Sean Nixon wrote an article on new types of masculinity called “Exhibiting Masculinity” where, upon investigating the cultural representation of half naked men, he also brings up one important concept which I think is important and readily applicable to, well, a shitload of stuff. Nixon remarks that “[i]n particular, the concept of patriarchy is weak at explaining the relations of power between different masculinities,” and that there are “relations of domination and subordination operating between different formations of masculinity” (Nixon, 1997, pp. 300). Harima Kenji, our School Rumble protagonist, undergoes a series of developments, yet his previous states of identity are never really lost; Harima develops in such that we can get a good look at the different kinds of roles he plays that are situational, that is, the type of masculinity he displays depends on the situation, most importantly, in relation to Karasuma.
I think it’s safe to say that our first impression of Harima is a one that reeks of manliness. Beard, bike, beaten-up bastards – all of that is quite masculine. But wait, Harima is also capable of being quite the wimp when it comes to Tenma (although this changes). So we all know that we act differently around certain people. You wouldn’t want to act like you do in a boxing ring around your grandmother. But of course these situations demand different types of masculinity – the fighter, and the domesticated boy, respectively, all of which are latent and displayed at the correct time.
Karasuma is, on the other hand, monolithic and inextricably stoic. Antisocial? Autistic? No, not really, he was in that band…and anime characters have a particular lenience (fetish perhaps, no, definitely) for the silent type – so he is exactly that – the silent man, like that was hard to figure out. Of course this role has been recycled with your minimalist Jin, minimalist Afro Samurai (don’t laugh at me), Morinozuka, and so forth. So Karasuma is almost like a parody of the tall and silent, especially when he has to play the jester (mime?) in those fantastical, awkward situations throughout that love triangle. But even if Karasuma is in himself a satire, he does retain the masculine qualities that constitute, specifically, the silent/refined/elegant/minimalist man. And as we’ve seen, one iteration of the pop-culture samurai fits this description pretty well.
Insofar as Karasuma is situationally homogeneous, he acts as a control to which we can compare Harima. The two instances I clearly remember off the top of my head of Harima/Karasuma interaction are (1) the scene where Karasuma is drinking water and Harima eventually says he likes him and will buy him curry in the future, and (2) when Karasuma and Tenma are at the animal fortune teller.
In the first, and this is before Harima stumbles upon Karasuma and Tenma eating onigiri outside, Harima approaches Karasuma but is seemingly talking to himself while Karasuma drinks. Harima already had a vague inclination that Karasuma was the guy Tenma liked, so of course he is going to play out his alpha-male status by assuming the role of the best-buddy-bro. Harima attempts to establish his hegemony over an unsuspecting (allegedly retarded [exaggeration] in Harima’s delusional mind) Karasuma by subscribing him just as some pal, thereby elevating himself to the likes of the jock (we also don’t know yet that Karasuma is a pro football player?!) that has tons of friends, Karasuma being just one of the unrecognizable many. Harima even says he’ll pay for the curry, as though Karasuma were some poor bastard who couldn’t afford lunch, haha (that’s ironic, you know). Harima’s hypocrisy is fun to laugh at, since it’s just a presentation of the high school social struggle, but who did have power? Karasuma. Here we have the silent masculinity versus the imperialist-asshole masculinity whose words cannot by any means penetrate that steel wall of a poker face. And so Harima only ends up looking like a dumbass while Karasuma walks away unflinchingly in the presence of an alleged badass.
In the second situation, Harima assumes the righteous hero masculinity where he chases after Tenma after Karasuma makes her cry. Again, Harima attempts to display his power by questioning Karasuma’s motives, but, and again, Karasuma basically nullifies any kind of authority by, seemingly, submitting himself to Harima’s will. I think Karasuma said something like, uh, “go.” Then he went to a curry restaurant. But anyway, and this is funny too, Harima is the one who submits to Karasuma’s hegemony now simply by going along with him. In fact it’s almost like Karasuma becomes arrogant when he completely disregards anything besides his love for curry with his matrix style pimpflip onto a pole. In essence, an abridged dialogue would go like this: “You bastard, you made her cry!” “I must eat curry, go to her.” “Yes master!”
In Harima’s case, a patriarchal system is almost never really applicable because he’s always in a subordinate position. Yakumo being the exception, otherwise, well…having a completely pathetic male lead would be interesting but I have a feeling that there is a marketability factor behind this. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, the whole Yakumo misunderstanding is pretty funny, overall, but that kind of humor could be converted and amplified in more Tenma/Harima if a questionable Yakumo/Harima relationship were out the question (and in the same way, the Eri/Harima relationship is hilarious in its own right). And while the whole point of this anime is to convey the complexity (sort of…not really) of gender relations, as we get the male dominated Asou/Suou & Ichijou/Imadori (in a very odd fashion…) relation, as well as the female dominated Eri/everyone besides Harima & Yakumo/Hanai relations, we do get a good look at relations of force in masculinity, especially with Harry McKenzie, Harima, and Hanai, and that other guy – and in this particular combination we bring out the badass in all of them, and there’s that one back alley scene I’m talking about
In exploring more of the masculine-masculine relations, there are a treasure chest full of scenes that you can bring up, one being the sports fest in season I, especially the relay race, but I think I’ve covered the main theme of Harima/Karasuma. In ruminating upon these variations of an overarching masculinity, this “suggests that we need to think about a range of new codings which share a loose family resemblance;” (Ibid., pp. 304) it grants us allowance into traversing the spectrum of masculinity that is Harima Kenji – not some god awfully boring two-dimensional character, but one that is rather flumsy and hard to define.
