much more dramatic, serious and over-the-top as a result- which also only makes it more ridiculous and hilarious.
• Dead Man's Trigger Finger: Spoofed, like every other combat trope, in the mock battle at the beginning of Season 2. Eri (really Nakamura) shoots three guys while they're shooting at her. All three of them stop shooting after being shot themselves and two of them fall over. The last one starts shooting into the air again as he collapses, "dead."
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Harima is the delinquent hero whose life is changed when he falls in love with Tenma. It's only then does he realize how pointless his life has been so he decides to be a manga artist.
  • Tenma hides her loneliness by being the Genki Girl.
  • Yakumo seems like a Yamato Nadeshiko but really she's an Extreme Doormat.
  • Eri's Tsundere qualities alienate people.
  • Nara is a Ridiculously Average Guy who expects to get an Unwanted Harem, but never does.
• Delinquents:
  • Harima was one in his middle school days, and he still gives this vibe in high school due to still getting in fights, his looks and slacking attitude towards school - even though he still means well and only really cares about winning Tenma's affections.
  • Tennouji, who constantly targets Harima too.
• Demoted to Extra: Hanai in season two. Well, more like demoted to extra, then demoted to a running gag of being stuck on a kite for the last dozen episodes.
• Department of Redundancy Department: "Mask Kamen" means literally "masked mask".
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage:
  • The music video for the opening theme, "SCRAMBLE!", appears in a billboard.
  • Itoko sings the first season end theme in her sleep. And tapes and plays it to taunt Harima at one point.
  • Tenma sings the "SCRAMBLE!" chorus in the pool episode.
• Dirty Mind-Reading: Once with Hanai after he left Nishimoto's place carrying the remains of Nishimoto's "collection" he ran into Yakumo. She quickly runs away afterwards.
• Disappeared Dad: Many characters either have lost (The Tsukamoto sisters, Harry Mckenzie) or have distant relationships with their fathers (Masatsugu & Haruna Tougo, Eri)
• Distant Finale: (Sort of) hinted at in School Rumble Z, with Harima and Eri shown having a child, though it was just as likely only Eri's friend Max hopefully imagining her future as he watched from afar.
• Divided into Disaster: during the Beach Episode the boys offer to teach the girls to swim. Harima screws up the order, pairing Hanai with arch nemesis Akira, Imadori with Mikoto, whom he's constantly perving on, and himself with Eri, whom he's just had an unpleasant encounter with involving her walking in on him naked and restraining her to keep her from screaming.
  • In another episode, they're doing a courage test in the woods, and pairing off. Once again, poor Mikoto is paired with Imadori. When we next see them, Imadori is out cold, and Mikoto says he learned a valuable lesson about hands and always keeping them to himself. Harima, meanwhile, is paired with Tenma. The problem with this is that while Harima is infatuated with Tenma, she's currently furious with him because of a misunderstanding, believing, mistakenly, that he's been hitting on all the girls in their class AND her kid sister, Yakumo. Yakumo, meanwhile, is paired with Eri, both of them interested in Harima.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune:
  • The OP of the 1st season is sung by Yui Horie, Eri's voice actress.
  • The season 1 finale's ED is sung by the voice actresses of Tenma, Eri, Mikoto and Akira.
  • The 3rd ED of the anime and the ED of the OVA are sung in-character by the Tsukamotos and Harima respectively in both the original Japanese and the English dub.
• Don't Try This at Home: The manga actually likes using this trope, having it written in the margins of a page at least once a volume, such as:
  • When Tenma leaves a bathroom through the window, several stories above the ground, using a pair of plungers to go down the wall. This warning is actually displayed while she does this.
  • When Tougou is riding in the sidecar of Harry's motorcycle, but instead of sitting strapped in, he's standing up with one foot up on the front.
  • Parodied when Imadori eats a shoelace.
• Establishing Series Moment: You just knew this wasn't gonna be your run-of-the mill Shoujo when you see the resident delinquent talk about the wonder of love after he just finished beating up a bunch of gangsters.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: Harima during the Kyoto trip.
• Evil Counterpart: The Outlaw basketball team and the English exchange students.
• Expressive Hair: There's also Tenma's little wiggling pigtails. It's even lampshaded in a manga omake where her pig tails demonstrate her happy and sad moods... and then one scene has one pigtail on the side as normal and the other pigtail on top of her head, to indicate she's confused/absentminded (in the anime equivalent of this scene, it's because she wants to remind herself to watch a TV show at 9pm).
