Noritaka Sawamura is a loser. He isn’t smart. He isn’t strong. He isn’t agile. He is, however, extremely tenacious. To win the heart of his fair maiden, Nakayama, he endeavors to become the high school King of Fighting. This series is full of slapstick, potty humor, social awkwardness, braggadocio, and pointless fist-fights. You’ll love it. Alas, there are no HTTP mirrors for this scanlation (at least not to my knowledge), so you’ll have to dust off the old IRC client, and head to #TamaScans@irc.irchighway.net for a copy. Tama Scans picked the title up only a few chapters ago, but I’m sure somebody has the first 25 chapters on an fserve somewhere.

TV-Tokyo’s airing of a School Rumble anime adaptation was something I initially viewed with unreasoning enthusiasm. As the initial air-date drew near, however, it struck me that as a long-time reader of the Mangainc translation of the manga, the animated version probably wouldn’t have a whole heck of a lot to offer me. After the first two or three episodes aired, I hungrily downloaded the fansubs, and watched each. The animation quality wasn’t anything to write home about, but pretty good for a TV anime. The character design and plot, however, were so similar to the manga that there just wasn’t a lot of incentive to continue watching. I already had 70 chapters (plus b tracks) of that plot read, digested, and thoroughly enjoyed.

Recently I had the opportunity to watch it through again, after a several-month hiatus from the print version. It’s a fun series, with a notably non-grating opening and end theme song for most of the series. The last episode was great, as it panders to what I expect would be a number of fan requests for how things should tie up. They didn’t go so far as to have Harima (the male protagonist) fall madly in love with somebody other than Tsukamoto Tenma (the main female protagonist), though a lot of American followers of the print version would have liked to see any number of alternative couplings result.

Ever since Inky retired from translating I’ve found myself increasingly withdrawn from the world of fansubs for both anime and manga. I’m just not involved in it as a community thing anymore, what can I say? A notable exception to this withdrawal has been Sunabouzu, a quirky action/comedy about a post-apocalyptic bounty-hunter/repo-man/total-badass.

Alas, the group that has been kind enough to provide translations of it in English (thanks, Lunar!) has been rather slow to release, with only 8 translations released while 22 originals have aired thus far. The artwork is… odd, with the animators clearly being more interested in making sure that they are portraying various firearms properly than keeping the characters visually-appealing, but the humor is outstanding. Give it a shot!