Woo, first review, and a couple days before the set is officially out also.

School Rumble is a show I really enjoy.  The singles released between late 2007 through the middle of 2008 had quite a few flaws in regards to video though.  Funimation has changed a show released as six singles into a boxset with five disks, so let’s take a look at what’s changed, what’s better, what’s worse, and what is the same.

School Rumble Season 1 Trailer

First let’s take a look at the series itself.  School Rumble is a comedy series that has a decent amount of slapstick, and a lot of character based comedy.  It has it’s dramatic elements (which is the plot focus), but for a lot of people their ability to enjoy the series will likely be based on the jokes.  And with it’s jokes it definitely delivers.  School Rumble jumps back and forth between finely focused specific jokes and the fine comedy tradition of ‘just start throwing jokes at them, they will laugh at something’.  Most of the jokes are quite good and will have you let out some sort of laugh, but even when they aren’t good enough for a laugh, you will rarely find a moment you aren’t at least smiling, which for me is the best you can get from a comedy.  It’s dramatic and story elements are relatively good also, although I’m sure there will be arguments for years on if they actually matter.  You could also argue if the plot is there to give a reason for the comedy, or if the comedy is there to make the plot funny.  But it’s a good show, and one I will no doubt recommend to my friends for years.

I’ll leave out character details, since I honestly believe most of the characters are well rounded and you are better off learning about them by watching the show.

Now let’s look at the packaging.  The original release of School Rumble came in six normal style DVD cases that were clear.  The artwork on each volume was a single character shot, with screencaps from the show behind them colored to be white, black, and a single color (different for each volume). Each of those had a reversible cover with a group shot of the girls from the series (with Harima, the male lead, on one of them).  The reversible covers were the group shot over a white background, with a color band across the middle.  For the season set, we have 3 thinpaks.  Each thinpak is a clear case.  Each side of the insert on the outside is one of the ‘reversible images with color bands’ from the single releases.  The color bands are all yellow now.  When you open the case you get the disks, and the back of the inserts have character sketches, and the episode lists for the two disks inside each case (the third case only has one disk in it).

The boxes to store the DVDs are wildly different for each release.  Volume 1 of the singles could be purchased with a metal tin that looked like a school locker to store the DVDs in.  It was a nice idea, but I felt the curved metal case didn’t quite hold the DVDs right, and it was sorta cheap metal, like a slightly tougher soda can.  I always felt like it would bend far easier than a good chipboard case (especially since even with all the disks in it there was a decent amount of open space in the case).  The season set is a step up or a step down depending on how you look at your boxes.  The season set has a case that fits three thinpaks perfectly, but rather than being a nice quality chipboard box, it’s basic cardstock.  Near a few corner’s its double folded cardstock to make it look nicer and not bend quite as easily, and is a single or double step up from “we just tossed it in a case”, so there is that.  I also should mention I really like the art on the front of the season set, which you can see at the very top of the review.

The menus on the disks are nice and clean, with an easy to read font and character artwork throughout.  One thing to note is the show is 4×3 and the menus are 16×9

Onto what many people considered the major flaw of the singles, video quality.  As far as I can tell, the season set uses the same encodes as the singles with one difference.  They got rid of the alternate angle (the original singles had an alternate angle that showed the original Japanese text in the opening credits and closing credits) in the set.  Other than that the video seems to be about the same.  Sometimes good, sometimes fine, sometimes eh, sometimes bad.  The show is never unwatchable, but there are definate times the video quality yanks you out of the show and makes you go “that video is bad”.  The animation quality for the show itself is generally acceptable, if not good.  Lots of scenes of characters standing around and just talking, but you rarely get the feeling of “this is cheap”.  All the character designs are very nice.  Each character has their own visual quirks so theres never any confusion on who is who, and the artstyle is appealing enough that you never have to struggle to look at anyone.  There is one small visual quirk that will be gone into later in the review.

The audio on the set is relatively good.  Both the English and Japanese audio tracks are 256k Dolby 2.0 tracks (same as the singles).  Both audio mixes have nice clear voices and are nice to listen to.  The Japanese voices are…the Japanese voices, not sure what else to say.  Acting is good (or at least as good as someone who doesn’t speak Japanese can tell).  The subtitles give a literal translation of what is said on the Japanese audio.  The English dub goes a bit more loose, but for School Rumble I honestly prefer it.  Nearly every character is cast perfectly.  The standout in the dub is Brandon Potter as Harima.  He has the tough guy voice down perfectly, and Harima’s internal monologues are especially enjoyable.  He is still sorta relatively new with not many credits to his name, but I’m glad he was cast in this role and hope to see him in many more (and that’s saying alot, cause when Funimation announced they had the show, I don’t think anyone thought for even a second that Harima wouldn’t be Chris Sabat).

edit- In early episodes the literal English subtitles sometimes leave out honorifics and sometimes change some honorifics to their English equivalents -sensei to Mr. or Mrs. for a teacher. Despite these the subtitles still flow and read in such a way that I don’t believe it changes the viewing of the show, so there is no change to it’s grade, just letting everyone know.

