From WF School Rumble & Anime Wikipedia
[edit] Background
[edit] Overview
Passionate and feisty, the Twin Tailed Golden Haired Goddess is one of School Rumble's most memorable characters, capturing the hearts of fans from around the world. While initially slated for a supporting role in the story, Sawachika Eri's unpredictable relationship with Harima Kenji has drawn the two of them into the spotlight as the primary protagonists in School Rumble.
Eri makes her debut appearance in chapter #7 of the manga (Episode #1 in the anime). Her picture appears on the cover of Volume 3 (Harima appears in SD form on the rear cover), and the cover of Volume 16 (in SD form next to Harima). She is also the featured character of the third image album.
[edit] Origins
Eri was born in Kyoto, Japan, as heiress to a wealthy family. She was raised in England, before returning to Japan for high school. Her mother is half-Japanese, and her father is an English businessman whose work frequently takes him away from home. While all her needs are provided for by her butler, Nakamura, Eri feels isolated and wishes that she could see her father more often.
[edit] Talents and Weaknesses
A fast learner, Eri picks up most skills and ideas very quickly. This shows in her studies, earning her high marks in most of her subjects. While not as athletic as her close friend, Suou Mikoto, Eri is strong at a number of sports. She is an extremely fast runner, winning races at the school's athletics festival. Due to an injured leg, however, she is unable to complete in the school's relay race.
Eri demonstrates her prowess at track and field
Eri's ability to learn new skills with ease carries over into sports as well. Despite her inexperience at playing softball, she becomes an effective pitcher in a short period of time, after listening to the advice of her peers. Eri is very competent with a rifle, showing proficiency at skeet shooting. She is also an expert skier and Kendo practitioner.
Outside of Sports, Eri shows her talents in acting. She plays the lead role for both the Cultural Festival Play and the Class Movie, and she has a reputation for never forgetting her lines. She is also skilled at hairstyling and fashion, which she considers as careers that she may enter into in the future.
Despite her many talents, Eri is consistantly weak in a number of areas, leading to a sense of inadequacy that she hides behind her pride in her many accomplishments. As a foreigner to Japan, she is weak in her use of Kanji. This causes her to occasionally misread or misuse words, often resulting in a comedic effect. She is a terrible cook, being only marginally better than her classmate and friend, Tsukamoto Tenma. She prefers making curry to nikujaga, based on her father's preference. Eri's other weaknesses include sewing and swimming, although she does learn to swim a distance of 2 metres under Harima's "guidance."
Sawachika Eri, idolized by her classmates
[edit] Personality
[edit] Public Image
While idolized by most of the male population of her class, Eri frequently spurns their attention. Most of this attention comes from the image that she presents in public. On the surface, she appears to be graceful, calm, and under control. On the inside however, she is a turmoil of emotions - proud, jealous, and insecure. Only her closest friends understand both facets of her character.
Eri feels isolated on two fronts. The girls resent her for being attractive, and the guys see only her external beauty - most of them have no interest in her as a person. As a result, Eri is constantly forced to listen to insincere confessions. At the same time, she is an idealist, dreaming of finding someone who sees her for who she is.
Throughout the series, Eri recieves a number of confessions from her classmates. In this regard, Eri is very direct, responding to the confessions based on their sincerity. While she is normally very polite in her responses, she has little tolerance for insincerity or arrogance. Out of all of the confessions that Eri recieves, Harima's confession to her stands out, possessing a genuineness and a passion that none of the other confessions had.
[edit] Personal Life
Eri is a very sensitive person who shows the utmost care and respect for her friends. While she lives a very comfortable life, it is also a very lonely one - and she values her friends that much more for it. On the surface, she acts calm and unaffected by the people around her - but that's part of a guise to hide her fear of rejection and her desire for the approval of the people around her.
However, she always manages to do the right thing when it counts. Eri frequently stands up for her friends, often choosing to do good deeds for them in secret. This is shown in a number of situations throughout the series, where she helps out Tenma, Akira, and Harima on a number of separate occasions.
At home, Eri has a parents who are able to provide her with the comforts of material success, but not the closeness of a normal parent-child relationship. As a result, despite having all the material comforts in the world, one of Eri's deepest wishes is simply to cook Nikujaga and spend an evening with her father like a normal girl. She yearns for a normal, open relationship - one which her position in life does not afford her.
[edit] Relationships
[edit] Love Interests
While Eri is often seen in public with many guys, only one manages to capture her attention and her heart.
- Harima Kenji: Harima and Eri's love/hate relationship forms the basis for the ever popular Flag pairing. Initiated accidentally by a mistaken confession made by Harima, Eri's relationship with Harima has become the central focus of School Rumble. The interactions between the two play an important role in their growth as characters, and also serves as a basis for many of the series's most memorable jokes.
Eri refers to Harima by the nickname "Hige," which means "Beard." Harima refers to Eri by the nickname "Ojou," which means "Princess."
[edit] Family
Eri comes from a very wealthy family. So far, we have been introduced to Eri's parents, and two members of her family's housekeeping staff.
- Eri's Father: Eri admires her father, who is often away on business trips. She prefers to make curry over nikujaga, based on her father's preference.
