SITE READER WARNING: The following review is extremely short and very to-the-point. This is not going to be one of those several page rants you normally read for a review. The following review is very simple in nature and size. Please don't send me e-mails about how short this review is. You have been warned. With that out of the way, onto the review.

"School Rumble" is like a high energy Sunday comic: It's cute, it's charming, and it's not meant to be remembered for more then five minutes. This is a series that is easy to like, but difficult to remember. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just a warning for those who like their comics to be deep, meaningful, and life changing. With that out of the way, "School Rumble" is about love and the difficulties in finding true love. There are three main characters who are involved in finding true love. The first character is a girl named Tsukamoto Tenma. She's in love with a boy named Karasuma. Karasuma is the second character, who doesn't acknowledge that Tenma exists, but delays transferring to another school after she writes him a love letter (but forgets to put her name on it). The third character is a guy named Harima, who is the school delinquent who loves Tenma, but Tenma doesn't realize this. This is the set-up for "School Rumble," where these three characters will play "cat and mouse" with each other throughout the series and not even know it.

This is Tsukamo Tenma.

Admittingly, this is not the strongest story in the world. Most of the time this idea can spin off into something special, but the author of "School Rumble" seems more content at just making a fun comic. And you know what? When you look at this series with that in mind this series works. Yes, the characters are not deep. Yes, the storyline is stupid. Yes, the jokes are kind of predictable. But it all works, and THAT is what is important at the end of the day! Annoyingly, the book doesn't have any color pages in it. Since Del Rey books cost an extra $1.00 over all the other manga out there, I think the color pages should really be a basic feature for Del Rey books. The footnotes explaining hidden Japanese puns and the preview chapter for the next book are nice, but these are pretty much basic features for most of all the other manga companies (that, and I question what the point of having a preview chapter is when the text isn't even translated into English). That said, the translation and everything else seems fine. Del Rey explains that the names are printed in their Japanese order (that is, last name is said first) to help preserve some of the jokes, but how this order helps make most of the jokes funnier is beyond me, and it isn't explained in this book.

This is Tenma's luck. Got it? Good.

I know, I know. There has GOT to be bigger issues to talk about then silly name orders right?! Well...actually, you're right, it's a stupid issue to even bring up. Sorry, I'm having a hard time finding things to talk about with this book. This really is a simple series in every way possible. Okay, I'm just going to wrap up this short review and say that "School Rumble" is simple, safe, and fun. You might not remember it in ten years, or even the following ten minutes, but it's a fun read while it lasts. And sometimes that's all you really need.

- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -