The moment, screencapped above, was my absolute favourite scene in this episode. Itoko thinks that Harima has brought home a girl to have hot monkey sex with and it is none other than the younger sister of his big crush. I think it is reasonable to know that she can recognise Yakumo - afterall, she did trick Harima into telling his Basis of Attraction (tm - Stripey) story to her in the Chinese restaurant while the Tsukamoto girls were seated behind him. (Which ep?) Tiny quibble with the Mr.A sub in the conversation later - Yakumo is surprised that Harima lives with Itoko-sensei and the pun isn’t itoko as “candle” but “cousin” . Harima replies that it’s ok since she is his cousin (ore no itoko) but Yakumo hears it as “my Itoko” in the “Itoko is my gal” way which only multiplies her confusion since she can’t read his mind and suspects that he likes Tenma. Hmmm… think DC’s Kotori’s confusion when she lost her power.
The scene when Harima goes shopping with Tenma for a present for Karasuma was quite agonising as was the train ride back. The whole premise of this series is inability to communicate and the only character who has the power to read the minds of those who like her, can’t understand the concept of love or relationships. Harima is probably the first guy she felt comfortable enough with to ask about those things but after giving a good answer, the waters are muddied again due to his self-absorbed reaction. More on the non-communication and mis-communication basis of School Rumble when with my series review / ep 26 post.
23. Eri refuses treatment from the school nurse, Tae, after being completely seen through about her jealousy about the latter’s fondness for “Hario.” This proves costly later when she loses the class relay competition due to the strain of the untreated minor injury from saving Harima’s pride during the “horseback competition” in the previous episode. To pay his debt of honour to Eri, Harima promises to win the boy’s relay for the class on her behalf. He does so against the odds after weak starts by the first guy and Imadori but his cap comes off, exposing his baldness. Eri gets him to dance with him, creating a huge sensation in the school.
Another display of muleheaded pride and hubris from Eri during her confrontation with Tae - the latter who showed herself to be the more perceptive, mature and honest person leading to even more hurt pride and unhappiness. This episode made Eri an even more interesting character for me but not any hotter or more likeable. I quite like how Harima and Eri have nicknames for each other (Hige or beard for the former and Ojou or princess for the latter) which are meant to be disdainful or sarcastic but end up sounding quite endearing.
Continue reading ‘School Rumble 23-24′
Yeah, yeah, I know Mikoto Suou and Eri Sachikawa are not gay at all. In School Rumble, it’s very clear that they do have their respective male love interests. Just let a guy have some fun, ok? (笑)
Anyway, after seeing WF’s 2005-06-29 status update I’ve decided to go ahead with this little flight of fantasy rather than wait for the last four eps to be released. Continue reading ‘School Rumble: MikoEri’
One of the reasons why Stripey and I are good pals is because we appreciate beauty. Even though we have very different taste in our real life and anime ladies, we can often appreciate each other’s point of view. It is in this spirit that the Synthetic Ah-peh-ture Radar (SAR), as I like to call it, was developed. It is our take on Synthetic Aperture Radar, “a form of radar in which sophisticated post-processing of radar data is used to produce a very narrow effective beam.”
The above screen caps from episode 21 of School Rumble (aka “Sukuran“) is precisely the kind of situation that the SAR was developed to avoid. What Imadori (the blond guy) did was the classic direct radar contact, staring at (i.e. to BEO or Hokkien-derived slang for “look” ) whatever attracted his attention directly and most indiscretely, resulting in physical violence and hilarity.
SAR has a similar starting point from normal BEO radar. It relies on passive, edge of the horizon observation (aka “corner of the eye” ). For conventional BEO, after passive identification of a potential contact, the normal standard operating procedure is to zoom in directly on the contact for confirmation, re-confirmation (the second glance), appreciation and possibly sounding of the alert to fellow BEO operators. Often this direct approach will alert the contact which have powerful detection modules (more observant and the all-powerful female intuition as pictured above in the third screencap) and adverse reactions may arise - at best, contact moving out of range to an anti-radar strike on the BEO operator.
SAR relies on the sweeping glance where the contact is the starting point of the sweep. Several sweeps at varying intervals will then follow after which the collected data is agregated and put through pattern recognition. Of course, every BEOster has a different pattern recognition program (taste, preference) but we believe that some universal criteria for enhancing pattern recognition through the deployment of the BEO Jammer Canceller can be developed. And if an approach is considered, the BEO Stampeder may also be used. (Apologies to non-Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny fans.)
Thus it is fairly obvious that the fine art of BEOing chiobuz requires a complete suite of modules and concepts of which the SAR is only the begining.