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Major characters
Takashi Kamiyama
- Class: 1-2
Voiced by: Takahiro Sakurai (JP), Ben Pronsky (EN)
I'll bet you want to know why I'm here, right? READ THE MANGA.
The main character. He starts off relatively normal, but as the manga attests 3 chapters in, he'd have to be just as crazy as the rest to stay there.
- All There in the Manual: the reason he gives for being in Cromartie is only in the manga and the movie.
- Badass Biker: When he goes on adventures with Mechazawa's motorbike form. However, even Kamiyama admits that Mechazawa does most of the work and doesn't even need a rider to steer himself.
- Beware the Nice Ones/Berserk Button: Although he will usually plead for the least violent way to solve situations, he won't hesitate to shoot at people harrassing innocents in the street with explosive missiles. And he does it completely stone-faced, at that.
- Discussed the Beware the Nice Ones trope to the other saying that when he said "I'll kill you" it sounds way more threatening than the loud delinquent.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Does this quite a bit in the earlier stories, especially in the anime.
- Demoted to Extra: What happens to Kamiyama as the series progresses. It was most likely intentional on the part of the author — perhaps intended as a parody of other stories where the protagonist recedes into the background due to the far more interesting and/or amusing supporting cast. Kamiyama explains why in the last episode.
- Extreme Doormat: At first, and always at his old school.
- Felony Misdemeanor: When asked whether he ever has done anything bad, he confesses to doing something so terrible that even his classmates are astonished. Gluing the 37,042nd domino to the ground so it wouldn't fall over when his group was trying to top the record of 37,041 dominoes in a row.
- Flanderization: Kamiyama starts out as just sort of a strait-laced dork who then evolves into an uberdork whose moral fiber leads to incredibly questionable trains of thought. The author seems to suggest that Kamiyama has been this crazy since the beginning, and that it's starting to surface now that he has been among the Cromartie students for too long.
- Killer Rabbit: Hayashida vouches for him based on this principle. If he goes around a school full of badasses looking like a nerdy loser, he must be the toughest one of all. Turns out he's wrong, but pretty much everyone believes it.
- The Leader: Ends up being voted as the "Boss" of Japan due to being the only one able to answer a simple question. If nothing else, being somewhat more groudned than his companions they mostly listen to him.
- Loser Protagonist: He's a complete loser in pretty much every feasible way. There is absolutely nothing cool about this guy.
- Mama's Boy: Implied. He regularly writes letters to his mother, suggesting that they may be close.
- Mistaken for Badass: Somehow manages to regularly get mistaken for the biggest badass in the series.
- Neat Freak: Along with all of his other exaggerated moral traits, he's one of these.
- Non-Action Guy: Not that anyone ever really does much fighting, but it's made very clear that he's a terrible fighter.
- Only Sane Man: A parody of this in a way. He's not sane by any means, it's just that his form of insanity makes him a lot more coherent than most of the other guys.
- Ordinary High-School Student: Sort of. In a school full of bizarre delinquents, he comes off as this, but in reality he's way too much of straight laced stick in the mud to be considered normal.
- Straight Man: Relatively speaking.
- Took a Level in Badass: Briefly, once Mechazawa is turned into a motorbike. See below.
Shinjiro Hayashida
Kamiyama's right hand man.
- Blatant Lies/I Have to Go Iron My Dog:Hayashida: I got club practice and stuff.Kamiyama: What club are you in?Hayashida: Oh, it's the... Uh, what was it? Oh, yeah, boxing! The boxing club!
- Though it is subverted by the end of the chapter.
- Delinquent Hair: His mohawk. It's a fake. He keeps a normal slick hairstyle under a sort of toupee on which his mohawk is placed, because his family wouldn't accept him trying to be different - so he doesn't show up at his home with his mohawk on.
- The Ditz: He can't even manage a simple word problem that amounts to five minus two.
- Expressive Hair: again, the mohawk.
- The Lancer: He's Kamiyama's right hand man.
- Only Sane Man: Another one of the more coherent guys, though he's probably the least coherent of the group.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Assumes Kamiyama is absurdly tough despite looking and acting like a weakling based on the Killer Rabbit principle. In reality, Kamiyama really is a weakling.
Akira Maeda
One of the saner ones. Gets no credit.
- Butt-Monkey: No character is safe, but Maeda gets absolutely no respect.
- Distressed Dude: The most likely character to be kidnapped. No one rescues him.
- Expy: A parody of real life wrestler Akira Maeda.
