Ranked #133

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

We all have times when we wish we were dead, although we don’t always mean it.

Well, I present you Itoshiki Nozomu. He’s the world’s most pessimistic person and always carries around a rope when things turn badly (by the way, when you write his name horizontally, you will get Zetsubou – despair). Right in the first episode we see Itoshiki hanging himself in some cherry trees and his imminent death is only stopped by Fuura Kafuka, his unequal: the world’s most optimistic person. This is what sets things off and from here on in we will make a journey through current Japan’s society, through the eccentric students of this eccentric teacher.

Usually when we talk about smart comedy what comes to mind is a Cambridge PhD that tells jokes that only Stephen Hawking and company can grasp. This series is really something because it is a smart comedy… that allows laughing. Zetsubou has a lot of serious subjects but you never see these treated like a soap opera. The problem is developed with a dark comedy that allows much more reflection about it.

Each character is a takeoff of modern Japan’s problematic citizens: a hikikomori, a perfectionist, a gaijin that suffers prejudice, an addict of cell phones, a stalker, a fan of yaoi and cat ears, an illegal immigrant, a girl that enjoys putting a stick in a dog’s ass (not sure if the last one is a general problem). The development of these characters may become compromised after the first half, conceding space to nonsense episodes, but this is natural coming from a comedy.

Usually when we see an anime we already know what to expect from the funny parts, they’re virtually the same every time. Again, that’s not the case here. Expect the unexpected. A really unique, cynical, nonsensical comedy. The color and the lighting is top quality. Also, get prepared to see a lot of cuts, abrupt changes of images, jokes been told on the blackboard or written on the screen. The dialogue is original and the animation is pretty creative and of high quality; moreover, there are a lot of alternative things.

For example, all the time you’ll see the picture of bald guy around, a Japanese Lex Luthor, that is funny exactly because there’s no purpose for that. There is an episode in which the characters are presented as paper dolls. The first opening doesn’t even have any image, except that damn bald guy. The second one can mix up Buddhism with bondage (don’t ask me how). The ending is like a surrealistic thriller. It’s a pretty cult comedy by this point of view, because uses a lot of art and animation techniques that you thought you would only find in a more serious anime or in a museum.

We can call it a harem series when we think that every girl somehow ends up falling in love with the teacher and that the only male characters that have the minimum relevance are a bald guy (another one) and a boy that only read books the entire time. There’s a lot of fanservice as well, but, one more time, the anime does that in a unique way. It’s almost like it is dissing the fanservice itself.

There are references to other anime like Lucky Star and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (and Zetsubou is incredibly similar to Watanuki from XXX Holic). Furthermore, the otaku world is shown in the traditional Comiket Market.

The first opening song, Hitotoshite Jiku ga Bureteiru, is performed by Kenji Ohtsuki, who some may remember from the ending of Welcome to NHK. Now, instead of the galactic crazy baby, there is a song that keeps repeating bure, bure, bure (warped, warped, warped)… whatever. What’s cool is that there is the participation of some of the voice actors like Nonaka Ai (here, Fuura Kafuka, but also known as Ibuki Fuko in Clannad After Story) and Inoue Marina (here she’s Kitsu Chiri; also made Eve Genoard in Baccano).

It may be a funny rock – you can’t hear Kenji sing without laughing - but is also a pretty good one, at least the song doesn’t get out of your head. Most of the OST is performed by Hasegawa Tomoki on the piano, and the majority of the songs are somewhat dramatic, melancholic, romantic, what fits with the dark comedy of the series pretty well.

When I finished the last episode I was so gloomy about it that I thought about doing bungee jumping from a two floors house with the rope around my neck cutting my wrists while falling after drinking caustic soda… but then I discovered that there was a second season and a third coming up this July… there’s still hope… ;)
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Despair! I am in it.