• Expy: Several characters from class 2-D resemble certain characters from Mobile Suit Gundam. Lara Gonzalez to Lalah Sune, Tougou resembles Anavel Gato, and Harry Mckenzie IS A CHAR.
• The Faceless:
• Failure Is the Only Option: Pretty much sums up Tenma's success with Karasuma and Harima's success with Tenma. Not as much in the ending of the manga and in School Rumble Z for Tenma. Still sucks to be Harima though.
• Festival Episode: Some episodes in Season 2 focuses on their cultural festival and the shenanigans that follow.
• 15 Minutes of Fame: Lara accidentally adopts a new, very distinctive temporary look, then displays her fighting ability in Shibuya. She becomes "Queen of Shibuya", with girls aping her odd style, and for a week becomes a poster girl for cosmetics and the like. But when her CD single flops, Lara returns to her normal exchange student life.
• Fight Bell Hijinks: During the preparations for the School Festival, all the girls in class prepare rice balls with the challenge of the guys trying to figure out which girl made which set of rice balls. Harima is determined to find Tenma's rice balls. He's Genre Savvy enough to know that Tenma is probably a Lethal Chef, but is determined to tell her that hers are the best to earn her affection. He finds a set that look awful, and tries them, finding them to be awful. Then he learns that Eri Sawachika made that set. Then he's presented with Tenma's, which are somehow cube shaped, and taste so awful that he is left on the floor in pain. Then Eri and Tenma ask him to take care of the leftovers (i.e., all the ones they made). After finishing off Tenma's, he's lying on the floor, hearing a bell, declaring Tenma the winner, as he imagines her in boxing garb doing practice jabs.
• Finger-Suck Healing: Karasuma gives one to Tenma. He simply copied it from a manga, but it doesn't stop Tenma from freaking out.
• Food and Body Comparison: During an outing to the woods, in an effort to impress the girls, the boys all agree to cook for them. Imadori serves up two mounds of curry and rice that he dubs, "Miko D-Cup Curry". Mikoto, less than amused, punches him into orbit and Akira declares him to be disqualified.
• Forgiving the Accidental Pervert: During the Beach Episode, Eri walks in on Harima while he's naked. Realizing that she's about to scream, which would set off a Not What It Looks Like situation, he grabs and restrains her, only to realize that he's now put himself in an even worse situation. He decides to explain to Eri but ends up saying, "You keep quiet." in the creepiest way imaginable. It's at this point that Akira walks in, and she correctly guesses the series of events that led to the current situation, saying at the end, "Don't worry, Harima. I don't think you're a pervert. But you are a total screw-up."
• Forgotten Birthday: While busy celebrating Tenma's birthday, her classmates forget Harima was born a day after her. Yakumo remembers though.
• Four-Girl Ensemble:
  • Tenma (sanguine), Mikoto (choleric), Eri (melancholic) and Akira (phlegmatic).
  • The 1st year girls get five: Miki (sanguine), Satsuki (choleric), Sarah (melancholic), Haruna (phlegmatic) and Yakumo (supine).
• Funny Foreigner: All of the transfer students, who tend to be a Large Ham.
• Gainax Ending: Possibly the original series' ending due to undergoing Cerebus Syndrome; but definitely School Rumble Z, which throws around lot of random Alternate Universe stories and ambiguous hints.
• Genre Deconstruction:
  • The entire series seems to start out as a deconstruction of a shonen love comedy by replacing the ditzy female protagonist we so often see with a badass male delinquent. The first two chapters make it pretty obvious.
  • Another good example is when Eri walks in on Harima in the nude; usually it's the other way around.
  • The actual ditzy female protagonist (Tenma) is a total Butt-Monkey whose affections are frequently spurned and who is the object of ridicule from friends, classmates, and even the narrator.
• Giant Enemy Crab: There is one. Episode 7 of Nigakki. Harima makes stew out of it.
• Gilligan Cut: When Karasuma turns down Tenma's umbrella with "I'm a kappa," she interprets this as him having a raincoat... Cue a change to that exact costume as she turns back around from her momentary Squee moment.
• Giving Up the Ghost: This happens to Imadori after he takes a basketball to the face from Harima. He was distracted at the time by the ghost of an old teacher and wasn't paying attention.
• Graduate from the Story: The final chapter in School Rumble Z sets place at Tenma's class' graduation ceremony.
• Gratuitous English: Every chapter title is one and taken from the name of a movie, usually somewhat related to what happens in the chapter.
