May 26th, 2009 
AstroNerdBoy School Rumble Manga Volume 12 Review
スクールランブル
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Summary/Synopsis:
At Tenma’s birthday party, she’s declared queen and gets to command her friends to do one thing each, including making Eri eat natto. Yakumo gives Harima a present since his birthday is one day off from Tenma. Harima gets summoned from the party to help “Nijō-jō-sensei,” aka. Karasuma, in his latest manga. This is the ultimate irony but when Harima makes a mistake, he convinces Karasuma to attend Tenma’s birthday party. Harima then disguises himself as Karasuma and calls Yakumo to help him with the manga after Harima really ruins it and is forced to recreate it from scratch.
Karen finds Imadori a surprise visitor to her little brother at their house. She’s all embarrassed because she wasn’t ready for this but in the end, she calms down and even plays with her brother and Imadori.
Harima is stunned when his manga is published instead of Karasuma’s. He’s summoned to meet the chief editor and brings Yakumo with him. The editor is a giant of a man but Yakumo has no problems dealing with him. The editor assigns Harima to create a 120-page manga. Since Itoko has gone on a trip and Harima doesn’t have a key, Yakumo offers him a place to stay and her and Tenma’s place. Initially, Tenma is OK with it and even decides to test Harima’s love for Yakumo by pretending to be Yakumo. Harima isn’t fooled and answers honestly, thinking Tenma is asking about herself. Harima is going to confess his love for Tenma that night but Tenma mistakes it for Harima attempting to make a move on Yakumo since he went into Yakumo’s room. As such, Harima is on the street.
Mikoto finds the homeless Harima and offers to let him stay at the dojo. Harima takes the offer and while wearing the uniform of the workers employed by the Suo family, he’s encountered by Eri, who doesn’t recognize him. Mikoto learns of this and decides to have some fun, resulting in Harima not getting any manga work done. After a workout with Mikoto, Eri decides to take a bath in the large outdoor onsen-like bath where she mistakes Harima for Mikoto in the dark. Mikoto sees this through a window and tries to help Harima as best as she can as Eri reveals that she’s being forced into an arranged marriage. Harima pretends to fart in the bath to keep Eri from getting in, which works well to Mikoto’s horror.
Eri’s servants are dispatched to retrieve her and along the way, Tenma gets picked up. Mikoto decides to have Harima, again disguised as a worker, get Eri out of the place to avoid being taken back home. They are on Harima’s motorcycle when they Eri’s family car with Tenma inside. They stop to rest at a temple where Harima sees a very different side of Eri than the one he’s used to. Not only does Harima end up snuggling with Eri for warmth, he even agrees to go to the omiai with Eri to help end the arranged marriage.
Thoughts/Review:
This is another good volume with a surprising amount of focus on the love-triangle between Harima, Eri, and Yakumo. Granted, this is a strange love-triangle since Harima isn’t in love with either girl and the girls aren’t fully aware of their own attraction to Harima, but there you go.
Regardless, this element of the story is what I’ve found most interesting for some reason. Even before I was spoiled on the ending of School Rumble, I figured that Harima would never end up with Tenma since Eri and Yakumo were in the picture. As such, I figured Harima would never stop loving Tenma, but would let her go and then choose between Yakumo or Eri. Oddly enough, Harima is always doing things for Eri that he doesn’t have to do. In this volume alone, he helped her get in the laundry and agreed to attend the omiai with her. Eri doesn’t appear to know it is Harima doing these things for her but when she finds out, I wonder what she will say.
Still, I do enjoy these stories with Yakumo and Eri centering around Harima. Mikoto making things more interesting in the Eri storyline doesn’t hurt either. ^_^
I wonder if the temple scene where Harima and Eri spent the night is a nod to the long-running Ah! My Goddess, where Belldandy and Keiichi had to find a place to say, ended up at a temple, and then ended up taking the place over as a residence.
Karen got some love with a single chapter about Imadori coming to visit her little brother. It is interesting that Karen dropped herself down to Imadori’s more immature level for the day to play though. The things one does for love, eh?
Bottom line: Another good manga volume in the series with an interesting twist on the Eri-Harima pairing that is left in a cliffhanger. Can’t wait to see how that’s resolved.
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Bastard! (j/k)
I’ve only gotten through the first two seasons of the anime, so you kinda spoiled me just now with the revelation about who doesn’t wind up with whom. No real harm done, though – I’ve never seriously had the feeling those two could wind up together. Nothing concrete I could point to, it just… seems wrong.
But no more spoilages, please?
Er, make that “halfway through the second season.” Somehow I spaced on getting the December release of the second half of it.
It’s in my Netflix queue now, though. Thank you. ^_^ God only knows how long it would have been before I realized I missed it, if you hadn’t made this post.
Well, I got spoiled by watching the 2-episode OVA and then reading the “School Rumble Z” manga. ^_^;
However, even knowing what I know now (and I only learned the ultimate choice last night), I don’t think it will ruin the manga because the fun of the manga has been the journey. Now that I know a destination, I really don’t think anything will change but I guess I’ll find out as I think there are about ten more volumes.
I was lucky – the first place I thought to look was fansubs, because I thought I left off at the end of the second season. I dl’ed the OVA, and got a couple of minutes in before I started wondering if I’d missed something.
Ironic, eh? Right after griping about a minor spoiler that I was actually glad to know, I almost completely spoiled myself by accident.
I’m still afraid the ending will be so rushed that someone will wind up as a “consolation prize” – bad way to resolve things, IMO. But hopefully I’ll be proven wrong when I get to watch it in a couple of days. ^_^
You weren’t spoiled about the end if you read School Rumble Z because that is unrelated to the series completely.
In fact, I’ll ruin the end right now: THERE IS NO END. Harima doesn’t end up with anyone. Millions upon millions of subplots are ignored. The last chapter just appears out of nowhere. The series wasn’t canceled as the author continues to write unrelated manga (just look at School Rumble Z). Many people are angry about this. We aren’t sure if Harima will end up with Tenma (it IS a possibility. I won’t spoil why because there is no point in doing that) or Eri or god knows who else.
I just read chapter 10 of “School Rumble Z” (already blogged it, but it won’t publish for at least two weeks), but what you are saying is that the event shown in chapter 10 does not count then, eh?
Yep. Just like the rest of the chapters have nothing to do with the original series.
@Mastersomething: I only scanned slightly past “I’M GOING TO SPOIL IT FOR YOU,” so I can’t be absolutely sure that you actually do so. But if so, IMO that’s more than a bit inconsiderate.
My apologies, but I won’t be replying to any response you make ’til tomorrow at least. I’m not willing to take the risk that you’ll amplify on your previous post, and as I’ve noted it should be only another day ’til I get to watch it for myself.
@arimareiji
Its really not spoiling anything. The 2 or 3 surprising events at the end I did not even mention. Its more like clarifying which is necessary because its a bad idea to read the end of the series thinking School Rumble Z actually happens. It actually would ruin the end more than it should.
I think maybe chapter 10 of School Rumble Z was made to give fans a little satisfaction, what with the first series ending with no real progress made between some of the characters. Therefore, the panel where Eri is holding a baby (and Harima’s blushing) is a glance to the future, one that I’m quite happy with, because I tend to like the Eri and Harima-related stories better than the Tenma and Harima-related ones. Don’t really know why, but that’s how it is.