STORY - Story? What story? This is a slice-of-life series and it is based entirely around hilarious character shenanigans, though if you ever see characters like this in your life, I'd be a little worried. Still, there are a few reoccurring themes revolving around anime and otaku snark and satire of Japanese lifestyle, culture, politics, media, literature, etc. They also frequently make fun of themselves, which is incredibly amusing. It's all amazingly well done and highly entertaining, I assure you. A bit of warning through, if you try and pause to read every single thing written in the background for scenes, you will turn 20 minute episodes into 40 minute episodes. read more

Normally I'd wait until I've seen all of a series before voicing my opinion, here I'm making an exception. Once in a while comes an anime that pushes all the right buttons for me; Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei does just that.

It starts with the music: more to my taste, a little harder than your usual cutsy jpop. I often find myself skipping past the opening songs, I hardly ever watch the ending credits and quickly move onto the next episode; here, the music with the animation creates an awesome visual I watch each and every time. I'm sure it's partially due to the style of the art, more manga-esque, more poster art than anime. This style continues throughout; you could say that compared to the rich backgrounds and detail of, let's say, Gendo Senki, Sayonara... can't even begin to compete. But you don't miss the detail, the simplicity and the style of drawing only makes it more graphic and more "punchy".

Then there is the story and the characters; it's probably the wackiest bunch you'll ever likely to encounter, if you thought a teacher constantly on the brink of overwhelming despair is strange, you haven't met his students! Each takes a personality trait and blows it completely out of proportion. This is where the fun comes in; I love the self-referencing jokes parodying pop-culture both Japanese and American, the patterns that don't move when the character does, the photo cutouts, and the unexpected, over the top behaviour.

Sure, the series isn't perfect, but it gets damn close. All I can say is that I thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the last 5 episodes. read more

I'm in despair! This anime with such a plot that could have been expanded in so many directions has left me in despair! And so begins this disillusioning review of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.

The series is a comedy, blending dark humor with otaku references and some slapstick. It's a very eccentric blend of various comedic styles so it comes off as a novelty and wears off just as fast. The first few episodes are uproariously funny, but once the novelty of the setting wears off there's nowhere for the series to go. Keeping to an episodic structure, no one grows and nothing changes. A good comedy will develop character relationships so it never runs out of tangents. Here it's Nozomu Itoshiki vs. his class. That's all you ever see. It's fun for a little while, but because it never goes anywhere, it gets old in a flash.

Animated by the (in)famous animation studio SHAFT and directed by creative madman Shinbo Akiyuki, Zetsubou's art takes all the requisite turns expected of it and a few new ones. The problem is it's all very hit-or-miss. Shinbo-san's affinity for blending 3-D objects in a 2-D world shines here, but other elements such as copypastas and the chalkboard gags just annoy, especially since they're only on screen for maybe a second or two and only serve to distract. While some of them are quite funny, the emphasis placed upon them is vague. Should we be looking at the chalkboard or listening to what's going on onscreen? This probably translates better for Japanese audiences, but an American audience relying on subtitles will be hurting to keep up.

The animation is often very smooth when it needs to be. It's a very unique style that doesn't reflect anything else done by the studio or the director before, which makes it pleasant to view. The only problem is really the character designs. They're either blatantly unique to the world or they just manage to blend in. I swear, I still can't tell Fujiyoshi and Hitou apart ><

The character designs were not the only problem I had with the cast though. Much of Zetsubou's potential was ultimately squandered in the character department. As Zetsubou is a character-driven comedy, much of the humor relies in the various dysfunctional personalities of teacher Nozomu Itoshiki and his class colliding on matters of society and personality disorders. This is illustrated by giving every main girl a specific and unique disorder and limiting the girls' personalities to only that disorder. It works wonderfully in the case of the sadistically OCD Chiri, but other characters like stalker Tsunetsuki and "I'll sue you" Kaere are less like characters and more like running gags. Thus it comes as no surprise that eventually the chemistry falls apart and one is left wondering if they even had a plan as of what to do with each girl after her disorder was revealed.

