School Rumble - Plot

Plot

School Rumble is a romantic shōnen comedy revolving around the daily lives of the students of Class 2-C at 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. Tenma struggles to confess her feelings to Oji. He remains oblivious to her interest, instead seeking fulfillment by indulging in curry. The main male protagonist, delinquent Kenji Harima, similarly yearns for Tenma, attending 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.

Harima complicates the love triangle through constant bumbling, and misunderstandings among the students aggravate the situation. Harima becomes involved with Tenma's close friend, Eri Sawachika, after 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 a 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 Karasuma. After the hero saves the heroine, she always 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, with the sisters' shared surname causing Harima and Hanai to misinterpret the object of each others' respective infatuations. Although Harima manages to engineer romantic encounters with Tenma, her relationship with Karasuma nevertheless progresses, and Harima's bonds with Eri and Yakumo grow stronger. Eventually Tenma musters the courage to confess her love, but shortly after Karasuma loses his memory. His amnesia gives a purpose to Tenma's life; she concentrates on her studies to become a doctor and help Karasuma.

Although School Rumble focuses on Harima and Tenma, the series explores a number of supporting characters. These include Tenma's friends Mikoto Suo, who runs a kenpo dojo where her childhood friend, Hanai, trains, and Akira Takano, a mysterious and uncannily perceptive girl. As the story progresses, more major characters are introduced into the relationship web.

School Rumble Z ends with Class 2-C's graduation ceremony. At this point most of the plot-lines are settled, but 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.