- Hidden Depths: One multi part story in the manga is about students loving to read Maeda's story he made for a class project to the point he gets a movie deal. He is not to sure how that happpened
- I Just Want to Have Friends: One of the main reason he hangs out with the students is that they're the closest thing he has that passes as friends. Pointing out that his points are mean for a friend to say makes him temporarily forget the validity of his complains.
- Informed Ability: The only delinquent of the main cast to avert this in the manga. Maeda is shown on-screen effortlessly countering a Yakuza and would have likely won had it been one on one.
- No-Respect Guy: Despite being one of the most respectable characters. And all because he doesn't have a badass nickname.
- The Smart Guy: Certainly comes off as the most intelligent character, even compared to Kamiyama.
- Only Sane Man: Another one of the more rational students and thus one of Kamiyama's closest friends. Maeda is the only character that realizes Kamiyama is kind being crazy or going off tangent.
"Freddie"
- Class: ?
"..."
A mute student who looks shockingly like late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. No one knows for certain if he is Freddie Mercury or not, but the resemblance is uncanny enough for everyone to refer to him as Freddie.
- Ambiguously Human: Freddie is sometimes referred to by the others as something inhuman, and sometimes acts strange even by the show's standards.
- When he gives gives directions to a lost cab driver, the students say he might be using his animal instincts.
- When Maeda has an image in his mind of a group of animals, Freddie is among them.
- Cool Horse: He travels exclusively on Koku-Oh.
- Leitmotif: A rock riff
based on Queen's "Procession" plays whenever Freddie shows up. - No Celebrities Were Harmed: Freddie is clearly (somehow) Freddie Mercury, the plainly deceased frontman of the band Queen.
- No Name Given: Nope, not even on the school's roster.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Since he never speaks, and no one can figure out his real name, the main characters nicknamed him "Freddie" after his resemblance to the late singer, and it stuck ever since.
- Shout-Out: To Queen's frontman, Freddie Mercury.
- The Voiceless: Hayashida points out that makes him less advanced than the seal since the seal can growl and yelp to communicate.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Always shown without a shirt.
Gorilla
- Class: 1-1?
A gorilla.
- Amplified Animal Aptitude: Gorilla's crazy antics.
- No Name Given:
Word of God stated that the Gorilla's name is " Hiromi Goo". But otherwise, we never hear anything.
Yutaka Takenouchi
- Class: 1-2
"My name is Yutaka Takenouchi, and I have only one weakness... I am VERY susceptible to motion sickness!"
- The Big Guy: The toughest of the guys. He's huge and burly and is apparently a great fighter.
- Born Unlucky: He can't get away from being in some kind of vehicle. Even his birthday party was on a houseboat.
- Catchphrase / Once an Episode: His stock introduction. At one point, he screws up his intro and blurts out "My name is motion sickness."
- The Leader: He's the leader of the Cromartie first years.
- One-Man Army: Offscreen but he beats a group of bikers in the manga all by himself after trying to overcome his motion sickness with a bicycle.
- Unstoppable Rage: Beat the hell out of everyone in a train including yakuzas when his motion sickness comes back.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Motion Sickness gets to him very easily. He tries to keep this secret, under the impression that it could be exploited or he would risk lose his badass reputation.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Most plots involving him just happen to be school trips. He even lampshades how the school takes many more, longer trips than it should ever be able to afford.
Takeshi Hokuto
- Class: 1-1
An upper-class individual with aspirations of world domination, Hokuto starts at an appropriate level, taking over one high school at a time. Unfortunately, he then transfers to Cromartie, a municipal school, which doesn't have a structure he can easily take over.
- Catchphrase: "All people are PIGS!"
- Consummate Liar: He tries covering up for his transfer error by coming up with ridiculous lies about him fighting his father who leads a dark regime.
- Custom Uniform: He has a white uniform to show off his wealth. Also because he went to the wrong school and thought white was the uniform.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: He comes to genuinely care for his classmates, but you'd never get him to outright admit it.
- Dream Sequence / Imagine Spot: Many. Sometimes, those dreams are the one detail of a story to actually get into the anime.
- Sanity Slippage: Starts out as a Big Bad Wannabe (albeit a snobby one) but quickly begins losing his cool after seeing how insane Cromartie is.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Since his father is chairman of a school board of directors, he believes he has the right to threaten expulsion to anyone who crosses him. Unfortunately, Cromartie has no such thing, rendering his threat, and the trope, moot.
- Sheltered Aristocrat: He has problems socializing with the commoners.