The accompanying music is decent. Noticeable at times, but often forgettable. The ED is pretty good, but it's the OP that's the real treat of the soundtrack.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei has been receiving rave reviews for the last year and in some ways I can see why. Its comedically nihilistic take on Japanese society, as well as it's inventive style bring fresh air to the myraid of other anime. But ultimately, what potential it starts with is squandered on one-dimensional characters and a repetitive plot.

Overall, I give Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei a 7 out of 10. read more

This anime starts off as a pretty straightforward humor/harem anime. The episode is divided into two sections, and each section introduces a student who has a strange personality quirk, such as always being optimistic, or only communicating via text message. This was okay to get to know the characters, but by the end of the second episode I was wondering if this was all the series was going to be. Luckily, around episode 4 or 5, it broke out of that mold.

It still kept the two section format, but instead of simply introducing characters one per section, it would just place them in a situation. My only real complaint is that there was little to no continuity between episodes. Many of them could have been viewed in any order(except for the early ones introducing characters) without missing anything. This put me off for the first half of the series, but by episode 7 or 8 the unique sense of humor this series has began to grow on me.

You'll find yourself reaching for the pause button fairly often, to stop and read the funny text written on the blackboard, on the wall, and other crazy places. The writing often contains references to other anime and manga, or crazy off-the-wall statements that you can't help but burst out laughing at. Even if, like me, you need to pay attention to dialogue the first time you watch an episode, you'll find yourself watching it a second time to make sure that you don't miss any of the hilarious text. I believe that's what gives Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei its charm.

I would reccomend you watch this if you like strange humor, but not if you're sensitive to humor around things like student-teacher lesbian suggestions, or a panty shot character. Also, for a while in the middle of the series, the opening credits contained bondage pictures involving the students. Don't be too put off by that though, as the majority of the humor in the series doesn't revolve around sex. I'm not a huge fan of just for laughs anime, and I still enjoyed this. I'll definitely be coming back for season 2. read more

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is a Psychological, Slice of Life, Comedy about an extremely cynical teacher trying to spread his feelings and views of despair onto his students. Every episode is usually split up two as each part gives us incite into another one of the students, which means that every episode is different from the last. Seeing all the problems with Japanese culture laid out in front of you, just to make fun of it is not original however this anime is able to do it in such a unique way. With plenty of parodies and random moments, this anime is hard not to laugh at. Another interesting thing about this anime series, is its “out of the ordinary” choice of censorship and how it makes fun of pointless fanservice. These are to sort of jokes anime fans would love to see nonetheless a lot of the jokes do get repetitive, which losses its affect in the latter episodes.

With every episode focusing on one or two of the teacher’s students, this anime does a fantastic job in portraying each of the characters that show up on screen. With so many different psychological disorders and social issues to deal with, the characters never seem boring or clichéd in anyway. Itoshiki is the main character and he proves to be just that, with his odd mannerism and hilarious moments and even though some of his jokes get fairly repetitive, he still remains funny.

Thanks to SHAFT we have a pretty unique animation style. The animation for this anime is basically a mix between superb, shoddy and just plain weird. It is just too hard to go into detail and explain it because it has the same weird conceptual artistic style as this entire anime. The music is an odd contrast of sweet melodies and hard rock, which go well with this messed up anime and it’s messed up main characters. Even the OP and ED themes are extremely catchy and you’ll never feel like skipping theme.

Overall is one of those Satire comedies that are made with the hardcore anime fans in mind. With so many hilarious jokes churned out, us viewers are bound to find some funny with the rest going straight over our heads. Even though this show gains a merit for being pretty unique, it does end up losing a bit of its appeal later on. So if you’ve seen and enjoyed shows like “Lucky Star” and “Welcome to the NHK” then you are sure to enjoy this one.

