Sakigake! Cromartie Koukou

Title:Sakigake! Cromartie Koukou
Charge! Cromartie High School
Cromartie High School
Overall:Buy
Keywords: , , , , , , ,
Notables: Original Concept - Kodansha Manga Award Winner
R1 License - ADV (Renamed)
SAKURAI Takahiro
TACHIKI Fumihiko
WAKAMOTO Norio
Sixteen year old Kamiyama Takashi thought he was lucky to become enrolled at Cromartie High School, until he discovered that it is in fact an "olympic for delinquents". Though he can only claim to have done one seriously bad thing in his life (read the manga!), the very sight of a student who dares to come to school without behaving as a typical delinquent leads the others to jump to the conclusion that he must in fact be the toughest punk ever. After his first day at Cromartie High, meeting the wide variety of "school badasses", Takashi can only say "This school has too many weird things. I won't be surprised to see anything else".


[TV series, 2003-04, 26 episodes, 12 min]
Episode Details 
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent 8 6 7 7 7 6 Ggultra2764 [series:997#1552]
Cromartie High School is a clear parody of delinquent character archetypes in which I did find the humor to be hit or miss. The show relies on sight gags, some over-the-top elements (Mechazawa, Gorilla and Freddy being big examples) and the cluelessness of many of the delinquent characters in the series to deliver its laughs. It even breaks the fourth wall at points by making mention of its limited animation, referring to its manga source material and even poking fun of itself. Some gags I found myself laughing at (Mechazawa the motorcycle, the self parody in the final episode, Takenouchi's motion sickness) while others didn't get to me as much (Hokuto's lackey trying to address his name, Yamaguchi's loving of sophisticated humor, Kamiyama teaching the clueless delinquents about something). I'll give the series credit for trying to do something different with high school comedy. But the laughs it delivered only came at specific points for me and I even found myself not being able to laugh at all in some episodes. Your mileage may vary on whether or not you can get consistent laughs out of Cromartie High School.

Last updated Wednesday, July 14 2010. Created Tuesday, July 13 2010.
Buy 9 9 9 8 10 Kari [series:997#798]
Cromartie High School is absolutely worth buying, because it's hilarious. The characters are insane, and you can't help but like them, and laugh at them in every episode. One of the students is a gorilla who's also a sushi chef. There's also a robot, and a guy named Freddie who's about 45 years old.

The show makes no sense, but it makes me laugh, and that was enough to make me buy the DVDs.



The music fits the show and the animation is fine.



The voice acting is great. None of the humor of the original script was lost in the English dub. All of the ADV actors cast to voice characters in Cromartie High School, even minor characters, did a great job.



Last updated Sunday, September 24 2006. Created Sunday, September 24 2006.
Buy Forbin [series:997#1573]
Drama : Low
Comedy : HIGH
Action : Low/Med
SciFi : Med
Ecchi : None

20 Episodes Watched
Very Very funny. At first I was thinking this was a little stupid, but as the plot played out (And there is sorta a plot) I was laughing more and more. This gets the Forbin thumbs up for entertainment!

Last updated Monday, July 25 2005. Created Monday, July 25 2005.
Buy 10 10 10 10 Violet D [series:997#1393]
Delinquent and not the nice kids you might meet in high school and get this. The principle is a robot. They all try to figure out what is different about this principle and knowone is brave enough to say this guy is a robot. This is what is the funny part. They all notice it but they don't want to say just how different he is. Needless to say they are all bad to the bone.

Last updated Tuesday, July 05 2005. Created Tuesday, July 05 2005.
Buy 9 8 10 8 10 10 Anonymous #1926 [series:997#1926]
Welcome to Cromartie High School...no wait, welcome to the most insane delinquent school on the face of the earth! Cromartie shows you the tough and tender side of delinquents by bringing in tough guys, weird people, a robot, a gorilla, a few aliens, and...well..I'm still thinking how did Freddie Mercury get in there?!?!? All in all this is a very downright righteous comedy, there are stupid comedies, and there are rightreous one, Cromartie is one of the righteous one, ADV Entertainment has done their homework, by distributing the #1 comedy of 2004 in Japan...remember...all of your jokes belong to CROMARTIE HIGH!

Last updated Sunday, April 10 2005. Created Sunday, April 10 2005.
Buy Stretch [series:997#628]
How's about a little delinquent genre parodying? This show is brilliant. I had heard a lot of good things about Cromartie High, but reading reviews on paper is one thing, and actually watching the show yourself is something else. It began with "Warning: to all viewers"--I figured "Ah, the usual watch-in-a-well-lit-room-at-a-distance-from-the-TV spiel", but no, it continued as "The characters in this anime are delinquents, so please don't follow their behavior" (it had me laughing whether it was intended as a joke or not). During the OP sequence it was hard to choose between watching the bizarre animation or reading the bizarre lyrics to the song ("Get out of the way, you bloody freak!"). Takashi gets his first taste of the characters around him when he drops a pencil. Even though I had read about what the delinquents at Cromartie like to do with pencils, it was hilarious! The episode moves on to the "I was a bad-ass delinquent bragging competition", and it becomes clear that there isn't a whole lot of logic (but plenty of humor)involved in earning prestige here. Takashi tries to blend in by reading a book about "Debuting as a Delinquent" (appearances are all important!). Come to think of it, I don't think a single punch was thrown in this initial episode, which is fine with me--bring on more of the same style of humor! I prefer the fansub version, in which profanity is commonplace ("Let's just get over there and f--- them up!"). I say this because A)these guys are delinquents, after all, and as such it's hard to take them seriously if they don't even swear, and B)because profanity is so uncommon in anime that reading it in subtitles frequently cracks me up! I recently rewatched the series as a whole, and I'd say it remains funny but is most hilarious the first time around.

(the school is named after Warren Cromartie, once a baseball player for the Montreal Expos, more recently for the Tokyo Giants).

My favorite line:

Mechazawa: "Hayashida, you're a good guy. You look like an asshole, but you're really sensitive towards other people"

Hayashida: "I'm blushing! If someone speaks like that, I can't be myself!"

Last updated Sunday, September 24 2006. Created Saturday, March 26 2005.

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