Sakigake!! Cromartie Koukou

Takashi Kamiyama is your typical mild-mannered high school student—polite, aloof, and pacifistic, with a slightly above-average IQ. But would your average high school student really enroll himself at the infamous Cromartie High School, known as a breeding ground for the toughest delinquents out there?

Apparently so, as that is exactly what Takashi does, though for reasons he'd rather leave unmentioned. However, one thing is for sure: the "hard-boiled rabbit in a den full of hungry lions" is never going to have another dull day. And how could he, now that he's surrounded by mohawked punks, obnoxious robots, and... gorillas? And was that Freddie Mercury riding a horse down the corridor? Follow Takashi as he earnestly dedicates his new high school life to better his school's reputation while his classmates are hellbent on wreaking havoc.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Freddie Main

Mechazawa, Shinichi Main

Wakamoto, Norio Japanese

Kamiyama, Takashi Main

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Hayashida, Shinjirou Main

Suzuki, Takuma Japanese

Maeda, Akira Main

Inada, Tetsu Japanese

Di Gi Charat ing

Sanada, Asami Japanese

Yamaguchi, Noboru ing

Kazama, Yuuto Japanese

Takenouchi, Yutaka ing

Naitou, Ryou Japanese

Go, Hiromi ing

Mechazawa, Beta ing

Kanai, Mika Japanese

Kobayashi, Noriko Producer

Nishizawa, Masatomo Producer

Sakurai, Hiroaki Director, Storyboard

Moriwaki, Makoto Episode Director

Reviews

Apr 20, 2025

Capacocha

Recommended

Cromartie Highschool is the funniest series I’ve seen in a good while. The humor is almost entirely slapstick and gag humor, which may be seen as cheap to some people. However, I tended to not care as much because the execution of it is good. Laughter is an involuntary response, and while it can be intentionally produced, a good comedy relies on the instinctive reaction of stress relief. To find a word that is quite fitting for Cromartie Highschool would be “absurd.” No, really, it’s a series whose premise is entirely nonsensical. The series has the added benefit of episodes that are shorter than they ... would be in a typical series, so the twenty-six episodes felt as if they were completed in a blink of an eye. The first two episodes in particular are slow paced, but I found that the pacing of the series tended to speed up when more of the jokes landed.

There’s not a lot of substance to it, mostly because the point of this series is to make you laugh. Cromartie Highschool is entirely populated by delinquents, with the exception of a few. The classic story structure is practically absent from this series, as there is no real plot or character arcs to speak of. After all, it wasn’t designed to be some thought-provoking masterpiece aimed at making a cultural impact. Instead, the structure of the series is episodic. Each episode begins like any other, with the setup being quite normal for a series that is especially abnormal. Usually a small event or misshap would occur, which transpires into a problem for the gang of delinquents. The absurdity gets the better of the series, and the problem resolves itself on a happy note. For example, one of these problems involves a song being stuck in everyone’s head, which starts as a whistle, but metamorphosizes into a tune that gets all of the delinquents humming. In Cromartie Highschool, there’s no faculty or rule enforcers to speak of. Instead, the schools are often regulated by leaders of each of the schools, who are also around the same age as the rest of the students. The premise of the series is similar throughout. However, the series benefits from this in a manner similar to Phineas and Ferb. Both of them master the formula of each episode, which gets connected by the running gags.

Despite practically everyone acting delinquentish, the series has a diverse set of characters that all have their own gag. The most notable of these delinquents include a pink ponytail-haired guy. The fact that he and his hair just exists… menacingly… is hilarious. Some of the other characters include a motorcycle riding robot, a gorilla who is often smarter than the delinquents, and a mute named Freddie who bears a striking resemblance to Freddie Mercury. Cromartie Highschool isn’t the only delinquent school in the area. As a matter of fact, these schools are overseen by students known as leaders, who function more like bosses. They tend to be opposites of each other, one of these leaders for example is a bit of a weakling when it comes to handling car rides, and another one can be cool as a cucumber. The protagonist, Takashi, is the oddball in an unusual school full of oddballs. He’s often regarded as the smartest in the school, which could be due to the amount of time either surprises or maybe even intimidates some of his peers with his wits. Though, most of the time he only points out that the sky is blue. A lot of his thorough explanations go over their heads, which is unlike his chats with his mother, who is also a tough lady. The large cast of characters set the tone of Cromartie Highschool like no other.

