School Rumble Volume One is a manga written and illustrated by Jin Kobayashi, and it was published in North America by Del Rey Manga in 2006. The series is rated “T” for ages 13 and up; after reading this volume, I would agree with this rating.
School Rumble is a romantic comedy, which involves a triangle of students in class 2-C at Yagami High School. The female in the love triangle is Tenma Tsukamoto, a second year student at the school. She’s a nice person, but can be rather clueless about events that are taking place around her. Tenma secretly likes Oji Karasuma, her nice-guy classmate. He was supposed to transfer to another school, but decides to stay after getting a love confession scroll that wasn’t signed; the scroll was written by Tenma. After Oji stays, Tenma still can’t find the courage to tell Oji how she feels.
The other member of the love triangle is Kenji Harima, one of the school’s delinquents. He’s secretly in love with Tenma, but he has difficulty expressing his feelings to her. Even when Kenji does summon up the courage to try to tell her, circumstances end up conspiring against him. From what I read in the first volume, it appears the series will revolve around Tenma and Harima’s failed attempts to express their feelings to their respective objects of their affections.
I was first exposed to School Rumble through watching the first episode of the anime series. Admittedly, at the time I saw that episode, I really hadn’t been interested in seeing more of it. However, I’m glad that I decided to give the School Rumble manga a chance. I actually enjoyed reading the manga, and I thought that some sections of the story were legitimately funny. Perhaps I’ll need to give the anime series another chance; perhaps I’ll enjoy it more now that I’ve actually read some of the original manga source material.
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