Extras, Extras, Extras.  The season set carries over all the extras from the singles.  They have all been moved to their own disk (the singular disk in the third thinpak).  Nearly a dozen interviews with the Japanese cast of the show, a bunch of spots and commercials for School Rumble that aired in Japan, and opening credits and closing credits without any credits on them (hooray for clean opening and closing animations.  You have the shows normal opening credits, normal ending credits, the Dojibiron ‘opening’ (the ending credits for an episode were done as a mock opening for a Power Rangers/Sentai movie that a character went to during the episode), and the final episode closing credits.  Their was a different opening for an episode that had Harima at sea on a boat and a bunch of men sang a song, but neither the singles nor the season set have a clean version of this intro.  It isn’t a big deal, but it would have been nice.

Now, the last thing to go over, the odds, ends and oddities.  The first one is likely a minor nitpick, but I feel it requires a mention.  The back of the box advertised 90 minutes of special features, but it includes the trailers in this time.  Since all the extra features are  on the same disk, let’s see how much extra features we actually get for our money.

In total, the last disk has 1 hour, 33 minutes, and 4 seconds of total running time between all the different title features on it.  Let’s tally up how many of these are not extras (trailers and such).

FBI Warning, Funimation Logo, frontloaded trailer for Kodocha- 58 seconds.
Trailer for School Rumble Season 2- 1 minute
Trailer for Ouran- 1 minute
Trailer for One Piece- 1 minute
Trailer for Rumbling Hearts- 30 seconds
Trailer for Degrassi- 1 minute, 30 seconds
Trailer for Peach Girl- 30 seconds
Trailer for Black Cat- 1 minute
Trailer for xxxHolic- 31 seconds

Now remember, back of the box says 90 minutes of special features INCLUDING the trailers.  If we add all that up we have 7 minutes and 59 seconds of commercials out of 1 hour, 33 minutes and 4 seconds total.  That is less than 90 minutes of special features.

The next issue is an odd pixel glitch that happens throughout the show (and was there on the singles as well).

When you click that screencap and get the fullsized one do you notice anything wrong?  Look at the very bottom.  The bottom of the screen is ‘off’, as if someone slid a few of the pixels to the left.  It is an odd little glitch and one wonders why they didn’t catch it.  If you are watching the series on a TV without overscan it can be a bit jarring at times. (The last picture in the review, two paragraphs down, also has a good example of this. Look at the bottom of the bow Yakumo is wearing in the picture).

One tiny little nitpick of mine is the tagline/slogan Funimation gave the show, “No! Wait! It’s not what you think!” It just seems like a really bad non descriptive catchphrase for such a funny show.

The last issue has to do with the format of the set.  We have 4 disks, and a 5th disk with all the special features.  Checking the size of each disk, and the size of the extras, there isn’t a reason the extras need their own disk.  I guess it’s nice to have them all in one place, but it does artificially make the set seem larger than it really is.

Despite it’s flaws it is a nice set and worth the money if you enjoy comedies.  The video is a bit iffy, which is something to take into account, but it isn’t so bad that it will ruin the show for you.

School Rumble is one of the best comedies you can buy, and I recommend everyone track down the series, whether it’s the season set or the singles.

Series: A (A super entertaining comedy that never lets up with the jokes and great characters)
Packaging: B- (Decent packaging that could have been much better with a better quality box)
Video Quality: C+ (Acceptable video quality, not really good though)
Audio Quality: B+ (Good audio, if not great)
English Dub: A (A dub that has quite a bit changed, but keeps the characters themselves, and keeps the story, but changes jokes to the English equivalent when it is appropriate)
Literal Subtitles: B+ (Funimation has a font that while not hard to read, looks a bit messy)
Extras: B- (Good Selection, but nothing that really jumps out at you)

Overall (not an average): B+ (While the set has definite flaws, the show is just really great and shouldn’t be missed)

Looking forward to season 2.

Screencaps are lossless PNGs taken in VLC.  As always if you have any screencap requests leave them in your comment.

~this article has been altered since it’s original posting to clarify something regarding the subtitles~