• Hands-On Approach: Tenma imagines that Karasuma's spirit is helping her at the pottery wheel and holding her hands.
• The Hecate Sisters: Tenma and Eri both match the maiden archetypes while Mikoto and Akira are the mother and crone, respectively.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Parodied in the wargames by a guy named Misawa ("Open a really good teahouse!").
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Itoko and Sasakura. Gets lampshaded in the Valentine's Day issue when Harima said they should just get married already.
• Hidden Depths: Many of the characters who seem rather quirky, not bright or otherwise odd have this side to them. Examples are Harima and Karasuma, who are both secretly professional mangaka. Ironically, their mutual love interest Tenma is hopeless at almost every subject in school except art (and Japanese history, oddly enough).
• High-Speed Missile Dodge: Harima races downhill at high speed, in the snow, on a giant curry bowl, dodging a battery of large, apparently heat-seeking frozen fish.
  • While wearing a freaking Santa suit.
• Hot Springs Episode: A classmate's family owns one and has her classmates visit it in an episode/chapter.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • In the camping episode, Yakumo chastises Eri for listening in on Tenma and Harima even though she's doing the same.
  • In Chapter 195, Eri gets called an angry girl by Lala.
• I Have This Friend: The whole idea behind the Slumber Party at Tenma's. She fools no one, but they still play along.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
  • The episodes of the anime are made up of three segments. In most episodes, all three segments have their own titles, which make up the entire episode naming (the two season finales being exceptions). And all three titles have common written elements between one another!
  • In the manga, all the chapters are named after movies. Some examples from the first volume: "Death Race 2003", "Broken Arrow", "Rain Man", "Enter the Dragon", "Speed", etc.
• Important Haircut:
  • Lampshaded and parodied as Harima's facial and head hair change several times in the series as a consequence of various quirks in the plot.
  • Eri considers getting one to impress Harima.
  • Mikoto cuts her hair shorter at one point. It doesn't mean much to her, but Tenma uses it as an example to brag about embracing new lifestyles to Yakumo.
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • When Harima interruptz Hanai & Yakumo's mock wedding, Hanai uses a camera stand to fight him off.
  • Which Harima deflects with a candlestick.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
  • Now and then Harima gives in and gives Tenma a chance to bond with Karasuma, such as covering Karasuma's mangaka duties while he visits Tenma on her birthday.
  • Despite her developing feelings for him, Yakumo does her best to give Harima some moments with Tenma after she realizes his feelings, even faking illness so that Tenma can go and help Harima with his manga instead.
  • Happens a lot after the Cerebus Syndrome kicks in, especially in the ending. Harima goes all out when he decides to take Tenma to the airport to fly to America to see Karasuma, and Karasuma's revealed to have purposely acted indifferently towards Tenma and reject her so she won't get too attached to him until his sickness overtakes him.
• Informed Attractiveness: Yakumo. It seems like she has literal hoards of people proclaiming how beautiful she is, particularly in comparison to Tenma. It's played straight in that Yakumo is obviously very beautiful, deliberately drawn so that is her defining characteristic, it gets subverted when her beauty transfixes A WHALE who then helps tow a ship she is on.
• Intimidation Demonstration: Karen scares off an attacker by absolutely disintegrating an apple just by squeezing it in one hand. Later, Lala does this to intimidate a few classmates, but Imadori, unfazed, claims that it's no big deal and does the same thing with a ripe banana.
• Intra-Scholastic Rivalry:
  • There is a heated rivalry between Class 2-C and Class 2-D, spurred on by many personal rivalries, such as the three exchange students from 2-D, Harry, Togo, and Lara having personal rivalries with Harima, Hanai, and Karen respectively. At one point, Harima and Hanai lose the entirety of their class to 2-D in a mahjong match. It should be noted that for the most part, these are Friendly Rivalries, as Harima and Togo actually join a basketball team together, and it is not uncommon to see Lara and Karen shopping together or having lunch with each other.
  • When a nascent girls' basketball team forms at the school, several of the male characters, and Tenma, come together to form the rival "Outlaws" team and challenge them to a match.
  • Class 2-C has a division between those who want to put on a play for the upcoming culture fest and those who want to do a cafe. This initially has a game of pool hockey form to see which side can win (at the start of Season 1). By the time Season 2 rolls around, the friction over doing a play or a cafe has reached a point where the two sides actually conduct a war game at night to decide the victor (strangely played for both drama and comedy at the same time), but still ends in a draw. A P.E. teacher who is disciplining the class for the late night shenanigans tells them they should just do both, which ends up being the solution.
