School Rumble

School Rumble revolves around the daily lives of the students of Class 2-C at the fictional Yagami High School, along with their friends and families. Tenma Tsukamoto, a cheerful yet unremarkable second-year high school student, has an obsessive crush on her eccentric, enigmatic classmate, Oji Karasuma. Tenma struggles to confess her feelings to Karasuma, not only because he is listless and borderline-antisocial, but also because his only fulfillment comes in eating curry. Unbeknownst to her, Tenma herself has an admirer, Kenji Harima.

A recovering truant and delinquent, Harima attends school solely to get close to her, and even begins creatively expressing himself as a manga artist, but he has similar difficulty declaring his love due to Tenma's dimwittedness and single-minded ambition, and whenever he summons the courage to do so, circumstances and his own bumbling conspire against him. Many of these instances, also result in Harima finding himself in mutually embarrassing situations with one of Tenma's best friends, Eri Sawachika, causing the two to form a tense relationship. Eri, the richest and most coveted girl in her grade who lives a duplicitous lifestyle and yearns for companionship that her father is unable to provide, finds Harima initially to be a creep as a result of these situations; however, they end up becoming unlikely friends, and Eri finds herself falling in love with him, although she frivolously denies this. The series predominantly revolves around Tenma and Harima's ill-fated attempts to confess their feelings, and how they each grow as people in spite of their failures.

Jin Kobayashi began writing School Rumble, his debut work, in 2002. He stated to an audience at Honolulu's 2006 Kawaii Kon convention that he started writing the series because he found the idea of a manga involving a delinquent falling in love interesting. Kobayashi's favorite character, Kenji Harima, is based largely on an amalgam of various friends, although he estimates "about 30%" of Harima is a reflection of himself. However, despite putting most of his personal feelings into the female characters, he stated that Ryuuhei Suga, a minor supporting character, is the most autobiographical.

Most of the other characters are based on memories of former high-school classmates; Kobayashi recalled that he had no real idea of their voices when drawing them, and it was not until much later, when he heard the voice actors' interpretations during the production of the anime series, that he knew how they should sound. He acknowledged that some characters are more developed than others; in reply to a fan question about the mysterious Akira Takano, he admitted that, despite the closeness he feels for her, he did not put much emphasis on Takano and planned to develop her love-life slowly. Kobayashi intentionally centered his story arcs around misunderstandings which he then resolves, since he believes "if there's no misunderstanding then there's no funny story." He claims that none of his stories are based on real-life events, although when pressed admits the possibility of some resemblances but without divulging specific details.

The School Rumble manga had a successful sales run in Japan and the North American English market. In Japan, several volumes managed to chart: Volume 13 was the ninth best-selling manga for the week of June 21, 2006, before falling to tenth the following week; Volume 15 reached 4th place for the week of December 20, also falling to 10th the following week; and Volume 17 came 7th for the week of June 20, 2007, subsequently dropping to 9th. School Rumble Z ranked 18th for the week of June 15, 2009. Del Rey's North American translation sold well, although not quite as well as in Japan.

Volume 3 was ranked 99th in September 2006; volume 4 was 96th in December; volume 5 was 98th in April 2007; volume 12 was 141st in November 2008; and volume 12 was 169th in May 2009. Overall the series ranked as the 145th best-selling English translated manga series for 2008.