In terms of describing Cromartie High School, I think Jascii put this the best way: Cromartie High School is not about delinquents; “it’s about a bunch of morons who look like delinquents”. It’s Production IG’s shot at a comedy, and while it’s not one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, it’s a very capable comedy-series nonetheless.
The fun in this series comes from the fact that even though the characters are all a bunch of idiots, they still try to be smart by engaging in huge debates over nothing, and they keep doing so with a straight face (many thanks to the animation, which remains consistent throughout the entire series). Every time a fight is about to take place, you can bet your hat that the characters will just talk endlessly about how they’re going to fight, and in the end they lose interest because of something else completely random that caught their attention.
That, along with the originality of this series make it a pretty funny short series (the episodes are only 10 minutes). The creators really try to toss everything they can think of at the viewers. We’re talking here about meteors, aliens, robots, grown men in bunny-suits and a Freddy Mercury-lookalike. This is more than enough material to keep the viewer from getting bore, so this series also doesn’t suffer from a lacklustre second half…
…although the characters do remain rather one-dimensional. There are also a bunch of characters with really inconsistent personalities, especially the main one: he changes from a complete moron to someone with actual intelligence, depending on the writers’ mood. There is character-development, but it’s pretty much become useless because of the episodes that seem to be aired in random order (one particular character is moves to America for a number of episodes, and yet a few episodes during this period show him like nothing’s ever happened).
Nevertheless, Cromartie High School is a quirky little series that’s good for a nice laugh. It’s got enough material to fill its airtime with (although it does at times overuse its running jokes too much, mostly the Afro-guy gets a bit too much airtime then what’s good for him), but I laughed a lot during this series.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 |
| Characters: | 7/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 9/10 |
I like how they all have the exact same expression in your screencaps.
Anyway, to put your sense of humor in perspective; I remember you gave SZS a 91 or something, and the second season less. SnH was 82.5 on the new system. Where would you put Gintama at the moment? It’s just that you seem to rate comedies in a slightly different manner, seeing as there’s no clear-cut place for ‘funny’ on the aspects you show us.
Hmm, I rated SZS 90/100, but I think that if I were to rate it right now, the score would probably a bit lower. Gintama at the moment would probably make for an overall score of 90/100 or 92,5/100.