School Rumble Coming in Late August

This just in, hot off the press!

One of my inside sources at Funimation has confirmed the rumor that the first volume of School Rumble will be scheduled for release in late August and that we should have a firm date for it shortly. This is very exciting because School Rumble is one of the highest rated Anime series to come out of Japan for some time and a lot of folks have been e-mailing in asking us about it.

Better still, Funimation is planning a limited edition Tin starter box for the first volume of the series that sounds extremely cool - it's going to be shaped like a locker. I'm trying to get some preliminary (first peek) art to post so you can see what it will look like.

Update: Here's that first peak tin box art I promised you. :-)



Funimation's School Rumble site can be found here.

Barring realignment for release announcements coming later this year that we don't know about yet, so far I predict the top 8 most popular Anime DVD releases of 2007 will be:

1. Haruhi
   
2. Full Metal Panic 2nd Raid
   
3. School Rumble


4. Gits Solid State Society


5. Black Lagoon


6. Naruto


7. Bleach


8. Tsubasa
   

Of course this is highly speculative to try to call any of these this early in the year, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

(I think we can also drop Death Note into that list assuming Viz manages to get it out on DVD before the holidays. I sure hope they do!)

We'll get the first volume of School Rumble posted to the store as soon as Fun gives us a firm date.

School Rumble Synopsis:

Tsukamoto Tenma is an ordinary 2nd year high school student who has fallen in love with one of her classmates, Karasuma Ooji. However, currently she is unable to confess her feelings to him. To make things worse, she found out that Karasuma is transferring to another school in a year. On the other hand, Tenma's other classmate, Harima Kenji (who is a delinquent) is also in love with Tenma. Not being able to confess his feelings, Harima gets depressed day by day.

UPDATE: Video Scan reported today that the first DragonBall Z Remastered Box is the #1 selling Anime DVD so far this year, but my list above only had new series in mind, not repackaged releases.