Cromartie High School

Publisher
ADV
Director
Hiroaki Sakurai
Production
Kodansha, Production IG, TV Tokyo
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Running time
26 episodes
Year
2003

Cromartie High School Episode 4 Preview

By David Rasmussen
14th Apr 05

Dearest Readers...
We managed to make it through an entire month of Cromartie High School reviews!
After last week’s disappointing humming episode I hoped this week would prove to be better.
Well... it’s different.

Episode 4
Sadly it seems to have nothing to do with the gang of Cromartie, and focuses on little mentioned rival school Destrade Technical School, and the big bad there who just so happens to be a lover of the comedic arts which is a secret only he (and now you) know of.
Who would have thought such a silent person could be such a comedian?
I liked the voice actor they got for this character, by the way, very nice.
I also like the episode despite the fact it has absolutely nothing to do with Cromartie High... which should actually be a minus instead of a plus. I mean what the heck! We’re only four episodes into the series and already the series has taken a detour and started talking about meaningless minor characters we won’t even see very much of! What’s up with that! Azumanga Daioh didn’t become this distracted to the point it wandered off track and started spending whole episodes on things not related to Miss Yukari’s class... you didn’t spend an entire episode watching the antics of Tadakichi-san, for instance! Nor did you have an entire episode revolve around the occasionally seen biting cat, which is the equivelant of having an entire episode written just about the seldom spoken of Destrade High here in Cromartie High’s anime!

And since it’s a one track minded pursuit of this one guy’s obsession with comedy it sort of makes the episode rather slow and dragging as it moves along at it’s reduced pace.
But then again anything and everything is better than last episode’s obsession with humming so I have no gigantic complaints about this episode.
Now I have time to kill... do you want me to hum the Princess Tutu opening credits song to you? No? Oh.. Well, we might as well just move on then.

Cromartie High School Breakdown the 4th
What’s Hot?
The same thing that I’ve said before. It’s a good series, and the voice dubbing is solid on this one.
Also, UNLIKE Princess Tutu which takes what was good about the manga and throws it all away for something entirely different, this series is closer to the manga than Tutu’s anime which is a shame.

What’s Not?
Too bad the series seems to want to be paced like Azumanga Daioh, and every episode seems to have a theme (which just didn‘t work these past two episodes)! If they only stuck more to the manga source, which is (by the way) the exact same complaint I had about Princess Tutu the Anime Series, then I would have been even happier with the series. It’s good, but it could have been a little better. Just a tad better. Like for instance did we need an entire episode about forgetting the name of a song and having everyone hum the song since they can’t even remember the words to it? And did we need an entire episode based on one guy from Destrade High? Did we? I don’t know, I just don’t know.

Moments to Remember?
Not much this time... but I did like the voice of the main guy, even if the main guy of this episode happens to be a secondary character that is probably seldom seen in this series. Let alone a secondary character that seems to harp on and on about comedy to the point of it becoming boring. Sheesh.

What to Ignore?
Hmm... maybe the fact that this episode just doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the gang at Cromartie today. Maybe that’s a good reason to ignore this episode. It’s still good and all, but still... oh, well. Forget it. Not a problem. Ignore my misgivings.

Overall? - An improvement over Episode 3, but not exactly a homerun grandslam episode, the series continues to be good but it’s beginning to have lagging episodes... if this gets any worse the episodic quality is going to get worse and worse, which is bad. Though I have hope that this series will continue to be a source of praise for me as opposed to it being a source of concern and worry. Next time should be good though since we bounce back to Graphic Novel 1 as inspiration as we finally sit down for some quality time with the Underground Kingpin of Year One, as we get on da’ bus... then the cab... and take a ride down delinquent boulevard and take a turn at motion sick lane.
But that’s next week so stay tuned, dearest readers.

-- David Rasmussen 14th Apr 05

Cromartie High School Images