Cromartie High School is a comedy built around the same sort of "humor through repetition" that made Azumanga Daioh a sensation. The setup is usually very simple, even moreso than your typical sitcom. It starts with a single behavior or observation, which is then repeated until you just can't help but laugh at it. This process is helped along by using audio/visual jokes to create an effect of... you know what, I'll admit it. I have no idea why this show is funny. I can't fathom why I would laugh at some of these things, but I do. Logically, this means that the show is destined to be a party favorite, pushing the inebriated masses to do things that they'll pretend to forget later. Cromartie has but one major disadvantage to Azumanga at the outset: a lack of girls. Not that anime is in any way lacking in pedo material as a result.

I think you can guess what the setting for the show is. What you might not guess is that the school is comprised almost entirely of delinquents. The remaining population include Freddie Mercury, a gorilla, and a robot. This was a strange one from the start, because the delinquents are the main act instead of comic relief.

Queen fans might like this show, for obvious reasons.	No high school is complete without a ...huge gorilla?

This oddball comedy begins each episode with a letter from Kamiyama - one of the delinquents - to his mother. Kamiyama's a bit scared on the first day, thinking his classmates aren't very normal, or sane. He's convinced he doesn't belong there after a classmate chows down on his pencils. Then the show decides that it's spent enough time on introductions and settles into its routine. The first volume covers the following highly intellectual topics: who the biggest badass is, whether the robot in the neighboring class is really human, a song that everyone can hum but nobody can remember the title, and a delinquent's secret life of comedy.

These things might have been funny by themselves, but I think the random acts of humor that happen on the side help out. A gorilla playing guitar is pretty funny, as well as Freddie Mercury riding into school on a horse. And not to forget the guy who's bald except for a patch of purple hair shaped like a paintbrush, that twitches a lot and makes funny noises. There's plenty more where those came from, and it definitely adds to the funny.

I don't really know if I should recommend this title or not. To say "buy it!" would be admitting that I identify somewhat with a bunch of morons, and what kind of intellectual would that make me? Probably a perfectly normal one; but that's beside the point! Now I don't remember what the point was going to be, so I'll just say the show's funny and be done with it. The show's funny.

Distributor: ADV Films
Creator: Eiji Nonaka / Production I.G.
Released: 2003

Video Quality: A-
Audio Quality: A-
Presentation: A
Content: B
Overall: B+