Ranked #1526

School Rumble San Gakki

It has certainly been one long ride! Two anime seasons, an OVA, and the supposed third season known as San Gakki.

We all start by getting thrown into an arc of the manga leagues ahead of where Ni Gakki left off. Needless to say you will be completely lost unless you have been following the School Rumble manga. To make a rather long and tedious story short, this "OVA" combines some of the most defining moments of the manga, to what made the manga a complete wreck in the first place. We have Harima's defining moment as a man to the inevitable train wreck known as School Rumble.

Then comes the art section of this review. I was rather (well completely) disappointed at how the first episode (episode 25) was animated. I expected so much more in terms of quality from an OVA (botched 3rd season). Though I gave the score of '7' given that the second episode (episode 26) completely redeemed the failures of the previous episode. You should be able to see the differences between the two episodes if you decide to watch this OVA.

Then we have the sound section. Nothing really new given that they pretty much reused the tracks of School Rumble Season One and Ni Gakki.

As I have mentioned before, this OVA combines the most defining moments of the manga as well as what made it an epic failure in the first place. When it is all said and done, everything boils down to character development. Even if you haven't read the parts of the manga this OVA covers, you will know how our protagonist (smack yourself if you think I'm talking about Tenma) develops over the course of the second episode. Then prepare to facepalm near the final moments of the episode as the author of this story gives a middle finger to all the fans of School Rumble.

I can't say I enjoyed this OVA to the extent of the first season and Ni Gakki. The elements of what made this show great (the comedy and the shipping lanes) were severely lacking. Though it can be attributed to the fact that we were only given 2 out of 26 episodes...it still wouldn't change the horrible ending of SR. I'm not a big fan of anime original endings, but why oh why didn't they give us one...

Thus ends the story of School Rumble...off to the next future train wreck known as School Rumble Z! read more

Overall: 5

I’m a huge fan of school rumble. I wanted to like this “third season” and more than anything I wanted to see how things turned out, but this is not what we wanted, this not school rumble. Do yourself a favor and pretend it ended with season 2. Even season 2’s non ending was better than this crap. I have never before seen an author stupid enough to marginalize the most interesting character (whom happens to be the main character) in favor of switching the focus to the least interesting character.

While i haven't read the manga, some basic checking of the last chapter of it shows the ending is more or less the same as the anime, something that viewers of both seem to support. This is important to note because the manga ending is one of the most universally reviled endings there is for any manga i've seen.

Story: 6

This ova tries to take a ton of the manga and quickly bringer the viewer up to date with what happened before it gets to the aforementioned shit ending. The result is the viewer be bombarded with tons of quick scenes at the start. In order to support the shit ending, a lot of changes were made to the story that annoys me as a fan of the series. It Is almost like the author got tired of the series so started inventing tons of random crap to lead to an ending that wasn’t support at all before this. The ending was also horrible, beyond bad, being one of the worst endings ever in the history of anime. Nothing foreshadowed it and in order to pull it off, the author had to radically alter personalities, invent crazy events and generally make a mockery of the entire series by ignoring everything that had happened previously.

Art: 8

Art is the same as the rest of the series. If you liked it before, you will like it now. I liked it before, thus I like it now.

Sound: 7

Same as art. Sound is same as rest of the series. Music was so-so with nothing really standing out to me.

Character: 4

What the hell! As I said in overall, the author makes a clear push to change the main character of the series from Harimma to Karasuma. In order to do this, Karasuma suddenly has his personality radically altered and is defined a lot more than he was in the entire two seasons before this. It is too bad that I already decided he annoys the hell out of me after two seasons of him being an emotionless robot that treats Tenma like crap (curry > her comment being the big and direct example). Harima’s character also changes for the worse too.

Enjoyment: 5

I wish I had just pretended it ended with season two. Since I liked school rumble quite a bit, the pain of how bad season 3 was hurts even more. Karasuma was a purposefully annoying character throughout the entire series so seeing him made in to a main character that I was supposed to feel sorry for pissed me off too.
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