Kenji Harima
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Kenji Harima | |
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| Nickname: | Beard (ヒゲ Hige) |
| Birth date/Zodiac: | 1 December/Sagittarius |
| Blood Type: | O |
| Age: | 17 |
| Height: | 180 cm |
| Weight: | 79 kg |
| Class: | 2-C |
| Job(s): | Mangaka, among others Pen name: "Harima Hario" |
| Seiyū: | Takahashi Hiroki |
Kenji Harima (播磨 拳児 Harima Kenji?) is the male protagonist in the anime/manga series School Rumble.
An ex-delinquent who loves Tenma. Although he does not practice any specific martial arts style, few people are able to match him in hand-to-hand combat. He has the ability to communicate with animals, and possesses a wide variety of strange and exotic pets which he named after European monarchs. He has a little brother, Shuuji, who likes Yakumo.
Apparently he is loosely based on Shizuma Kusanagi from the anime Samurai Girl: Real Bout High School (the motorcycle, being a ruffian and 'wild man'), and his appearance greatly resembles that of the mangaka of School Rumble, Kobayashi Jin.
Harima begins the series wearing sunglasses with a mustache and goatee. He originally adopted this look to avoid being recognized as the boy who saved Tenma from a thug the previous year, but was subsequently accused by her of being a pervert (Tenma apparently no longer remembers that incident). He also undergoes several changes in appearance throughout the series. The style he sports most often is sunglasses without a mustache and goatee, which lasts from the last few episodes of the first season and throughout the entire second season.
He is most definitely a 'bad boy' at heart, one who is too stupid to go beyond the honorifics and complexities of love which he is quite frequently faced with.
Harima struggles often to confess to Tenma, though he knows she has absolutely no feelings for him and may even dislike him. Every time Harima finds the courage to tell Tenma his true feelings, something happens which prevents him from succeeding. He gets extremely jealous seeing Karasuma and Tenma together, but his attempts to put a stop to that usually end up bringing them closer. To date, Tenma has yet to hear his confession properly.
Harima's dream is to become a famous mangaka (adopting the pen name Harima Hario, probably a reference to Fujiko F. Fujio, creator of Doraemon). He started drawing doujinshi to avoid dwelling on his failure to win Tenma's heart. In his works, Harima is the hero, Tenma is the heroine in love with him and Karasuma is the arch-villain /love rival who ultimately loses to Harima. He initially idolises the mangaka Nijo jo and imitated his drawing style, but after a brief depression after knowing that the person is none other than Karasuma, he adopts an original style and thanks to Goto Tengai and Yakumo Tsukamoto's motivation, he pursues his dream not for the sake of self-gratification or escaping from reality.
Whenever he has problems with his work, he secretly consults with Tenma's sister, Yakumo. Because of this, people often see Harima and Yakumo together and those who know them believe that they are actually dating. He constantly tries to explain the situation that he and Yakumo are not in love with each other, which only ended up in further misunderstanding to the slow and dense Tenma. This may only be partly true however, since it is hinted that Yakumo is in fact secretly in love with him.
Harima also must deal with situations involving his classmate Eri, unaware of the fact she has a crush on him. While Eri wanted to be closer to him, he avoids and detests her for being snobby and making him feel inferior due to her immense wealth. Anegasaki also has affections for Harima, as he is the same situation as her in the middle episodes of Season 1 of the anime, when she finds him in despair after he realised Karasuma was the one Tenma liked, and sympathising with him offers to shelter a few days in her apartment. Anegasaki also appears later on as the school nurse, which leads to a few unfortunate situations for Harima.
As a result, the various mishaps with several female characters in the series has gained a reputation of him among his classmates as a monkey.
While Karasuma is Harima's romantic rival, his actual chief rival is Hanai, the class representative of 2-C. This is shown visually by the colours of their glasses: Hanai's glasses are depicted as white (due to light reflection) while Harima's glasses are black.
Note: Sawachika calls Harima by an alternative nickname: "Hige (鬚)" ("Moustache"/"Beard") while Anegasaki calls him Hario.
