A relatively ordinary student enters a notorious school whose delinquents share classrooms with a robot, a gorilla and other inexplicable classmates.
Kamiyama’s attempt to fit into Cromartie exposes a world in which intimidating appearances do not produce sensible behaviour. Discussions, minor obsessions and failures to understand one another can occupy more attention than a fight. The short format lets an absurd social problem become the centre of an episode.
A robot occupies the same group portrait as several solemn-looking students. The reading scene treats an equally strange background image with little visible surprise. That matter-of-fact presentation gives the school’s absurdity its social form: the impossible is another thing classmates have to discuss.