School Rumble 2nd Semester
Danielle Just
School Rumble is a shonen comedy where the rumble centers on romantic relations with occasional action to spice things up. The story focuses mainly on a primary love triangle. Tenma Tsukumoto, a kind but clueless girl, is in love with Oji Kurasama, a curry-loving lethargic classmate. Harima Kenji, a former delinquent who begins drawing manga, has fallen love with Tenma to the point he'll attend school just to sit next to her. As the series progresses more characters are introduced and the love triangle between the three gets tangled as Tenma's friend, Eri Sawachika, gets involved in several incidents with Yakumo Tsukumoto, Tenma's sister. School Rumble often dispenses with its romantic element in favor of the comical elements.
School Rumble: The Second Semester continues to tangle the web of relationships. This season introduces many of the side characters left out in the first season that were in the manga, convoluting the relationship web further. It also develops the romantic relationships between Tenma and Kurasama as well as Harima and Tenma, Eri and Yakumo. In addition several episodes have no basis on the plot at all and are mere manga ideas Harima or another editor has written for proposal.
This season also had a lot more secondary characters put up front. While many of them I did not care for, there were a few that I liked, such as Kyousuke Imadori, Karen Ichijo, Mai Otsuka, Hiroyoshi Aso and Satsuki Tawaraya. This gives a more fleshed-out world to School Rumble and allows readers of the manga to enjoy seeing some of their favorite characters in a particular scene rather than some random student. In other cases it allows the narrative to follow some of the other students rather than the main love-triangle always being the focus while still having Harima or Tenma make appearances as the secondary characters for the episode or scene.
Extras:
FUNimation includes two interviews with the set. The first was with Tenma's Seiyū (Japanese voice actress), Ami Koshimizu, and the second was with Jin Kobayashi, the mangaka for School Rumble from which the anime is closely based on. I'm glad FUNimation included the 2 interviews, particularly with Jin Kobayashi, as it gives some insight into his manga. However, after watching Koshimizu's interview, I get the feeling there should have been more interviews. If that's the case I would have preferred to have them all as I enjoy watching them.
Overall:
School Rumble: The Second Semester is definitely a unique comedy. Jin Kobayashi is able to blend absurdest humor and play it straight without it feeling wrong. The series is constantly taken to new heights. In addition, the second series really begins to strengthen the bonds set in the first series as well as explore a few new ones. The relationships between several of the characters, notably Tenma and Kurasama as well as Karen and Ichijo, are much more firmly cemented than in the first season.
School Rumble has something for everyone if you like comedy or romance and The Second Semester just expands upon that with more characters and even some intense action episodes While there is rumble in School Rumble, it is lacking in the action scenes the title deliberately conjures in some minds, with martial arts battles or the like. The comedy elements are present in every episode and even if you don't like a particular scene or episode you'll almost certainly find something appealing. The romantic ones often tend to end in either comical situations or semi-resolved states with ambiguous endings. There are only a few actual couples and they are minor characters. Although a lot of the relationships do clear up, the web does get tangled a bit more with the introduction of side characters, such as Mikoto Sou and Aso; Mikoto was in the first season as a major character while Aso appeared in the anime ony during the second season.
As for the main love triangle, Harima still cannot confess his love for Tenma, even after writing a manga with both of them as the stars, Meanwhile, Tenma gets closer to Kurasma, thanks in part to Harima's efforts, as he's conflicted. Harima wants Tenma to be happy and she's happiest around Kurasama even though he'd rather have her love him. Eri and Yakumo's relationship with Harima get closer as well. I'll be honest here, between the rivals for Harima, Eri and Yakumo, I clearly prefer Yakumo. While Eri seems to get closer at first, near the end of the series it is shown that Yakumo is getting closer. Near the end of the series she is actually confronted with the possibility that she really has fallen in love with Harima. While it had been hinted at multiple times throughout the series, this was the first time the anime confronted it directly; Eri has had multiple times where Tenma or Mikoto have directly confronted her about her relationship wth Harima.