• It Will Never Catch On: The caveman episode had lots like pottery (Yakumo), anime (Karasuma) and pointed spears (Harima).
• Jidaigeki: Aside from Show Within a Show The Three Slashers, Nigakki opened with a segment styled after this.
• The Lad-ette: Mikoto, who, despite her beauty, is quite loud and overly straightforward.
• Lampshade Hanging: Anytime Harima talks to Yakumo about manga, pointing out things like Author Avatar, Tournament Arc, Battle Aura, and Serious Business.
  Harima: The villain intends to use baseball to take over the world.
  Yakumo: How is he going to do that?
  Harima: I don't know.
• Large Ham:
  • Masatsugu Tougou - the American national anthem or flag constantly playing/shown in the background while he makes his speeches doesn't help.
  • And, in a more meta example, Tenma and Harima's English voice actors ham up just about everything they say. It works. Gloriously.
    • It certainly helps that anything Luci Christian says is automatically cute.
  • Hanai as well. "For the class, and for myself ... TIME FOR TEA!"
  • The announcer for the cavalry battle too. He is clearly having way too much fun commenting on the match.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: During the Sports Festival, the relay team for class 2C consists of Asou, Suga, Imadori, Harima, and Hanai, all of whom are acting distracted either due to love interests or interpersonal conflicts. Then Harry and Togo belittle them for being distracted by women. Cue an Art Shift, and the boys from 2C turning to give Harry and Togo a collective Death Glare that actually gives them pause.
• Living Statue: Hanai awoke a statue of kuta panda in chapter 166.
• Locker Mail: Tenma's love confession to Karasuma gets so long that what she leaves in his locker amounts to a love scroll.
• Lost in Translation: Some of the jokes revolve around words sounding similar in Japanese and although they try, the jokes aren't quite as funny (if funny at all). The most prominent example is when Harima talks to Yakumo about Itoko and refers to her as "My itoko (cousin)". Yakumo gets the wrong idea.
• Love Dodecahedron: And how!◊
• Love Letter Lunacy: Goes two ways in the first episode - first from Tenma to Karasuma, and later from Harima to Tenma.
• Love Makes You Dumb: The bread and butter of the series, though Harima and Tenma were both plenty dumb before they ever fell in love.
• Macho Disaster Expedition: Subverted hilariously. The four main girls agree to have a swimming race with a group of boys they met at the local pool, the cost of their losing being having to go out on a date with them, and if the girls win, the boys have to buy them an extremely expensive meal. Tenma can't swim, but figures among her three friends (one of whom is extremely athletic), one of the girls is surely fast enough to beat the boys. When they jump into the water, all four girls sink straight to the bottom. Turns out none of them could swim and were all thinking the same thing Tenma was.
• Macross Missile Massacre: With tuna.
• Magical Girl: Mai's guilty pleasure. Deconstructed somewhat in Magical Mai episode, where she's sick of being mocked for wearing frilly pink dresses and beating up bad guys at her age and actually intends to hang up her wand for good after winning over her love interest.
  • Magical Girl series hilariously parodied during this episode quite obviously include Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon.
• Magical Realism: The Tsukamoto sisters are psychic, their cat can switch bodies with people, Harima talks to animals, his editor shoots eye beams, there was a talking cherry blossom tree and Akira is a spy.
• Male Gaze:
  • There can be many shots of a female character's breasts, butt or thighs. Mostly when the perverts of 2C are involved.
  • Manga: Harima and Yakumo's first meeting.
  • Anime: The cruise episode. When Eri was dragging a fish, the first part of her shown is her butt.
• Malingering Romance Ploy: When Nurse Anegasaki starts at the school, the perverts of Class 2-C get themselves banged up in order to be near her. They're very put out to find Harima already there and in Anegasaki's enthusiastic embrace, though to be fair, Harima hadn't known Anegasaki was there, and she and Harima had a bit of a history.
• Mangaka: Both Karasuma and Harima are this.
• Manga Effects: Mentioned now and then when Harima works on his manga, such as instructing Yakumo how to apply screentone and freaking out when Tenma's beta job goes horribly wrong.
• Masked Luchador: Lara's dad.
• Measuring Day: Occurs in a chapter/part of an episode, and Tenma (and Harima) try to disguise themselves as doctors/nurses in order to get measurements of their crushes... sure enough, the physical examinations end up being cancelled.
