School Rumble Ni Gakki – 04

Summary:
Since everyone in class has ideas for the play, Mai and Yuuki makes each person write it up, on the condition that they can’t include themselves. The resulting stories are quite unique. The first one features Yakumo confessing to Hanai, but it’s actually Harima disguised as Yakumo. Hanai doesn’t care and the two guys have a boy’s-love moment. The second story has Ichijou and Mihara as ballerinas jealous of Mikoto in a Glass Mask parody. The next one has Eri as a now-poor daughter of a company that went bankrupt. The restaurant owner she talks to is (again) Harima in disguise, and he’s angry that he almost lost his business because of her. Mai and Yuuki think that Harima probably wrote the story, with the disguise as his way of getting around their rule. Eri overhears them and is she’s definitely not happy about the story. And finally, there’s one about Mai being a magical girl. At the end of the day, Yuuki is worried about how they’re going to assemble the story. She and Mai happen to see Akira reading, and they get the idea that Akira should write the script. After talking with Eri and then reading a story that featured her writing the play’s script with everyone cheering her on, Akira gets to work. And as it turns out, Akira was the one responsible to the story about Eri and Harima.
That night, Tenma tells Yakumo that she’ll be staying at school to work on the culture festival preparations. Tenma suspects that Yakumo has Harima on her mind, so the next day, Tenma wants Eri to ask Harima about the kinds of things he likes. Eri objects at first, but Tenma says that it’s for Yakumo’s sake. Tenma leaves it up to Eri, so she approaches Harima saying that she’s doing a survey about the menu for their cafe. Her questions don’t actually have much to do with the menu, as she asks him if he likes girls who can cook (no, it doesn’t matter the food as long as there’s love in it) and whether he likes girls who are good at sports or girls who aren’t (both are ok, but he finds it cute if they can’t swim). The answer to the second question reminds Eri of the time at the beach when Harima tried to teach her to swim. Her final question asks Harima what type of hair style he likes. Harima notices that Tenma is eavesdropping on the conversation, so he answers that he likes hair that’s tied on both sides. What Harima doesn’t realize is that this hairstyle also applies for Eri…and Yakumo too. Everyone sees that Yakumo has tied her hair up when she brings her sister a bag.
At this point, Nishimoto enters the room and says that they’re going to the public bath-house, one that is run by their classmate Kinugawa Ayano. In the changing room, Eri wonders what Harima would have said if she had had a different hairstyle. She’s later asked by Yuuki and Megumi if she’s going out with Harima and starts reflecting on her feelings for him. However, she then overhears him from the other bath saying that he hates blondes with hair tied on both sides. She of course doesn’t know that Harima is really just talking about Jirou, who looks like a girl with hair down. In response, Eri tells the other girls that her feelings are to the extent of wanting to kill him.
After returning to school, the girls decide to make onigiri for the hungry guys. Each of the girls makes a different type and it’s up to the guy to find out who made which one. Of course, Harima knows that he must get Tenma’s. He makes his choice and, knowing that it’ll be disgusting, he eats it. It worse than he though, but Harima suffers through it and gives Tenma a thumbs-up. She’s confused at what he’s doing, but returns the thumbs-up anyway. To get the taste out of his mouth, Harima tries a second onigiri dish. However, it turns out to be even worse than the first one. The only silver lining for Harima is that now he knows that Tenma really isn’t the worst cook. Eri then approaches Harima and offers him more onigiri. He realizes that the first dish he ate was actually hers. After Eri, Tenma brings Harima a plate of her square-shaped onigiri. Harima recognizes them to be the second type he ate, but scarfs them all down anyway. Tenma really is the worst cook.
Meanwhile, Mikoto is in a different room talking with Hanai. He’s energetic these days because he found out that Yakumo and Harima’s relationship is just a misunderstanding. Mikoto herself hasn’t had any relationships since that time (with the college guy she had a crush on), so she suggests that the two of them have a competition for who can get a lover before the other. As the night continues on, the class works diligently on the cultural festival, which is starting the next day.

I would cry foul about how they skipped some stuff (to name a few: half of chapter 113, a shortened Tenma and Yakumo scene, and a shortened Hanai and Yuuki scene), but I really don’t care because this episode was just as funny as today’s Suzumiya Haruhi episode, if not even more funny. This is so much better animated than in manga form (and that’s not something I say often). They’re really outdoing themselves on the humor, especially those stories that the class wrote up at the beginning. Can you tell I really enjoyed this episode?
Harima’s reactions to the onigiri was almost Yakitate!! Japan quality lol. The onigiri eating is just one of thing many things he did this episode that has inadvertantly made Eri like him more. She gets a lot of screen time, making it seem like they’re building up to something in terms of the Flag Faction. The actual cultural festival in next week’s episode should turn out to be quite interesting.