- Eri's Mother: Eri has a strong relationship with her mother. She is quite perceptive of her daughter's feelings.
- Nakamura: Nakamura is Eri's personal butler. He is very perceptive, attending carefully to Eri's needs as they come up. During the Battle of Yagami High, he masquerades as Eri in order to protect her.
- Masaru: Eri's family's maid. He uses Eri's twin tails to identify her, and occasionally confuses Eri with other characters, such as Tenma and Yoshidayama. An excellent cook.
[edit] Best Friends
Eri is best friends with Mikoto, Tenma, and Akira. Her friendship with Mikoto is especially notable. She often meets up with her friends after class in the Cafe Mercado, where Tenma's sister, Yakumo works.
- Suou Mikoto: Mikoto is the first friend that Eri makes when she moves back to Japan. Out of all of Eri's friends, Mikoto understands Eri the best, seeing through the facade that she puts up in front of her classmates. The two have a misunderstanding when Tenma suggests that Harima has a crush on Mikoto. However, the two make up afterwards. Mikoto plays an important role in helping to bring Harima and Eri closer together.
- Takano Akira: Out of her three friends, Eri is closest to Akira. If Eri is keeping her troubles to herself, Akira is usually the first to notice. Although seemingly mercenary, Akira watches out for Eri from the background, often using her skills of perception to mediate problems involving Eri and Harima. However, Eri's feelings for Harima are also often the subject of many of Akira's practical jokes. The two girls understand that each other's outward aloofness is a mask for an inner warmth, and Eri uses her understanding of this to give Akira encouragement to write a play for the Cultural Festival. The two sit next to each other in class.
Eri and Akira have a heart to heart talk.
- Tsukamoto Tenma: Tenma shares Eri's ineptitude for cooking and Kanji. As such, the two end up studying their Kanji lessons together. On a couple of occasions the two practice cooking together, often with disastrous results.
"Hell hath no fury as the wrath of a woman scorned..."
[edit] Rivals
Eri encounters a number of rivals for Harima's affection as the series progresses. Most of these rivalries arise out of misunderstandings. Yakumo was Eri's most recent rival in the series. Eri's two earlier rivals, Tae and Mikoto currently are active supporters of Eri's budding relationship with Harima, by providing Eri with encouragement and support.
- Anegasaki Tae: Tae is the first rival that Eri encounters for Harima's affection. When Harima confesses to Eri, Tae arrives to bring him home, causing Eri to misunderstand their relationship. During the Sports Festival Arc, Tae clarifies her relationship and gives Eri encouragement to pursue her interest in Harima.
- Suou Mikoto: After the trip to the beach, Tenma mistakenly believes that Harima has a crush on Mikoto. When she communicates this to Eri, Mikoto and Eri have a confrontation. However, the conflict is resolved when it turns out that Mikoto was actually harboring a long-term crush on her tutor instead.
- Tsukamoto Yakumo: Later on in the series, Yakumo's involvement in Harima's manga creates a misunderstanding, causing Eri to think that the two are dating. The misunderstanding is eventually clarified at the end of the Cultural Festival Arc, when Yakumo admits that she isn't dating Harima.
Eri is currently aware that Harima is in love with another girl, but she does not know that the girl is Tenma yet in the first two seasons of the Anime Series.
Later in the manga series, Eri is having a party with the girls on her mansion and she finds Harima and Tenma talking on the balcony. She gets very upset and jeleaus with Tenma and from that point, Eri starts to see Tenma as a love rival too.
- Tsukamoto Tenma: In the Manga series, Eri finds out that Harima, actually, likes Tenma's kind of girl (dumb and distracted kind of girls), when she was having her birthday party on her house, and found them talking and sharing a piece of cake on the balcony. Eri refuses to give up, and she starts to ignore Tenma's friendship until the snow storm incident and the slap from Yakumo when she found her sister freezing outside Eri's Mansion, makes her to think about it and stops ignoring Tenma's affection and friendship.
[edit] Current Love Status
Finally in the manga series, Eri's love status is complicated. First, Tsukamoto Yakumo is confirmed as her most dangerous rival in love, and both are still searching some information about the same man to finally confront their feelings: Harima Kenji.
Second: After school graduation and some years later, Harima is still traveling around the world and none of his classmates have any clue of his whereabouts. Recently on the School Rumble Z Manga Series (Ch. 5), Eri is working as a stewardress to be able to travel around the world and gather information about Harima and finally confront her feelings about him. Eri already have some information about Harima: Another stewardess saw a bearded man resembling Harima at Heathrow Airport (England).
Both Eri and Yakumo are having their own "lonely fight" for Harima's love and Happiness.
[edit] Character Design
[edit] Overview
 An early drawing of Eri, taken from Chapter 10  A later drawing of Eri, taken from Chapter 81 Throughout the manga, Eri's character design constantly evolves. Since School Rumble is Koyabashi Jin's first manga, there is a noticeable difference between how some characters are drawn in the early chapters of the manga and the later chapters.
