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Thursday, 22 February 2007 |
 | | ▪ | PUBLISHED BY: | | DEL REY | | | ▪ | ART/AUTHOR: | | JIN KOBAYASHI | | | | ▪ | FORMAT/COLOR: | | JAPANESE FORMAT / BW | | | ▪ | PAGES: | | 183 | | | ▪ | RATED: | | T+ | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 12/26/2006 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 02/23/2007 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | CHRISTOPHER SEAMAN |
The torments that complicate the lives of teenagers- puberty, hormones, high school, jobs and the future- occupy places of (dis)honor in SCHOOL RUMBLE Volume Four, released by Del Rey. There are no doubts the young lead complicated lives, with much of the complication being of their own design. This light manga dwells predominantly on that fact, as we proceed from episode to episode watching the characters in the piece bumble their way humorously (certainly not gracefully) through adolescence. Sometimes it is almost painful to watch the humiliations pile up, particularly for delinquent classmate Harima Kenji. But that is oddly the charm of this work by Jin Kobayashi.
In Volume Four, the fallout from the day at the beach is raining down on the characters in the story, as possible love entanglements threaten to strangle old friendships and create new alliances. A lot of this volume, like its predecessor, is centered directly or indirectly on Harima Kenji, who tries to be cool with the sunglasses and attitude, but just bumbles along as he wrestles with his undeclared love for Tsukamoto Tenma. Tsukamoto thinks Harima is in loves with her friend Mikoto, and tries to set them up, but predictably, everything goes sideways. Harima is also now the object of speculation among some of the ladies who are reflecting on their sexual histories in light of his being caught accidently au naturel by Sawachika Eri, also in the previous volume. This is compounded further by more misadventures between the two in this volume. I mean, this guy can’t get a break! Harima eventually takes to communing with animals and keeping his new friends in the school gym, leading to more mayhem for everyone who comes into contact with them. Of course, other plotlines developed in previous volumes continue, but somehow, it always comes back to Harima Kenji and what’s going to happen next.
If readers are looking for light humor, this manga delivers it in loving spoonfuls. The misadventures of Harima Kenji, and the love entanglements of the others are broken up into little vignettes, occasionally complete with scene titles running along the outer edge of the page. SCHOOL RUMBLE may have a suggestion of violence in the title, but it mostly goes no further than characters getting well deserved kicks in the head for being socially inept. The animal sequence is particularly good, as in a chapter involving Harima pulling Sawachika Eri through a gap in a wall in an old classroom after…well, it’s just better if you read it for yourself. Fun remains the order of the day in this manga, with, in this volume, mock trading cards for each of the characters replacing the report cards used so humorously in Volume Three to give readers insight into the nature of the different characters.
Del Rey has packaged the manga well with another useful summary of the plot so far, and images of the characters to help the reader keep them all straight in the head. The notes at the end of the book explaining the many references demanding illumination in this work are very helpful, and the art work is framed better in this edition than before, making the reading easy to follow.
IN SUMMARY:
SCHOOL RUMBLE VOLUME FOUR puts the ‘situation’ into ‘situation comedy’ with comic high jinks and absurdities heaped one upon another. Summer love and summer fun go hand in here, giving readers a manga that will remind them of what there is to love in the dog days of summer. |
