First Impressions / School Rumble

Summary:
Harima shows Yakumo a part of his manga, where a prince (Harima) has to save a sleeping princess (Tenma). He actually drew a total of 120 pages and is so tired now that he leaves the manga with her and goes to take a nap. During this time, class 2-C’s rendition of “Sleeping Beauty” is about to begin. Eri is acting the part of the main prince and Mikoto is supposed to be the princess. The play starts off without a hitch: the six princes are rescuing a sleeping princess trapped in a tower by an evil wizard. Impeding their path is a group of three sumo wrestlers, but they bow out of the way at Eri’s request. The princes reach the base of the tower, and then encounter a gate guarded by a living rose. Prince Eri easily defeats it with her swordsmanship.
Backstage, Yakumo realizes that it’s almost time for the sleeping princess to make her appearance. The problem is, Mikoto is nowhere to be found and Harima has fallen asleep on the bed. Yakumo tries to wake him, but is forced to hide herself when the bed gets raised onto the stage. Everyone is very surprised to see that the princess is actually a guy, Harima no less. Of all the people in the audience, class 2-D’s Tougou Masakazu is most impressed with this turn of events. Eri realizes that she’ll have to kiss Harima at this rate, and is horrified that Akira signals for her to continue with the play.
The next scene has Yuuki and Mai as spirits of the sword that will help defeat the evil wizard. But before they can hand it over, they must give the princes a test of wisdom. Their question is: what has 4 legs in the morning, 2 legs during the day, and 3 legs in the evening? Tenma immediately answers “monster,” which is incorrect. This screws up the script even more, since the spirits now can’t give them the sword. Akira makes a change so that the princes are forced to fight all of the evil wizard’s subordinates. In the end, only Eri is left standing and she prepares herself to awaken the “princess” with a kiss. Much to her chagrin, Harima pulls the drapes between them and the audience starts laughing at her.
The angry Eri opens the drapes and finds Yakumo in bed beside Harima. Eri forces Yakumo to take responsibility, so Yakumo responds by getting out of the bed. She happens to be dressed like a witch because of her own class’s cultural festival activity, and it’s perfect because now the audience thinks that she’s the evil wizard. Yakumo claims that Harima needs some peace and quiet to rest and that Eri is disrupting his sleep. Eri gets pissed off that Yakumo is making her look bad, so she draws her sword and the two start fighting. The prince puts all of her power into a final attack, but Yakumo dodges it and counters by smacking Eri’s face with her staff. When Eri asks Yakumo why she’s fighting, Yakumo answers by saying that Eri doesn’t know about the 100 years that the wizard and the “princess” have spent together. After confirming that Yakumo isn’t lying, Eri decides to give up for now and makes her retreat.
With only Yakumo left onstage with Harima, the audience starts demanding a kiss. The pressured Yakumo gets close to kissing Harima, but suddenly a person drops down from the ceiling – Akira. She kisses Harima really quickly before disappearing again. Thus, the play ends with the “princess” having been awoken by the female spy. Everyone is pretty happy with the way things turned out, especially since the audience is going wild with applause. Eri confronts Yakumo afterwards, but Akira steps in and diffuses the situation by saying that she only kissed Harima on the nose.
At the end of the day, Ichijou’s band hijacks the stage during a teacher’s boring speech and the entire room breaks out in dancing. Imadori is so caught up in Ichijou’s singing that he brushes off the girl he was supposed to meet. Meanwhile, Mikoto is telling Hanai that she’s happy that everyone liked the show, but she regrets not having been able to be the princess. So that Mikoto can experience being a princess, Hanai pushes her onto the dance floor towards Asou, who’s dressed like a prince. As those two start dancing, Tenma encourages her sister to go apologize to Eri. The two girls are able to make up and Eri even asks Yakumo to dance. During this, Eri asks if Yakumo is really going out with Harima. Yakumo says no and explains that Harima had only asked for her help. Everyone ends up having a great time, except for Harima, who’s been crucified on the ceiling as punishment for what he did.

Bloody Mary Faction!
Ah, the great role reversal that is class 2-C’s play – female princesses and a male prince. What’s more, it culminates in Yakumo vs. Eri 🙂 I think the funniest part out of all of it was watching 2-D’s Tougou Masakazu’s reactions to the play (compared to how Lala was sleeping through it). I went through this entire play wondering how they were going to resolve it, and then Akira’s Mission Impossible-style ceiling drop came out of nowhere. As to be expected from a show like School Rumble…
So Yakumo has now cleared the way for Eri by explaining that she’s not actually going out with Harima. Somehow I doubt that’ll change much. The end of the cultural festival not only marks their reconciliation, it’s also a beginning for a growing Asou and Mikoto relationship, a.k.a. the Basketball Faction (spoilers in link). However, next episode does not appear to be the start of the basketball arc and instead is about the guys and girls on a picnic. I haven’t read any of the manga past volume 12, so I dunno if they’re jumping ahead or if this is anime original material.

32 Comments

  14. Think they would have done better if they split this into two episode, alot of stuff might have been skip, the most funniest part I fine is Harima pulls the drapes between Eri and say he doesn’t want her and the audience starts laughing at her.

    Mike
    Reply

  20. Actually the next episode is all original from the looks of the preview. They did not skip any stories the current chapter 175~124 had no story involving a picnic.

    SS
    Reply

  21. los capitulos de school rumble 2 son cheveres y espectaculares los quiero
    la 5 y la 6 .

    se pasaron con esos capitulos

    de la primera fue chevere pero la segunda me parece un poco mas chevere y cada ves esta mas loco esos capitulos .
    bueno bya

    carlos antonio rospigliosi monteagudo
    Reply

  25. You know I love this show but I truely hate both the main characters. Harima and Tenma are both so stupid that I hope they end up together in the end since I dont want Yakumo or Eri to suffer. Really waht sort of man would not want to be kissed by Eri or Yakumo? Noone I respect anyways. Personally Im all for this “Bloody Mary Faction”.

    Fuhrer
    Reply

  29. No! They did the camping trip already in the first season episode 16. If you just started watching from the second season and are not caught up with the current manga chapter 175 or at least watched the first season than you should probably do that first. That is if you can……The next episode is definitely all original from the looks of the preview…!!!

    SS
    Reply

  32. at first i wanted kenji to be wif tenma, but the more i watch tenma is just not good enuff for kenji >:) she shud be wif some miserable guy like karasuma >:( and eri or yakumo can have the best (Kenji) ^^

    brianleung8912
    Reply

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