• Medium Blending: 3D Harima. Akira's overseas adventures are also told in 3D.
• "Mission: Impossible" Cable Drop
• Mistaken Declaration of Love Several examples, but the most pivotal one is probably Harima to Eri.
• Moment Killer: Mikoto & Akira after Harima agrees to become Eri's official fiancee so she can stay in Japan.
• Mood Whiplash: Tenma and Eri having an awkward misleading conversation about men's bodies to Eri and Mikoto getting into a shouting match about Harima.
• Most Common Superpower: In the Magical Mai episode, Tenma is a Western-style superheroine specifically based on Wonder Woman: and she has huge fake breasts. Not implants, mind you, they're part of her costume, but still.
• Motorcycle on the Coast Road: Often shown with Harima who constantly rides his motorcycle around.
• No Ending:
  • The manga introduces what looks to be two important plot elements that throw fuel to the Eri/Harima and Yakumo/Harima factions, then bitchslaps both camps (and everyone else) by aborting it via a Time Skip and two inconclusive chapters that reset what character development Harima had managed to obtain. The ending of School Rumble Z seems to hint at Eri/Harima, but it's not clear whether the brief image of them with a child is the actual future or not.
  • The anime suffers from the same fate albeit a slightly less depressing one (seeing as Karasuma appears to be recovering at a faster rate).
• No Indoor Voice: Lara Gonzalez
  Lara: ICHIJO!
• Nosebleed: Many. Most notably a violently explosive one.
• Not So Stoic: Harima, Yakumo and Karasuma.
• Not What It Looks Like:
  • The traditional reaction subverted in one case, where Harima and Eri are in a very suspect position and Akira walks in, stares at them for a moment, and then correctly guesses the unintentional events that lead them to where they were. Particularly notable as even Eri didn't realise it wasn't what it looked like, and believed Harima was actually trying to force himself on her (Akira's observation presumably cleared that up, but it still took her a long time to get over it).
  • Played straight with Harima's initial meeting with Tenma in middle school after she wakes up in his room with him on top of her.
  • Eri walking in on Harima and Mikoto in public and thinks they're on a date.
  • Tae jumping Harima and witnessed by 5 students.
• Oblivious to Love: Obvious here, but one moment deserves special mention: in an episode where Tenma visits Harima at the hospital, he outright confesses that he likes her, and she understands... that he said he likes some kind of egg.
• Odd Friendship: Harima & Yakumo, Mai & Nishimoto and Lara and Satsuki.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Harima's face after his mistaken confession to Eri.
  • Harima's expression when Eri walks in on him naked.
• One Degree of Separation: A given with a big cast. For example there's Harima who meets Yakumo before finding out she's Tenma's sister, and two sisters who meet his brother before finding out whose brother he is.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Because of this, Eri thinks (probably still) that Tenma is no longer a virgin.
• On the Next
• Paintball Episode
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Almost no one can recognize Harima without his sunglasses. The sunglasses and moustache/goatee is also what helps him have Tenma not recognise him as the kid who saved her and apparently takign advantage of her.
• Pervert Alliance: Most of the boys of Class 2-C are in an alliance, led by Ganji "Buddha" Nishimoto, with resident Camera Fiend Fuyuki providing snaps of the girls in class. Itoko-sensei wipes out their collection of photos with a virus and a Fan Disservice pic of Harima's butt and a caption telling them to knock it off and study.
• Plot Tumor: Tenma. The Flag, Riceball & Kid's Meal pairings overtake her and she loses prominence as main character... then for no reason at all she becomes the focal point of the finale without resolving any of the pairings.
  • That said, it might not be a tumor at all. Most of the other drama occurs with Harima, who was established as the main male protagonist from the outset, so for the plot to focus heavily on his stories isn't really that much of a change. The lack of a resolution, on the other hand, probably gave most of the readers a tumor.
• Poor Communication Kills: Most of the plot would be resolved if every character would be a bit more forward. Most of the plot would never happen in the first place if Tenma (and to a lesser extent, Harima) didn't misinterpret literally everything she sees or hears before taking decisive (and disruptive) action.
• Porn Stash: Nishimoto gave away his to his classmates, Hanai confiscates the rest. Yakumo runs away from him when she senses his lust.
• Psychic Powers: Both of the Tsukamoto sisters can see ghosts. Also, Tenma can effortlessly bend spoons, while her younger sister Yakumo can read the minds of any guys who are interested in her (along with some special cases) as well as animals (though that doesn't mean she can understand them). Tenma's power has absolutely no impact on the plot (used only once, as an aside), but Yakumo's power is a key aspect of her character.
