Chapter 5 Summary: Harima is facing off against a whole gang of punks, and takes them down with ease. He narrates that he refuses to lose because he is a man in love! Later, in class, the other students are shocked and afraid when they see Harima in class, except for Tenma, who tells him to not use his desk to crush briefcases.Afterward, the class takes a test. Harima struggles with the test, but notices Tenma taking hers, not stressing at all. He also notices that she forgot to put her name on the test. He then tries various ways to get Tenma to notice this fact; mouthing it out to her, yelling that he forgot to put his name on his test in hopes that she would get the hint, but they don't work. He then writes a not stating she forgot to put her name on it, she notices it, but she still doesn't get the hint. Tenma copies what Harima wrote as an answer on the test. Harima's last idea is to place her name on his test, having a fantasy about it and how she would fall for him in finding out that he did this. He goes through with it, but it backfires on him; and Tenma for that matter as the test she receives back has a zero score. She's shocked, and Harima prays for forgiveness.
Chapter 6 Summary: Harima comments on his past and how his life was changed when he fell in love with Tenma. When he arrives at his shoe locker in school, he receives a challenge letter from another student, Tennoji Noboru, and he rips it up. Later, he puts a love letter in Tenma's locker, asking her to meet him behind the gym at 4 o'clock.
At that time, Harima arrives behind the gym, finding Tenma waiting for him. He also finds someone else there, Tennoji, waiting for him as well. While waiting, he notices Tenma, makes some small talk, notices her letter, takes it from her and reads it. Harima is ticked that that he read his letter. Tenma likes it, however; upon hearing that, Harima notes that it is the happiest he's felt ever since falling in lover with her. Tennoji lies to her and says he wrote the letter, but Tenma rejects him, saying that she likes someone else. He's heartbroken. Harima arrives, offers some sympathy, and then beats him up and knocks him out; then mocks him for the way that Tennoji read his letter.
Review/Analysis: Chapter 5 is the funniest I've read in this series so far. The not-quite-direct contact between Harima and Tenma was amazing, he's trying to do a service for her so that she writes her name down, but she never figures it out. The punchline at the end with Tenma receiving a zero grade shows off two things: She's dense, and Harima's a moron, intellectually speaking
I liked chapter six as well. What it served was to introduce a rival character for Harima. Tennoji does fill that role somewhat, but he seems to be a standard-fare, one dimensional delinquent. He mocks Harima's poem, but he does not know that Harima himself wrote it since he didn't sign it. I only wonder what would have happened if he actually did sign it. I think it would have killed the story since 1) Tennoji gets punched out earlier, and 2) Tenma rejects Harima, since she already is in love with Karasuma. Not signing that letter, in fact, continues the story since Harima does not realize (yet) that Tenma is not in love with him.
These chapters primarily featured Harima, with Tenma in the background more or less. He tries to reach out to her in both chapters, but those attempts backfired badly; the zero score on the test that he took, but wrote her name on there, and the misunderstanding with Tennoji and the love letter. Harima's attempts at getting her attention, while they fail like Wile E. Coyote, serves as a source of comedy. Tenma's attempts with Karasuma has a similar effect of failure, but it keeps us laughing. But there is a possibility of these attempts getting old to us after a while, so hopefully a slightly different tract is taken sometime in the future, but then again, the same method's are not being done over and over, which I like in a gag manga. For now though, establishing characters and settings is paramount, as it builds a foundation for things to come (I know what happens later on, so I would think that this is a good assessment.)
I find that these chapters here establish a common theme- misunderstanding; along with the sub-theme of putting your name on something, as seen with the test and with the letter, which leads to Harima placing Tenma's name on his test, and Tennoji lying about the letter. I see the theme of misunderstanding as a primary building block for most of the events in the series.
I like where the series is going, but the only thing I find wrong is the lack of a continuous story. It's all self contained in each single chapter; not a bad thing in a gag manga, but not so much in a romantic comedy. I see this story taking on more of a romantic comedy genre at some point. I think Kobayashi-sensei understands this as well, but we'll see what happens.
Let's see what happens in the next two chapters. Until then, God bless.
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