School Rumble

School Rumble is a romantic comedy that depicts the daily lives of the students attending Class 2-C of the fictional Yagami High School, as well as their friends and families. The main female protagonist is Tenma Tsukamoto, an unremarkable second-year high school student who secretly admires her eccentric, enigmatic, nice-guy classmate, Oji Karasuma. She struggles to confess her feelings, about which Karasuma appears to be oblivious, preferring instead to seek fulfilment by indulging his passion for curry. Complicating the narrative is the main male protagonist, the delinquent Kenji Harima, whose desire for Tenma has developed to the point where he attends school solely to be near her. Like Tenma, Harima has difficulty declaring his love, and whenever he summons the courage to do so, circumstances conspire against him.The misfiring attempts of the two to make the objects of their affection aware of their feelings are a persistent comedic theme throughout the series.



The love triangle evolves through mistakes made by Harima and misunderstandings by Tenma and their classmates. Harima becomes involved with Tenma's close friend, Eri Sawachika, when the pair are thrown together in mutually-embarrassing situations. Later in the series he develops a friendship with Tenma's younger sister, Yakumo Tsukamoto, who becomes Harima's assistant on the manga he writes. The plots of Harima's stories portray a Harima-like hero fighting to save a Tenma-like damsel in various historical or fantastical situations, usually in battle against an obvious facsimile of Kurasama. After the hero saves the heroine, she naturally falls in love with him. Yakumo's relationship with Harima causes problems with Class 2-C's student representative, Haruki Hanai, who has a crush on Yakumo. The sisters' shared surname causes Harima and Hanai to misinterpret each others' infatuations. Although Harima manages to engineer romantic situations with Tenma, her relationship with Karasuma progresses while Harima's bonds with Eri and Yakumo grow stronger. Eventually Tenma musters the courage to confess her love, but shortly thereafter Karasuma loses his memory. His amnesia gives a purpose to Tenma's life; she concentrates on her studies in order to become a doctor and help Karasuma.

Although the focus of School Rumble is on Harima and Tenma, a number of supporting characters are developed. These include Tenma's friends Mikoto Suo, who runs a kenpō dojo where her childhood friend, Hanai, trains, and Akira Takano, a mysterious and uncannily perceptive girl with who leads a double-life. As the story progresses, more major characters are introduced into the relationship web.

The series ends with Class 2-C's graduation ceremony. While most of the plot-lines have been settled by this point, there is no clear resolution for the main protagonists. Karasuma still suffers from memory loss, and although Harima attends the ceremony with Eri, the status of his relationship with Yakumo is uncertain.