Kenji Harima

Kenji Harima (播磨 拳児) is a fictional character in the anime/manga series School Rumble and its male protagonist.

Fictional character biography
Harima is an ex-delinquent who loves Tenma. However he still retains aspects of his delinquent persona such as riding his motorcycle to school and getting into fights with other delinquents. 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, Jin Kobayashi. He has a little brother, Shuuji, who likes Tenma's younger sister, Yakumo, although they do not live together. Harima is a fan of the jidaigeki TV show called "The Three that were Slashed", which Tenma is also a fan of.

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, and Harima also tries to change the subject when she is on the verge of remembering. His hair is pulled back with a headband, leaving an ahoge. 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.

Personality
Harima is most definitely a "bad boy" at heart and is too stupid to go beyond the honorifics and complexities of love which he is quite frequently faced with. He often struggles to confess to Tenma, though he knows she has absolutely no feelings for him and may even dislike him. Every time he finds the courage to tell her his true feelings, something happens which prevents him from succeeding, and often Harima's own indecision and inability to take immediate action when opportunities present themselves make him miss them. 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 has a habit of trying to escape his problems by avoiding them, which has resulted in him briefly following various pursuits and skipping school for periods of time. This first manifests itself when he discovers Tenma's interest in Karasuma, leading him to ditch school and turn to drawing manga as a means of escape. 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 discovering that Nijo jo was none other than Karasuma himself, he adopts an original style and pursues his dream for reasons other than self-gratification or escaping from reality, although he continues to use himself, Tenma, and Kurasuma in his works. Harima's pen name is Hario Harima, probably a reference to Fujiko F. Fujio, creator of Doraemon.

In addition, Harima briefly masqueraded as a fortune teller by using his animals as the means of determining people's fortunes, but his disguise did not fool his classmates, save for Tenma. He later tried to leave Japan by signing on as a sailor aboard the Kikokumaru, a fishing boat. The ship's captain, Goto Genkai, himself a former mangaka, convinced and inspired Harima to face his problems and follow his dream, giving him his own drawing pen crafted from a tuna skeleton that Harima now uses.

While Karasuma is Harima's romantic rival, his actual chief rival is Haruki 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.

Like the Tsukamotos, it is implied that Harima is largely independent. Although he now lives with his older cousin Itoko Osakabe, he previously lived on his own a year ago, when he first encountered Tenma. Itoko is actually surprised that someone she thought of as being fiercely independent is so humbled by Tenma's influence.

Abilities
Although he does not practice any specific martial arts style, few people are able to match Harima in hand-to-hand combat. On more than one occasion, he has single-handedly defeated numerous opponents, emerging from these fights unscathed. His physical abilities also make him one of the best athletes in Class 2-C although he is not in any of the sports clubs.

Harima has the ability to communicate with animals, and possesses a wide variety of strange and exotic pets which he named after European royalty, although how he adopted them has not been revealed. The animals are as devoted to Harima as he is to them, assisting him when he was pursuing his stint as a fortune teller, and on their own turning themselves into performing animals when their presence at the Yagami Shrine was discovered by the press to help Harima out and prevent themselves from being harmed. This ability enabled him to communicate with Yakumo's cat Iori and extract a thorn from its paw, which caught Yakumo's attention.

As mentioned above, Harima is an aspiring mangaka, and his work caught the attention of Nijo jo/Karasuma's publisher. He later submitted a sample of his work to a mangaka contest, which he wins.

Relationships
Harima's attempts to become closer to Tenma become complicated because of the relationships he develops with some of the other female characters. These have resulted in Tenma thinking that he is interested in girls other than her, as she is unable to tell from his reactions to her that he is in love with her. For example, Tenma briefly thought that Harima was interested in Mikoto Suo because of his behavior during the beach trip.

Whenever Harima has problems with his manga, he secretly consults Yakumo Tsukamoto, the only person he trusts with reviewing and assisting him with it. Because of this, people often see Harima and Yakumo together and those who know them believe that they are actually dating. This perception further inflamed his rivalry with Hanai, who is in love with Yakumo. The two also get into misunderstandings because whenever one or the other becomes involved with one of the Tsukamoto sisters and the other finds out, he assumes that it is the object of his affections, arousing intense jealousy and combativeness. Harima constantly tries to explain 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 secretly has feelings for him. It is also interesting to note that out of all the girls he is somehow involved with, Yakumo is the only one he's never insulted or thought ill of. Harima has called even Tenma an idiot often enough.

Harima also must deal with situations involving his classmate Eri, unaware of the fact she has developed 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.

The older Tae Anegasaki also has affections for Harima, as he was the same situation as she was after she found him in despair after he realised that Karasuma was the one Tenma liked and was himself Nijo jo. Anegasaki sympathised with him and sheltered him a few days in her apartment. Although Harima rejected her advances, Anegasaki still likes him and later becomes 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.

Sawachika calls Harima "Hige (鬚)", meaning "Moustache" or "Beard", and continues to do so after he adopts a clean-shaven look. Tae Anegasaki calls him by his pen name, Hario.

Kenji Harima 播磨拳児