Cromartie High School, Vol. 1

16 year-old Takashi Kamiyama decides to enroll in Cromartie High School, one of the roughest and toughest schools in Tokyo. Kamiyama has brains and could go where he wants but his best friend is a moron. So Kamiyama decides to stand by his friend and attend Cromartie with him. The problem is that his best friend is so stupid that he can't even get into the worst school in the city! So Kamiyama must face up to the reality that he's the only good guy in attendance. He starts to understand what he's up against when he drops his pencil on the floor, and a delinquent picks it up and eats it! It's not long before he becomes accquainted with some of the most bizarre characters in his life. These include a Freddie Mercury look-alike and a gorilla who seems to be smarter than some of the students, including Kamiyama's ally, the mohawk-sporting Hayashida. There is even a robot shaped like a garbage can with arms who wears a school uniform shirt over his metal body without attracting the least attention. The undisputed leader of the misfits suffers from motion sickness so when they're driving to a gangfight, he's ready to throw up. And you have Yokuto, whose father has great political pull in the education system, which has allowed his son to control 18 different schools, who plans to make Cromartie his 19th, that is, if he can defeat stupidity. This first volume of Cromartie was a good laugh. The situations verge on the absurd most of the time, such as when some of the students argue over whether the gorilla is considered human or not and someone says "he's wearing a watch" so that makes him human! The manga was very inventive, and reminded me of Azumanga Daioh but with a male sensibility. It does seem like the concept could become tired after a few volumes, so hopefully Volume 2 will go in some different direction. I would stay away from the anime version because it is so poorly animated that it seems no improvement over the manga. I would also recommend the manga and anime versions of Azumanga Daioh. Also, The Breakfast Club dvd movie.

OK, if Azumanga Daioh was about the hilarious adventures of a group of girl high schoolers, Cromartie High School is about a group of male students who are juvenile delinquents. Cromartie has a reputation for tough guys, as proven immediately when Takashi Kamiyama, the most normal-looking student, drops a pencil. One of Cromartie's thugs picks it up, then eats the pencil! Kamiyama tests the lug by dropping a whole bunch of pencils, which the guy then gathers up and munches down on! Other funny things include the revolutionary way of fitting in with a bunch of delinquents, a handbook read by Kamiyama so he doesn't stick out. However, things work out, because as Shinjirou Hayashida says, "say there was a rabbit, and it was living with a bunch of lions, and getting along just fine. That'd have to be one bad*ss rabbit." To which another student says, "I get it! Da*n, that rabbit rocks!" And even if you get into and win a lot of fights, it doesn't count unless you have a nickname, like "The Fireball of 2nd [class]" or "The Hospitalizer of 3rd [class]." Maeda is a good fighter, but as he didn't have a nickname, he's looked down on by his peers. However, he does have a mean-looking mom that scares his classmates. Cromartie's surreal and bizarre appeal is based on three other characters introduced in the first volume. The first is a tall bemuscled guy with a thick bushy mustache, slicked back dark hair, who suspiciously looks like the guy who sings "We Will Rock You." He never speaks and nobody knows his name, so Kamiyama names him Freddie. I wonder why-ha ha. Then there's a gorilla, an actual gorilla, who proves to be more intelligent than many of the actual students, and who is seen wearing a wristwatch and making a call on a cellphone! Finally, there is Mechazawa, a robot, basically a drum can with two headlight eyes dressed in school uniform, who's the brains of his homeroom class, constantly lifts the top panel of his head and oils himself with an oilcan, a satire of the 50's with the greasers. Kamiyama and his crony, Hayashida, who sports a Mohawk, aren't sure he's a robot and there's a running gag wondering if some of the other students will come out and say he's a robot. Or are their eyes playing tricks on them, is Mechazawa actually a normal high school student? Other weirdness involves Takeshi Hokuto, the son of a rich financier who wants to control Cromartie High School, but is freaked out at seeing Freddie and the gorilla. As he mistakenly enrolls in Cromartie, which is a municipal as opposed to an elite school, he quickly makes up lies to get him out of this mess, such as that he's fighting his own father, the shadow prime minister and evil archfiend. The delinquents at Cromartie, however, have the intelligence of a pretzel and believe him, which deepens Hokuto's dilemma! And Yutaka Takenouchi, the tough, bald, burly kingpin of Class 1, loves field trips and going to historic temples and such, but he gets motion sickn