In some ways, this change reflects Eri's evolution as a character as well. In the early chapters of the manga, Eri acts as a supporting character to Tenma. Her role is more comical than serious, and how she is drawn reflects that. In later chapters, however, she captures a large share of the spotlight as a major character. The later drawings of Eri in the manga reflect this change as well - she is drawn with a tremendous amount of detail.
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 Detail View of Eri's Eyes. Note the "Spoke Lines" on the Irises. One feature that distinguishes Eri is her eyes - she is one of the few characters in the series who is drawn with angular "cat's eyes." Her irises are also drawn with "spoke lines" that radiate outwards from her pupils, giving her eyes a unique, textured appearance.
This is her eye in a neutral expression. The top eyelid is an arc with the outer end slightly raised. The outer edge of her eye ends with a little downward stroke which is used to add feminine qualities to the character. Since her eyes are light brown, her iris are never totally colored over with black and "spoke lines" are usually drawn on the iris to represent the visible iris fibers. Her eyebrows are curved arcs with a neutral slant angle which represents her gentleness and moderate personality.
Eri's eye has features typically used in Tsundere type of girls. Having this type of eyes, she is able to show a wide range of face expressions like anger, ferocity, seduction, playfulness, shock and disgust in a totally unique way.
When drawing Eri, Kobayashi Jin reportedly begins with her eyes.
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 Variation of Eri's eyes taken from the manga |
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Unlike her close friends, Eri has blonde wavy hair due to her Caucasoid inheritance. She usually keeps her hair at waist length, though sometimes it may appear longer or shorter. She has a stylish layered hairstyle with thick bangs (fringe) which covers her forehead. She usually styles her hair in a twin pony tailed manner using small red ribbons. She also adopts many other hairstyles depending on the situation.
Notice that her bangs are layered.
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[edit] Fashion
 Eri's Traditional Twin Tails [edit] Hairstyles and Hair Accessories
Eri adopts a number of different hairstyles throughout the manga, depending on the situation.
- Twin-Tails
- Ponytail
- Limo Scene Hair
- Red Ribbons
- Hair Elastic
- Large Red Ribbon
- Large Purple Bow
- Employee B Hat
- Flower Hair Ornaments
[edit] Outfits
- School Uniform
- Nightgown
- Gym Uniform
- White Swimsuit
- Black Swimsuit
- Black Dress
- Prince Costume
- Employee B Costume
- Kimono (not sure which type)
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[edit] Character Analysis
[edit] Overview
愛理 - Love and Reason - these two concepts lie at the center of Eri's character conflict. Torn between the desire to hide behind the protection of her image and the desire to reach out to others, Eri's character development is linked to School Rumble's main storyline.
[edit] Archetype
Eri starts out as a classic tsundere character. This is primarily reflected in her ongoing relationship with Harima.
While the tsundere archetype is the starting point for Eri's character, her personality is not limited by the archetype. Over the course of the story her character constantly evolves, turning her into a complex and multidimensional character.
[edit] Doublespeak
[edit] Competitions and Events
[edit] Baseball Game
[edit] Pool Hockey Game
[edit] Sports Festival
- Winner of Girls' 100 m Dash
- 4th Runner in 2C Girls' Relay Race
- Kibasen team with Harima Kenji and Yoshidayama Jirou
[edit] Battle of Yagami High
[edit] Cultural Festival
- 2C Cafe Waitress
- Play - Prince
[edit] Basketball Game
- Eri is asked to join the basketball team, but declines.
[edit] Trivia
Agedashi Tofu (also called agedashi dofu, 揚げ出し豆腐)
- Eri is right-handed.
- Eri's favourite place is the zoo.
- Eri's theme song is "Feel My Feeling," by Horie Yui.
- Eri likes Agedashi Tofu, and dislikes Nattou.
- Eri prefers Jyuorku tea.
- The can of tea that Harima hands Eri in Chapter 55 reads "Weird Tea."
- Eri uses HB lead mechanical pencils.
- Eri tends to make her onigiri too salty.
- Eri does grocery shopping for the first time in Super Mart Tanaka.
- Eri and her friends like to hang out at the Cafe Mercado.
- The numberplate of Eri's father's limo is Tenzin 11 e 30-75.
- The first guy that Eri rejects in the series is Sano, in Episode 8.
- Tenma messes up Eri's hair twice in the manga.
- In Chapter 154, Eri hugs a stuffed toy version of Pyotr.
[edit] Quotes
- "Never Dream of it!" (Ep.08)
- "So, you like a clean-shaven look, eh?" (Ep.20)
[edit] Parodies
- Mecha-Sawa: A pun on Mechazawa from Cromartie High, this is a popular fan parody that adds Eri's twin tails to Mechazawa. An alternate form of this parodies Mecha-Hisui from Tsukihime.
- Sawagashi Airi: A tsundere type character from the anime Kage Kara Mamoru who has a similar sounding name and twin tails.
- Tohsaka Rin Cosplay: Some fan artists have taken to drawing Eri wearing the outfit of Rin from Fate/Stay Night, based on their similar character designs. Harima is usually included, cosplaying as Rin's servant Archer.
[edit] Character Merchandise
[edit] Related Links and Articles
[edit] Fan Sites
[edit] Articles