^_^ read more

Well, I'm not a native speaker and this is my first review here. So please forgive me if I make any mistakes . ^¬^

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is by far the most interesting series I've seen in a while. It really brakes the whatever we may call "normal anime patterns" in a very original way. Starting with the story, which does not exist, not in a normal way. The following episode has nothing to do with the previous one. Sometimes, even the second part of the anime, doesn't seen to follow the first one, but every slice of the story can really gets your attention, in addition to a lot of laughs.

The Sound and Art are not state-of-the-art, but they are very appropriate for the anime. You can feel the real atmosphere of the anime through the ED/OP songs. The art is impressive, the characters are very well-made and the scenery is awesome. Throughout the scenery you can see a lot of information, sometimes there are so many things that you have to pause in order to see them. Ok, you're not supposed to, but if you do this I can assure you'll get some extra laughs.

Characters are the critical point of this anime. Each character has a distinct peculiarity like, being a stalker, a suicidal person or having a personality disorder and a lot more characteristics that you might never see, in a funny way, on other animes .

SZS is the kind of anime that makes you think about it in a real context of life. Only enjoyment awaits you. Watch it. x ] read more

Here's an anime to simply enjoy. Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei separates itself from other comedy series, with its lack of solid plot, interesting characters and new stories to tell every episode.

Don't get it wrong, its lack of plot is very refreshing, different from the usual. For once, there are no cliffhangers, no twists, no complex character development. The only thing to forward is the next episode. You may know what's coming up next, but how the characters will deliver it, or deal with the topic is something to look out for.

For me what made the series interesting is the characters, each with their unique personalities. How random can they get with a hikikomori, an animal lover, a schizophrenic, a stalker, and an illegal immigrant? There is only one normal person in the whole series and being normal also makes her stand out. I know, I sound crazy by just talking about that, so you can just imagine how crazier the series is. Also, the personalities correspond to their names.

Another thing to comment on is the animation and the sound. The characters are well-drawn and are brightly colored. The OP and ED songs are very catchy. I appreciate the work done on the backgrounds as they very highly detailed and perfectly match the quality of the characters. The OP and ED also change every now and then, also with very detailed themes. Well done.

With a whole class (plus some other people) with different characters to uncover, 12 episodes is not enough to contain the craziness. Watch out for other installments of this series, which are still of the same quality and level as this one. read more

Ah, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei! Before I begin, let me state that I watched this anime in two days while at a sleepover with some friends, which means some episodes were watched really late into the night/morning. This may have affected my perception of the anime to some degree due to severe sleepiness. Also, this sleepover happened about 6 weeks before I wrote this review, so I may not remember every little detail about what I am discussing. Forgive me. ^^’

Story- Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei’s (SZS) story revolves around a group of schoolgirls (OK, there is one moderately important male student, but no one REALLY cares) and their suicidal teacher. Together the class and their teacher engage in everything from normal classroom conversations to stalking each other, to hibernating in their teacher’s (Itoshiki-sensei) house for a night. Each student in the class has one dominant character trait and these traits are usually set up so that they make fun of or satirize some aspect of modern culture. For example, we have Kafuka Fuura, an overly optimistic girl who is so bent on looking on the bright side of things that she is completely blind to all the horrible things that may be happening around her. She embodies the popular notion that optimism is the best way to go through life, but this optimism made her so naïve that she cannot even begin to comprehend the evils, sadness, or injustices in the world- including her own parents’ suicide. Another such student is Kiri Komori, a hikikomori (or shut-in) who has stayed inside and skipped school for so long that her skin actually glows white. She embodies the increasing number of young people in Japan who have become hikokomoris themselves and have thus isolated themselves from any form of human contact. Then, of course, we have Itoshiki-sensei himself. He is a man so pessimistic that he attempts to commit suicide on a regular basis. This is most likely not only satirizing middle-aged adults going through mid-life crises and such, but I also interpreted it as satirizing the increasingly popular “emo” movement in young people today which glorifies and romanticizes depression and angst (a disgusting way of life, if you ask me). As you can see, these characters have quite a bit of depth to them and the various situations they are thrown into are usually hilarious and funny to watch. However, these situations and stories are not always funny, most likely due to the content being lost in translation during the subtitling process. This makes for some fairly boring parts in the anime as well.