• Race for Your Love: Harima pretty much kidnaps Tenma and takes her to the airport so she can go to America and see Karasuma.
• Real Trailer, Fake Movie: Akira helped Tougou make one to commemorate the class' Kyoto trip. It starts as parody of The A-Team but then zooms in on the love story of Eri & Harima.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni
  • Harima and Hanai.
  • Also Tenma and Yakumo. Tenma being A Genki Girl, and Yakumo being The Quiet One.
• Relax-o-Vision
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Yakumo points out that the female lead of Harima's manga looks like Tenma and the hero looks like himself, Harima mistakenly believes that she's worked out that he has a crush on Tenma... because she can read minds. In fact, Yakumo can read minds, but only of guys who are attracted to her, making Harima one of the precious few guys she can't read (she actually suspected Harima had feelings for Tenma because he doesn't actually do a very good job of hiding it at all, particularly with how obvious the resemblance of the characters in his manga is).
• Running Gag: Several, aside from the countless times someone is interrupted when confessing their love.
  • Professor Tani mistaking Harima for gay.
  • Nakamura dressing up as Eri.
  • Naru, Nishimoto, and Yoshidayama trying to meet girls with "swimsuit sumo".
  • Eri somehow getting into situations involving a naked Harima.
  • Hanai on his kite.
• Scary Shiny Glasses:
  • Yuuki, occasionally.
  • Hanai at times.
• School Play: A cross between "Sleeping Beauty" and Seven Samurai.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Harry and Togou.
• Sentai/Super Robot: Both are given a homage in episode 18 in the form of Dojibiron.
• Serious Business: How about the time when they have a WAR GAME just so they can choose on what to do for their School Festival!?
• Shadow Dictator: The Principal (manga only).
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The first several episodes are about Tenma trying to impress Karasuma and/or Harima trying to impress Tenma but nothing ever comes of it. Arguably, the whole series counts as one. See the "No Ending" description above.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Happens to Harima very often with any of the girls interested in him, especially Eri.
• Shipper on Deck: Sagano for Tawaraya and Asou, Tenma for Harima and anyone he might have feelings for (except herself, of course), the main group for Mikoto and Asou, Mikoto and Akira for Harima and Eri.
• Ship Tease: It's passed around, but mostly it's Eri/Harima and Harima/Yakumo. Harima/Tenma gets a tiny bit while Mikoto/Hanai, Mikoto/Asou and Karen/Imadori round out the supporting cast ships. Hanai also occasionally gets teased with minor character Yuuki Tsumugi.
• Shout-Out:
  • At one point, Harima watches a parody of Star Wars which led him to conclude that Tenma and Karasuma are supposedly "siblings" in the same vein as Luke and Leia).
  • Harima's pig happens to be called Napoleon
  • The manga chapters are all titles of movies.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: The Tsukamoto sisters and the Togou siblings. There's also Akira and her half-sister Motoko.
• Single-Stroke Battle: A variant occurs with the guns between Harima and Hanai during the war survival game.
• Sitting on the Roof: Many scenes take place on the school roof.
• Sleep Cute: Tenma on Harima's shoulder on the train home after they shop for Karasuma's birthday present.
• Slice of Life
• Slow-Motion Pass-By
• Soap Opera Disease:
  • Karasuma has an incurable disease that—once set in motion—wipes his mind clean and destroys all cognitive ability.
  • Given the vagueness of her ailment, Akira's younger half sister as well.
• Speaking Up for Another: to a misunderstanding, Tenma is furious with Harima. She goes on a rant to Eri about his many negative qualities, most of which Eri agrees with. However, when Tenma calls Harima a pervert, Eri voices her disagreement with that. She has cause to know, having spent the night with him while on the run from an Arranged Marriage. She says that Harima has many bad qualities, but being a pervert is not one of them.
• Spoiler Opening: Each season has one, showing events that will happen throughout the entire season (Ichigakki, for example, showed Harima's Important Haircut from day one). Same goes for the endings.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Madoka, Shigeo and Mai shooting each other to the tune of "Feel Like A Girl". Then again, they were just playing...
• Stroke the Beard:
  • When Harima crashes Hanai's mock wedding.
  • Eri accidentally chops Harima's beard while he's asleep. When he starts going for his beard during his sleep, the girls hilariously grab Eri's pigtail so he will stroke it instead and not suspect anything.
