First Impressions / School Rumble

Summary:
Nakamura is about to shoot Asou, but a sniper’s bullet causes him to dive out of the way instead. That sniper is Itoko, and she’s successfully leveled the playing field by keeping Nakamura at bay. Elsewhere in the school, Tanaka Kazuya and Nagayama Toki are the last two defenders at their position. Tanaka decides to ask Nagayama out on a date, assuming they get out alive. Unfortunately for them, someone comes and shoots them both. At that time, Mikoto steps into a classroom and realizes that she’s being hunted by Yuuki, who is part of the newly formed band army. It is Hanai who saves Mikoto from Yuuki’s slingshot. Yuuki remembers a time when her glasses broke and Hanai gave her a ride home. On the way, he stopped and showed her a view of a rainbow by using a broken piece of her glasses. The current Yuuki tells her two opponents to shoot her; Hanai resists doing so, but Mikoto doesn’t.
With Yuuki out of the way, they radio Asou and Suga to tell them about the band army. However, Asou and Suga are soon taken out by Karasuma. In the theater faction’s base, Eri and Tenma are the only ones watching over their flag. Eri thinks she sees something and goes outside to investigate. Tenma hears a gunshot and, when she goes outside, she finds Eri’s body on the ground. Karasuma is standing near her admiring the moon, and he admits that the band probably won’t win. Realizing how much the band had practiced, Tenma puts her gun to her own head, but Karasuma stops her. He instead puts her gun to his chest and forces her to pull the trigger.
Mikoto and Hanai are under attack by the other three members of the band army. While Hanai handles Fuyuki, Mikoto takes out Sagano and Ichijou. However she realizes too late that Harima is behind her. Harima waits until Hanai sees them before he shoots Mikoto. This elicits a scream of “Miko-chan!!!!” from Hanai. Their fight leads them to the roof where they have a heated gun battle. At one point, Hanai asks Harima if he really loves Yakumo, but Harima won’t say unless Hanai can beat him. They decide on an old-fashioned pistol duel with their backs to each other. After ten steps, they turn around and fire. Harima falls to the ground – Hanai is the winner. Harima says that he understands how Hanai feels about Yakumo, causing Hanai to realize that there’s someone else that Harima likes, but Harima “dies” before Hanai can find out. Akira has of course caught everything on videotape. Hanai carrying Harima under the moon is the final shot in her film.
The next day, Kouriyama-sensei lectures the class about what they did the night before. Fortunately they’re getting off easy thanks to Itoko. Back the classroom, Suga is telling everyone about seeing a mustached old man in Eri’s clothes. Eri herself has no idea what Suga is talking about. The suggestion Kouriyama-sensei made was for them to do both the cafe and the play. The class representatives Hanai and Mai rally the class around this idea. Harima gets pissed that Tenma calls Hanai dependable, so he teases Hanai by reminding everyone of the “Miko-chan!” from during the battle. Mikoto and Hanai turn red faced and flatly deny it. After school, Tenma walks home with Karasuma and cheers him up about expressing his happiness. Meanwhile, Eri returns home, confronts Nakamura about his involvement, and asks for her uniform back.
The after-episode extra tells of Nakamura saving a girl during a revolution. He went on to raise her into a maid like her beautiful mother, but she didn’t quite turn out the same.

Yay for the Glasses Faction story!
I kind of assumed that, since it was one of the side-stories, they would fit it in eventually at the end of one of the episodes, but this way works much better. Compared to the manga, there’s a much deeper implication here that Yuuki can’t shoot them because she has feelings for Hanai.
The episode has some pretty cool action sequences. That final gunfight between Hanai and Harima looks so much more impressive animated than it did on paper, especially when they start shooting each other from point blank range. I like how they covered pretty much everything during the survival game, but the pacing the next day when they’re all back in the classroom feels a bit rushed. They cut out a lot of the dialogue from the manga (which, granted, wasn’t all that important, but still…).
Overall, I was very pleased with the way the survival game arc turned out. School Rumble with guns is so much fun 🙂

27 Comments

  3. that was kick ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
    the scene with Harima and Hanai under the moon was way tooooo halarious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    HOPEFULLY we won’t see Harima x Hanai, lol

    mootab
    Reply

  12. sinistral if u read the manga probably maid cafe and band performance. man ur missing a lot if u havent check out the manga scanned. remember if u wanna suprise urself on the next episode i recommend u dont read the manga. btw where do u get chapter 119 scan cus i cant find it for some reason.

    anim3guy
    Reply

  13. Wow, I didn’t know there was a SR wiki. Looking forward to the subs of this becuase I had always been wondering what the hell was going on when I saw a picture of Harima with a pair of P90s. ^_^

    tragicsmile
    Reply

  21. Can’t wait until this is released on fansub. Just finished the first season yesterday, watched both the OAVs and the first two episodes of this series today.

    … I wish I knew enough Japanese to watch raw versions of anime, but I still do not know more than a few words and phrases

    Zelath
    Reply

  25. In this Episode it really hit me is when Tenma attempts to “kill” herself to help Karasuma, it was a perfect blend in with the music as u actually see a side of Karasuma and Tenma, the Everyday-Dense Tenma actually attempts to “kill” herself for Karasuma, and the Wierdo Karasuma actually showing emotions by stopping Tenma and instead “suiciding”. the Most Wierd of this Episode is that the beginning of the Fight, people who “died” left no blood stain but as Karasuma comes into Play and battles it out for the Band team, u realize that whoever standed in his way “died” and there were blood stains everywhere….isn’t the survive game suppose to be a No-Real Death Game?

    Desires
    Reply

  26. Why the student of 2-C didn’t making a “War Memorial of Battle of Yagami High/Yagami High Civil War” To commorate the “fallen comrade” during the “war”? Or, simply making a “Memorial Day”.

    Yagami High Republic Army
    Reply

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