- Snowball Lie: When he realizes he transferred to the wrong school, he lies about rebelling against his "corrupt" father. It spirals out of control and the Cromatie students believe every word of it.
"Hokuto's Lackey"
- Class: 1-1
Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Followed Hokuto to Cromartie.
- All Take and No Give: Played for laugh from Hokuto's perspective during a dinner, Hokuto realizes he is the only one aside his rival to put meat on the plate while everyone only talks while taking a bite. The lackey is especially greedy with the meat which annoys Hokuto to no ends.Hokuto: I like what he is saying, but the way he holds his meat makes me want to kill him.
- Butt-Monkey: Every time he tries saying his name.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": To the point they refuse that he stops being a lackey to Hokuto.
- Hey, You!: Because no one's interested enough to know Hokuto's lackey's name.
- Satellite Character: Originally, though he gets more appearances and screentime than Hokuto himself in the manga. The author implied that the reason for this is how Lackey is easier to fit into any given story.
- The Unreveal: Hokuto's henchman tries to reveal his name to the others. "Listen and listen good! My name is..." "Look! A meteorite just crashed into the school! "THIS ISN'T POSSIBLE!" Even when he was out on a date with a girl in volume 11 of the manga and had the chance to introduce himself to his date's friend's boyfriend, he STILL gets interrupted.
- Withholding Their Name: Inverted and Played for Laughs because Hokuto's lackey frequently gets cut off before he can say his name. The background and author notes in the manga finally does reveal his name to the reader, but the whole cast of the series admits that it's better that he just continues to go by "Hokuto's Lackey" because they've built up their friendships and familiarities with him around it. Learning his name would be a rather jarring change to that relationship.
"Masked Takenouchi"
- Class: 1-2
A former hijacker who was mistaken for Takenouchi. Stayed at the school to teach the rest proper behavior, so they don't end up like him.
- The Atoner: He let go of his terrorist past.
- Clark Kenting: To the point that when his mask is removed, no one knows what he looks like.
- Cool Old Guy: And only 30 years old. After being a hijacker, he spends the rest of the series either dealing with fitting in with a bunch of high school delinquents and (trying) to teach them important life lessons.
- Dark and Troubled Past: He once did time in Mexico and according to him if he is caught by the cop on criminal record alone he'll get 20 years straight.
- Far East Asian Terrorists: Was a terrorist at one point in his life before he met the Cromartie students.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": They end up just calling him "Mask" when they realized he isn't Takenouchi.
- Martial Arts and Crafts: Masked Takenouchi becomes the successor of pillow-jutsu.
Shin'ichi Mechazawa
- Class: 1-5
Voiced by: Norio Wakamoto (JP), Jay Hickman (EN)
I'm afraid I don't know a thing about technology...
Leader of a different class. No one but Kamiyama and Hayashida recognizes that he's a machine. And if they do, they don't recognize that he's a robot.
- Chew Toy: After a while all of his appearances have him getting destroyed either physically or having his memories deleted again.
- Cool Bike: Midway thru the series he's changed into this.
- Elephant in the Living Room: His being, well, a robot.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Robot: Usually wears a school uniform-jacket and T-shirt but no pants.
- Hopeless with Tech: In spite of being a robot. Doesn't stop his classmates from asking him to fix their appliances.
- Ro... ro... Roly Poly Buddy!
- Tin-Can Robot: A near-classic example of the form factors. He's a gray cylinder with limbs and a face.
- Transforming Mecha / Mid-Season Upgrade / We Can Rebuild Him: Can transform into a motorcycle mid-season.
Ken Hirai ("The Flunker")
- Class: 1-2
A student who was held back one year, and is unfailingly referred to as "Mr. Hirai" or "Hirai-san".
- Exposition Break: tells long-winded stories in an attempt to teach the others. They usually miss the point completely and bore everyone else.
- Older and Wiser: Despite being held back, the class looks up to him for advice.
Makio Tanaka
- Class: 1-2
The class' errand boy until Kamiyama took his position.
- Extreme Doormat: In contrast to Kiyoshi Fujimoto, he's meek in person and only a jackass online.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Fujimoto punches him down for walking into him the day after his trolling, despite not knowing it's him.
- Troll: He's the one who's revealed to be behind the trolling on Fujimoto's forum.
Noburo Yamaguchi
- School: Destrade High
Leader of Destrade High School's first years, and an aspiring comedian.
- Always Someone Better: "Honey Boy" is this to him.
- Berserk Button: Crude jokes or anything that drags down comedy standard, also breaking the gag either by not making jokes or pointing out how the ventriloquism act works.