• Summer School Sucks: Zig-zagged. Harima is not happy to see that he has received all turtles on his report card, as it means tht he will have to attend summer classes. But then his Love Interest, Tenma, reveals that she got all turtles too, so she will be right there with him. Harima's response is an elated "THANK GOD I WAS BORN STUPID!"
• Sunglasses at Night: Harima. Hanai during the Wargames arc.
• Surprise Santa Encounter
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Harima engages it when Yakumo notices that the characters of his manga look like him and Tenma.
• Take My Hand!: In the manga, Harima handcuffed himself to a girl he thought was Tenma who was about to fall off a bridge. It's really Yakumo, and the bridge stands over a small creek. Queue an entire day of non-stop, public misunderstandings.
• Take Off Your Clothes: During the camping episode. Harima tells Tenma to disrobe and this shocks the eavesdropping Eri and Yakumo. Eri takes a second look and sees Tenma and Harima wearing a curtains so they can dry their clothes.
• That Came Out Wrong:
  • Subverted when Harima and Tenma are taking cover in a cabin from the rain - see the Take Off Your Clothes entry.
  • Played straight when a naked Harima puts Eri in an arm lock and covers her mouth to keep her from screaming after she walks in on him looking for his swimsuit. He tries to tell her not to scream, but instead says, "You, keep quiet." He immediately realizes that he said the creepiest thing possible, and wonders what to do next, when Akira comes in and accurately sums up the situation, telling Harima that she didn't think he was a pervert, just a complete screw-up.
• Three Shorts: the TV series is organized this way, with a manga chapter a segment.
• Third-Person Flashback: In an episode, Yakumo has a flashback/dream to when she was a little kid that is from the first person perspective. Up to and including when the camera shakes up and down to indicate her nodding her head.
• This Is Reality: Harima comments to himself that if life were like a comic book, he'd be able to win Tenma over more easily.
• Those Two Guys: Lots, which is a given considering the large cast. For example, Tsumugi & Sagano, Madoka & Mihara, Asou & Suga.
• Threesome Subtext: Eri and Yakumo are both interested in Harima. They're both teased with him as well as with each other (most notably their slow dance in an episode). Before the original manga suddenly stopped, Harima's also apparently engaged to Eri while living with Yakumo, with all three apparently content with the arrangement.
• Through His Stomach: Constantly comes up in the series, especially when Tenma, Eri and Yakumo are concerned.
  • Tenma thinks Yakumo is doing this when she starts bringing an extra lunchbox for school - however she finds out the extra lunch is for the stray cat, who would eventually join the sisters as Iori.
  • Tenma tries to get closer to Karasuma by first making curry for him, except it backfires when she accidentally brings two lunchboxes full of rice (while Yakumo had the two lunchboxes of curry). Gets better when Karasuma suggests turning the rice into onigiri, and afterward she starts bringing them for him and herself. invoked
  • Eri prepares to do this for her dad for a rare dinner together. Unfortunately after grocery shopping he tells her he has an urgent business trip to go to.
  • Tenma once trickes Yakumo into giving Harima a lunch box, set with a heart shape no less.
  • In preparation for the cultural festival, the girls of 2C practise making onigiri and try to get their male classmates to guess who made which. Harima is very determined to eat Tenma's to incorporate this trope, even though he knows how horrible she is. In the end, the onigiri he thinks is Tenma's (because of how bad it tastes) is actually Eri's (who unsurprisingly is pleased) - he finds out when eating Tenma's real ones that hers are much worst than he anticipated.
• Thundering Herd:
  • A variant in the Nigakki opening - Hanai and Harima aren't being angrily pursued, but they're still (angrily) running in front of the rest of the male cast.
  • Occurs in the last episode of Nigakki, where Harima is being pursued by Tenma who's annoyed that he's ignoring her... followed by a whole lot of other pissed off male students who have heard rumours that he has private photos of Tae.
  Harima: Why is everyone chasing me?!
• Tiger Versus Dragon: Harima (dragon) and Hanai (tiger) at the mock wedding.