The art isn’t “objectively” great, but it still adds to the charm of the series. It has a sort of sketchy feel to it that makes the characters look like badasses, Takashi even more so. There’s not a lot of animation, as a lot scenes have only still shots of the characters’ blank expressions. The audio makes up for for a lot of the art, because at least the voice acting characterizes everyone quite well. Regardless of whether the audiovisual department is lacking or not, it’s not like it mattered in the first place anyway.

To summarize, Cromartie Highschool is a hilarious and light-hearted series. It’s not made to convey any story or deep meaning, which can be seen by the lack of a story structure and themes. A school full of delinquents couldn’t be any less serious. The characters are a strong highlight of the series by their virtue of all being likeable and adding to the comedic value of the series in their own way. The only thing that kept this series from being a 10/10 is the fact that the comedy wasn’t hit after hit. My sides weren’t exploding, and it’s not like I was lying on the floor dying. Nonetheless, it was still a hilarious series.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Aug 23, 2022

CleansedSpace

Mixed Feelings

I think some parts were pretty funny, but some episodes are fillers straight retarded. If a few words, this anime had too many extra episodes. Now, if the director would've cut some episodes you would've had a fine comedy.

I voted 7 because some parts were hilarious but I firmly believe this anime is average and just for the boiss.

There's a robot in the anime and everyone thinks the robot is like a human and some episodes were specifically about the robot in action scenes and some other boring asf stuff where nothing really happens and you are supposed to laugh for any ridiculous reaction of ... a character...

This anime is for you if you already watched all other anime comedies and you have a lot of extra time.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Feb 18, 2018

XaskisX

Not Recommended

Long story short it is a great comedy, but terrible anime.

For ones who are interested in more details... I propose to think what makes a good comedy anime, good? Your innate answer would be
jokes, and essentially you are absolutely right in your thoughts, but aside from that the comedy ANIME just like all other genres needs to fit in strict time limitations, provide good visuals, have a good sound work etc. Which were the breaking point of this show in my opinion.

So let's go through all of them step by step:

Story - 1:
Whereas story in purely comedy show is not essential, i think that ... this is the right section to explain why time limitation is such a severe problem for comedy shows. Fitting anime into the frames of episode is not an easy job, but while in the most shows you can create a satisfying end from literally any situation without losing much mood of it, or even create an extra tension and hype as a result when you are working with the jokes you have no choice, but extend them or adding a random stuff to fill in the gaps after the main jokes of episode. As a result, the show starts to feel blunt.
Art - 3:
I liked the art style of the show, but the animation quality is terrible. The dialogue based nature of the show, surely limits the options, but all of us know that there is a studio that does that right.
Sound - 4:
Opening is fine, other soundtracks are kind of fit in the mood, but plain for the most part.
Characters - 5:
Despite having pretty wide cast of characters, some of which is rather unique in some way (i mean this is not really common to have Freddie Mercury in the class), but I don't think that i should even start to explain why they are nothing more than one trope dummies without any sign of development.
Enjoyment - 7:
You might be surprised by that, but in fact I did enjoy the show after all, because of it's absolutely hilarious attitude and great jokes.

Unfortunately, this show was released into wrong time and form, i think it had all chances to become the best comedy show, if only it were delivered through the net without strict time limits and better audiovisual work. But at it’s current state I’d recommend you the same thing as the authors of the show in the first episode: go read the original.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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