- The Comically Serious: And seriously comical.
- Expressive Hair: His afro pulses and grows when he thinks.
- Funny Afro: He is an aspiring comedian and has an afro that pulsates when he thinks. Unlike most examples, he's The Comically Serious.
- The Rival: Kamiyama's main rival. Being the Gag Series that it is, he's his rival in comedy.
- Serious Business: Yamaguchi takes comedy extremely seriously.
- Straw Critic: He claims to have great taste in comedy.
- Unknown Rival: To Kamiyama's comedy pen name, "Honey Boy". He does recognize Kamiyama's skill through his overanalysis.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Yamaguchi would generally be right about things and have more success, if he wasn't in a Gag Series.
Kiyoshi Fujimoto
- School: Manuel High
Leader of Manuel High's first years. Exceedingly violent in real life, Fujimoto runs a message board and is generally patient and polite in private.
- Hypocrite: Just about the entire point of his character is how he says one thing in real life, and has a completely opposite reaction and opinion about the same subject while on the net.
- Kick Them While They Are Down: Introduced doing as such.Fujimoto: Listen up. You got to beat your enemy until they've stopped moving. There is no mercy in a fight.
- Mood Whiplash: Because of his attitude in real life and on the internet conflict so much he can beat member of his gang over a disagreement related to his computer experience.
- Nice Guy: On the internet, in real life he is a brutal delinquent.
- Situational Sociability: Online he's the most polite person you could ever find, even when dealing with a persistent troll. In real life, he's a delinquent with a short temper, and unwittingly beats up that persistent troll.
Jackson Setouchi
- School: Bass High
Voiced by: Kiyoyuki Yanada (JP), Ernie Manouse (EN)
Leader of Bass High's first years.
- Benevolent Boss: usually takes his second in command's opinion equal to or above his own.
- Butt-Monkey: The author reused him only once in the manga because he needed someone to get hurt.
Minor characters
Mechazawa Beta
- Voiced by: Mika Kanai (JP)
Mechazawa's little brother.
- Chew Toy: Takes after his brother in that you would be hard pressed to find one appearance where he doesn't get smashed.
- Fun Size: He is the size of a tin can.
- Verbal Tic / Pokémon Speak: "Mecha Ratta!" is the only thing he can say.
Girl Gorilla
A random gorilla, unrelated to the male, that shows up every now and then.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: the only difference is the bow in her hair.
- Actually, the girl gorilla has even less hair on her head, and has a mustache and beard on closer inspection of her face. If anything, she looks even more like a male than the male gorilla.
The Aliens
- OneShotCharacters: Appeared merely to keep Hokuto's lackey from saying his name, and were never mentioned again.
- Though their space ship does show up in the background at least Once per Episode.
- Lampshaded by fake Takenouchi when his terrorist friend come back. He warns him that he better find a good quirk if he wants to stay at this school because aliens lasted four pages before being gone and forgotten.
Pootan
- Voiced by: Nobuyuki Hiyama (JP), Mike MacRae (EN)
The star of a popular Gag Series, Pootan is a regular man wearing a fuzzy white bear costume that exposes his face.
- Jerkass: Pootan is an asshole, both on and off the set.
- Leitmotif: Pootan's theme is just as bizarre as his show.
- The Stoic: Pootan always answers Buddy in a stern, serious voice.
- Verbal Tic: Sometimes adds "Poo" to the ends of his sentences.
Buddy
- Voiced by: Daiki Nakamura (JP), Rob Mungle (EN)
Pootan's co-star, who wears a fuzzy pink bunny costume that also exposes his face.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: He tends to become very angry if Pootan doesn't do what he asks.Buddy: Come on, Pootan, let's play.Pootan: No, poo. Pootan is filing his tax returns.Buddy: GODDAMMIT, I HATE YOU, POOTAN!
- No Name Given: He's referred to as "buddy," but that isn't his actual name.
Maeda's Mom
- Voiced by: Megumi Hayashibara (JP)
Maeda's mom, who looks exactly like him, except with different hair.
- No Name Given
- Gonk: It's maeda in a dress and fuzzy hair. Everyone except Maeda are horrified by it.Student: You miss the big picture here, sure it's embarassing having your porn found by your mom but imagine your porn being found by Maeda's mom.
- Strong Family Resemblance: that's likely going to happen when you marry someone else you look just like.
- The Voiceless: In the English dub of the show and in the comic. In the original Japanese, her annoyed moan was performed by Megumi Hayashibara.