The one downside about the series is its ultimate ending. For all the plot advancement, it rolls back some key items in the final scenes and doesn't really state whether Yakumo will pursue Harima or not while the situation with Eri is at a standstill. though both realize each other can sometimes not be as bad as the other thought; there is no clear resolution. While Tenma has gotten closer to Kurasama, she still has yet to confess and even though Tenma figured out who Harima was from her past, she forgets it the next day due to an accident. That all, in addition to the other unresolved secondary characters' relationships, makes the ending feels like a real cop-out and the lack of an animated third season in Japan means for those watching the anime the ending leaves you wanting more. In spite of this minor issue, the series is still great and its hard to hold it against them when they were clearly aiming for a third season when this aired.
They had. It was not hard to see that Coach Jackson and the rest of the Holy Cross field hockey staff were interested in adding Emily to their roster, especially after everything that Emily had done the summer before. Emily knew they wanted her, and she knew her parents expected her to go.
Emily hung up. She had worked for five years to get here -- to get an offer to play Division I field hockey. This was why she had spent so many hours at all of the practices and tournaments and overnight camps. She had had her hopes raised and dashed and then raised again. She'd finally gotten what she'd told herself, for so many years, that she wanted.
The recruiting frenzy began when Emily was in eighth grade. That spring, on a recommendation from her club coach, she tried out to be a goalie for her regional Futures team, and made the cut. Being part of the development program for the U.S. women's national and Olympic teams meant that for seven Saturdays that spring, Emily trained for eight hours each day with girls from Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, and the surrounding areas. That summer, her team played in the National Futures Championship against teams from other regions around the country, each girl hoping to attract the attention of Futures scouts and win a spot at the Junior Olympics.
Emily didn't move on to the Junior Olympics, but the wheels had been set in motion. She wanted to play college field hockey, to become one of the best players at one of the best schools. Her parents told her that field hockey could help her get into a better school than she would otherwise have been able to attend or afford.
So that summer, Emily began going to college recruiting camps. She played in tournaments with her club team on the weekends. Her summer break was filled with sweaty practices and road trips and strange hotels. When she wasn't away with the club, she had her upcoming season on Coffman High School's team to prepare for.
During Emily's freshman year, she made friends with Sarah Noreen, a fellow goalie on Coffman's field hockey team. Sarah would vent to Emily about how she was burnt out and disillusioned with recruiting, with all the hours and heart poured into a system that gave no guarantees it would pay off. Emily listened to her and couldn't help but feel the same way. She decided she wanted to stop all of it.
But something happened Emily's sophomore year. She was sitting on the bus after a game, her gear piled around her on the sticky leather seat. It was early in the season, and the trees' still-green leaves blurred past the open window.
Emily was sitting near Katie, Carly and Kate, juniors who who were considered three of the best players on the team. They always stuck together, and at every end-of-season banquet they won all-league accolades.
As the bus bumped along the road back to Coffman, Emily overheard the three of them talking about emails they had gotten from college coaches, who expressed their interest in recruiting the girls and invited them to visit campus.
According to NCAA regulations, Division I coaches could initiate communication with players only after the first day of September. Before that, the players were the ones who had to be the first to make the phone calls and send the emails.
As Emily listened to Katie, Carly, and Kate on the bus that day, she thought, I want that. She wanted to be considered one of the players on the team that was being recruited, that a big-time school was coming after. She no longer wanted to be just a player. She wanted to be a recruit.
So Emily started it all over again. She joined a new club team, coached by Keli Puzo, a former Olympian. From sophomore year until senior year, she dove back into the recruiting clamor, once again doing the tryouts and practices and tournaments with her club team. She went to colleges' recruiting camps -- OU and Indiana and Northwestern and Louisville. Some, she attended multiple summers in a row. In the spring of her junior year, she went to the a recruitment-focused junior day at Dartmouth.
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