Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
The only thing for certain is that for Kamiyama, Cromartie High School is his reality. And what a
surreal reality it is.
Because this is where the toughest, meanest (and often dumbest) students are sent to do time. At
Cromartie, purple-mohawked bruisers and pencil-chomping street thugs are just part of every day life.
And so is a 400-pound gorilla. And a macho brute named Freddie who travels with his own theme music.
And, of course, Mechazawa, the student voted most likely to need an oil change. So pack your bags, put
on your best tough-guy swagger, and get a lesson in insanity from the hilarious losers at Cromartie
High. This is one class you won't ever want to cut.
(Source: Discotek)
There's a lot of ways to say screw it, and not care about what makes animation technologically pretty. You can make character outlines really sketchy, you can eschew in-betweens for your key poses, you could literally just shift your characters across the screen. _Cromartie High School_ goes the latter route somewhat, letting its extremities lift any concerns about its low-budget feel. It's a classic TV animation principle: you're not watching _Space Ghost Coast to Coast_ for good animation, but because the writing and situations are batshit and hilarious. If we're going way back, you're not watching _Danger Mouse_, _Rocky and Bullwinkle_, or _Roger Ramjet_ for anything visually impressive. Let your prejudices against "bad animation" go for this one, or else you're just gonna look like a damn fool. Characters are scaled bigger and/or smaller as they speak, still shots are repeated if needed, character designs are copy-pasted, random background elements will pop out of bare nowhere, stock images are used in place of drawings on more than one occasion. And all this does is add to the joke. _Cromartie High School_ is a parody of delinquent anime that takes every opportunity to be as silly as humanly possible. There are no teachers because who cares? Any acts of delinquency are largely ignored, unless they need to make a joke about, for example, Takenouchi's extreme motion sickness. It's wonderful. I love it. ~~~~~~img220(https://pa1.narvii.com/5850/6240a8ddaa31d6b29b6f5da226b6c528751b70fa_hq.gif)~~~~~~ Freddie Mercury is there just because. There's a soda can-looking robot that they do anything EXCEPT take good care of. The leader of an opposing school is actually just intensely into comedy. There's entire episodes about a satirical take on cutesy mascot anime that have little to do with the main cast. The gorilla gets an entire episode about working at a sushi shop based on a singular gag in the previous episode, and none of the established characters besides Mechizawa's little brother do so much as show up. It's a seriously funny anime that echoes several low-budget peers of the 20th century. It's somewhat of a shame Adult Swim never got its hands on it, because really, this is exactly the type of show that Cartoon Network airs at 11 pm. It's short, has barely any smooth or flashy animation to speak of, and lets the clever writing and characters do the work for it. Well, I say clever, but standout jokes can range from genuinely smartly written ("We need a sumo wrestler on car two") to "our robot is now a bike, we are spending the whole episode with our main character doing cool things on the robot bike". I must add that said episode decides to have a clip show towards the end, and none of the clips have much relation to each other in the first place. If you really care about that sort of thing, you've got to loosen up a little bit. Have some fun in your life. Accept _Cromartie High School_ into it. You'll thank me later.
>_Dearest mother,
I have completed my enrollment for Cromartie High School. I hope to get used to the school as quickly
as possible and lead a healthy, academic life.
But.
I’m surrounded by people who, frankly, scare me. Annnd, I’m kinda freaking out._
I vaguely remember hearing about this when it came out in 2004, but a show about a high school full of
delinquents didn’t interest me. Fast forward over a decade, and I came across a Tumblr post with the
first couple minutes of the first episode (while I can’t find the video, here’s a post with
screencaps that only manage to capture about 50% of the humor and absurdity). Over-the-top,
exaggerated, this wasn’t a straightforward show about delinquents like I’d thought, but rather a
parody. I was hooked.
The fun thing about it is that you don’t really need to know what it’s parodying. Obviously, you’ll
probably get more context if you do–I know a few stereotypes about delinquents picked up from 20 years
of anime and manga consumption, but for the most part, I don’t know much–but the narration and
animation do a good job explaining the basics you need (all the boys look like delinquents. All the
boys assume they and others are delinquents, while at the same time many of them have other goals,
weaknesses, and/or spend time philosophizing).
(According to its Wikipedia article, it’s a parody of the _yanki_ delinquent manga of the 70s and 80s.
I didn’t realize it was parodying a specific thing while watching, I just figured it was taking a few
tropes and just satirizing them.)
Like, I don’t have to have any prior knowledge to see that this guy is trying to be tough, and he’s
got a lackey.
