Casual Cogitations

Before anyone embarks on this series, allow me to give three pointers on what to expect from Cromartie. One: each episode is barely twelve minutes long. Two: every episode moves in the pace no different from a bullet train. Lastly, three: Common sense brings bane to the comedy in the series.

Cromartie High School. A harsh place filled with delinquents, punks, brutes and other riff-raff. A school so rough and tumble that if you drop your pencil on the floor someone will pick it up and eat it. A school so surreal its attendees include a 400-pound gorilla, a tin can robot named Mechazawa and a student known only as Freddie (because of a startling resemblance to a certain lead singer). The short of it: take Azumanga Daioh, replace all the cute schoolgirls with no-good high-school punks, and top it off with a bit of Williams Street-esque bizarre comedy and you've got one of the funniest anime titles, Cromartie High School.

We're introduced to this world through the eyes of a new student, Takeshi Kamiyama. Though up until now Takeshi was largely a good kid, since he's entering one of the roughest high schools in all of Japan he's determined not only to transform himself into a delinquent punk like everyone else, but also to change Cromartie for the better. However, first he's got to prove himself the toughest guy in the class, though he finds the typical methods, fisticuffs and hair bleach (which just makes him look like an idiot) strangely ineffective. Later in the show he takes on the entire school, but this proves easier said than done, at least if Freddie, Mechazawa and the 400-pound gorilla have anything to say about it. Add to that rival schools fighting over turf (and over jokes to use for radio shows), and life isn't going to be easy for young Kamiyama. However, it will be freaking hilarious, as these may be some of the strangest, stupidest thugs ever.

Like I've previously said, just swap out the female-only cast of Azumanga for a male-only cast of shockingly and superbly stupid thugs, and you've got the basic gist of Cromartie. A variety of almost random asides, references and assaults on the fourth wall augment that humor. For example, Kamiyama's opening narration for the second episode of the series addresses how people whine about changes in character design and voice casting in anime adapted from manga and eventually ends with Kamiyama morphing into Piyoko from Digi Charat and even adopting her signature appellation of "pyon" to the end of every sentence. Basically, it's off-the-wall comedy with a heavy of dash of surrealism.

True, each episode lasts no more than twelve minutes, so under most other circumstances the plot would either feel disjointed due to a lack of time to develop things, or resolved in a convenient rush if the episodes are self-contained. This will not apply here because simply put, there is no plot to begin. There’s one purpose to Cromartie, and that is to make the viewers laugh, which it does without any semblance of wit whatsoever in its humor, or a plot to speak of.

Speaking of humor, Cromartie makes use of parodies of other anime titles as the main ingredient to its comedy, and these often make for the punch lines. This is what makes Cromartie a comedy that is unlike other comedies I’ve seen, even if some of the punch lines didn’t always tickle my funny bone. However, at the breakneck pace each episode progresses, the punch lines will just keep coming and the previous one will not seem to matter for long.

Most of the laughter stems from the ridiculously yet hilariously incoherent dialogue shared by the characters in Cromartie. These exchanges and their equally side-splitting outcomes are the result of two common traits shared among all (okay, most) of the characters: firstly that they’re very stupid and secondly that they’re always ready to beat the snot out of someone. Best of all, they do so with stoic expressions on their faces from start to finish.

Don't even try to make sense of it all, just roll with it and let Cromartie High School take you where it will. It has only one aim in mind: to entertain.

I thought that a few of the comedic gags weren’t delivered well, but for the most part they hit the bull’s eye straight on. It may be flawed, but with such a bizarre cast that you just can’t hate, what more can one want? Comedy is basically about delivering laughs, and Cromartie did make me laugh.