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.

Short Synopsis: Paris is big. Mina isn’t there yet. Porfy’s out of money. So yeah, he’s still going to have to kill some time.
Highlights: Calm before the storm!!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
Porfy no Nagai Tabi is a very good series, but as I’ve mentioned before: overall just isn’t as good as Les Miserables, but one thing that it did do right was the OP: it fits for the entire series. In Les Miserables, people at one point were fighting and dying for what they believed in, and the OP still showed a bunch of little girls. ^^;

The episode starts as Porfy walks around one of the rich parents of Paris. Obviously, it’s not the most wanted part of the town by fortune tellers, so everyone acts annoyed at him, especially if he continues to bug them. A kind baker then directs him to the right places, and how it’s not the time for the fortune tellers to show up yet. Porfy then feeds some of the local pigeons and gets reminded of Apollo again.

That evening, Porfy sees the first cards since his arrival at Paris and idiotically mistakes the owner as Carlos. The supposed “Carlos” pushes Porfy away, who then hits one of the waiters, dropping one of his dishes. The waiter is very annoyed, although Porfy doesn’t seem to realize this because all he’s interested in is the food he just ruined: it’s Greek. Porfy says that he came from Greece, but the waiter obviously couldn’t care less. He then forces Porfy to the cook. Since Porfy doesn’t have any money and is familiar with the Greek dishes, he offers him a job. Porfy’d rather search for Mina, but the waiter, Xalupurous (Christ, what a difficult name), reckons that he can just search for Mina if he’s not working.

Alex(?), the cook, then shows him around and offers him a bit of food, since he’s a nice guy. It turns out that the restaurant desperately needed a new waiter since they recently sacked one of their old staff, and none of the French people was able to remember the right dishes. While Porfy washes the dishes, he chats a bit with Alex. It turns out that he was born in France, but his parents came from Greece. Porfy then accidentally breaks one of the dishes, making the waiter (I’ll just call him the waiter, since Xalopuro-thingy is just too complicated) gets even more angry. Later, when Porfy is peeling potatoes, he complains again because there’s too much of the potato wasted this way. The waiter then sends him to take away the dishes that are done.

One of the guests, reading a book, is getting bothered by a drunk. They struggle a bit, and she eventually pushes him onto one of the other tables. She however gets blamed for what the drunk did. The waiter tells her to leave, and even though Porfy tries to say that it wasn’t her fault, the waiter doesn’t listen and the woman leaves in anger, leaving her book. Porfy then brings it back to her.

A bit later, Porfy and Alex are finally done with the dishes. The waiter then pays Porfy with an incredibly small amount, due to the plates he broke and dishes he wasted and because of the book he brought back to the woman (he wasn’t supposed to). He then orders Porfy to be on early the job the next day as well. Porfy says that he doesn’t have a place to stay, but the waiter refuses to let him stay at the restaurant. Porfy then walks away, and runs into the woman from before again, who wants to thank him for bringing back the book. Apparently, she has been waiting for him, and overheard how he doesn’t have a place to stay. She introduces herself as Rose.

Porfy then tells her about how he’s searching for his sister, and lost just about everything, but Rose tells him to cheer up. She shows him around the house, and suggests how he should sleep on the couch in the living room, and of course take a bath, since he’s been sleeping outside all this while. When Porfy is watching outside, she takes him to the roof where they can get a better view.

They look at the stars for a bit, and then Rose says that she’s about to get to work. She puts on lipstick, and notes that it’s hard for a woman to be living alone. When she’s left, Porfy notices one of her paintings which has been flipped over. One of the faces of the painting has been crossed out with lipstick, and looks a lot like the actress Mina used to admire and the episode ends.

So yeah, it was a bit coincidental, out of all the woman Porfy could have ran into, but it’s a fascinating idea nonetheless, and the sacrifice the series has to make for it is more than worth it. I really like how, just before the finale of this show, the series decides to reserve two episodes to flesh out Mina’s love form movies a bit, by giving a bit of background for her favourite actress. After that, it’s really anything that could happen, and it all depends on how much time the creators want to spend on the series’ aftermath. There are seven episodes left, six if you count the next episode, which will conclude Rose’s story. I’m really curious to see how the final reunion will work out. The reunion with Alecia was downright awesome, and it’s now time to see whether the creators can make full use of nearly fifty episodes of building-up.