• Time to Unlock More True Potential: At one point, Harima has to regain his spirit not as a fighter but as a mangaka, under the eye of the captain of a fishing vessel.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl
  • Tenma (tomboy), Yakumo (girly)
  • Eri (tomboy), Yakumo (girly)
  • Eri (girly), Mikoto or Akira (tomboy)
  • Lara (tomboy), Karen (girly)
  • Itoko (tomboy), Youko (girly)
• Tormented Teacher: Tani tries to be a Nice Guy, and he's actually one of the few at the school who is impressed with Harima's improvement. But he is also a Butt-Monkey who has a class of extreme personalities, has had a couple of moments with Harima where the two were Mistaken for Gay (Harima's withdrawal letter ended up in the envelope he gave Tenma, meaning Tani got the love letter intended for Tenma, and on another occasion Harima wanted to invite Tenma to the movies, but she'd moved off, so he'd accidentally asked Tani). Then, when the attractive new School Nurse, Tae Anagasaki gives him some homemade cookies as a way of introducing herself, they're eaten by Tani's rival, Kato, homeroom teacher of Class 2-D.
• Transformation Sequence: In the Magical Girl parody episode, Mai gets a Sakura-level one.
• Umbrella of Togetherness: Used 3 times to ship Harima and Eri.
• Universal-Adaptor Cast: Very fond of these for Imagine Spots and random historical retellings. In School Rumble Z, the majority of the chapters are the cast in a Alternate Universe.
• Universal Group Reaction: In one episode, Tenma, Mikoto, Akira, and Eri are at a water park when a group of guys begin to hit on them. The girls agree to go out with the guys if they can beat them at a competition, to which Tenma immediately suggests swimming. Only to witness all of her group sink like stones to the bottom of the pool. She tearfully demands to know why none of the others told her they couldn't swim, to which the others can only bow in unison and say, "We're sorry."
• Unknown Rival: Harima is this to Karasuma, who isn't particularly aware by his nor Tenma's feelings.
• Unspoken Retort: Tsugumi, in a flashback, recalls a time she broke her glasses. Hanai collected the shards of glass for her, and then offered to pedal her bike for her to get her home. She thinks he's like a samurai or knight...until he asks how much she weighs before they set out on the bike (from Hanai's perspective necessary to determine if he was capable of making the effort), to which Tsugumi dejectedly thinks, "So much for my knight in shining armor." She nevertheless does develop a one-sided crush on him.
• Unwanted Harem: Subverted. Tae is the only one who expresses open attraction toward Harima. He treats Yakumo only as his friend and Eri as someone he owes a debt too but doesn't like. He calls Yakumo by her name a few times but beyond that never seems to actually learn anyone's name, probably because he's so singularly obsessed with "Tenma-chan".
• Visible Sigh
• Visible Silence: Prone to "..." speech bubbles and "shiin" onomatopoeia in the manga, especially when a rather ridiculous moment happens.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: A picture of a cat is shown when Tenma gets seasick in the cruise episode.
• Wacky Homeroom: 2C and 2D are full of Large Hams and oddballs. Especially the former - they hold a war survival game at school just to decide what to do for the cultural festival.
• Wham Episode: Episode 10 has both a Wham Shot for Harima and a Wham Line for Eri, in the same scene, as Harima made his big confession for Tenma... to Eri.
• What Does She See in Him?: The preeminent example is probably Imadori for Karen; aside from being pretty good looking and good with kids (on account of being so childish himself) Imadori really is pretty much a lecherous, shallow, lazy, self-centered Jerkass.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Used mini-plotwise in the Manga: Madoka seeing other men behind Shigeo's back. One account semi-witnessed by Shigeo himself (who doesn't know what's going on) and another by Suga, for which Madoka uses a kiss (presumably his first) to 'keep him quiet'. Though, it is revealed later in the Manga that in the end, Shigeo and Madoka are still dating (which either means they resolved the issue or it was never brought to Shigeo's attention).
• What Is This Feeling?: Eri encounters this often whenever Harima is on her mind.
• Wiki Walk: Tenma trying to interpret Karasuma giving her a turtle to help with ideas for the cultural festival results in this... mostly because she somehow deducts she has to play a game of shiritori^note a Japanese game where a player says a word and the next player says a word starting with the last syllable of the previous word and so forth to get what he means.
• Wild Card Excuse: "Because this is the Tea club afterall..."
• Will They or Won't They?:
  • Harima/Eri - especially the latter who, despite sharing many heartwarming moments with the former, still won't admit she has feelings for him.
  • Harima/Yakumo - in Z, Tenma threatens to crash the car she's driving after finding out Yakumo still can't define her relationship with Harima after all these years.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Eri unloads a rolling sobat on Harima in one episode, and in a much later one puts him in a Boston Crab.
• Your Size May Vary: Tennouji and a certain mammoth.

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