Art- SZS is definitely unique and stylized. The artwork used in the anime makes use of more subdued colours that fit well for SZS’s dark thematic overtones that serve as a basis for its comedic elements. A fair number of scenes in the anime were done in different styles of art, including scenes that made SZS look like an old silent film or some trippy video from the 80s. This range of artistic styles was both interesting and challenging to watch at the same time.

Sound- It has been too long since I’ve seen SZS to properly comment on its sound. Nonetheless, there are two parts of the show that I clearly remember in terms of sound/music- the two opening/ending themes (Ito toshite Jiku ga Bureteiru and Zessei Bijin). I enjoyed both these songs for the way they integrated 1940’s swing music with J-pop (Zessei Bijin) and for their fast-paced hardcore melody and instrumental track being juxtaposed against the voices of young Japanese schoolgirls who will take over the melody of the song every now and then. Both songs make for great listens and I will often have them blasting in the car when driving long distances. XD

Characters- I have already went to a good amount of depth with the characters in the “Story” portion of my review. Thus, in summary, the characters are interesting, diverse, and each play in an important part in representing various negative aspects of modern Japanese culture (even though they are taken to the extreme in the case of SZS). Awesome characters- too bad they don’t develop much during the plot (not that it matters much in a comedy-esque anime).

Enjoyment- SZS was a fun and enjoyable anime to watch, especially in a group of friends. It made all the funny scenes all the funnier to watch and then allowed us to take them further as we made up our own jokes based on the anime after watching it. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, I was fighting sleep during the later episodes which made some of them seem too lengthy and stretched out in some cases. That combined with the fact that some of the scenes that were supposed to be funny just didn’t strike a chord with me brought down this rating to a 6/10.

Overall, this hilarious anime rooted in satire is definitely worth a watch. However, if you aren’t laughing or at least smiling after the first few episodes, chances are that this anime is not for you: many of the later episodes are similar in tone and style.

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Don't call me biased reviewer, I tends to be really cocky on series. This review might be find else where, since I can't just write different review all over again, in different forum. Remember, I only use same username for all the forum, (Goo4) so please don't freakin tell me that it is copied.

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ZETSUBOU SHITA!! Everyone should have shouted this at least once in their life. But there is someone who has gone into extreme, and even tries to suicide himself for ridiculous reasons.

The anime, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (aka. SZS), is considered to be the most random anime in existence. You cannot predict how or when it will end. Story? What story? Discussing plot of this anime is meaningless. However, I can say, humours and word plays in this anime is just BRILLIANT. Kometa Kouji, who wrote the original manga, is fuckin genius. He tries to distort every single aspect of Japanese Society into something… ar… DESPAIR?

SZS is fully consists of satirical comedies. Start with our Zetsubou Sensei, when we see him tries to hang himself for some foolish reasons like ‘my transportation card did not properly recognised’, we laugh at him. It’s not just humour, but satirical humour. It reveals how foolish killing one self is. This anime brilliantly has done those.

Sometimes, it shows floods of examples to support that satire. It usually appears with floods of texts and it might hurt your eyes. This could work as one boring factor for this anime if you don’t know much about the culture of Japan or others. BUT if you can understand those, you will enjoy it too. Also, there are a lot of bloods and fanservices in this anime. Hell, but they are all for good fun of randomness.

Art is one aspect that will please your eyes. Simply beautiful. Although, the character design looks simplistic or inconsistent, SHAFT's uniqueness covered this negativeness brilliantly. First, there is bald guy called 'Maeda', flying all around during the episode. Also, if you are otakuistic enough, you will be able to find tons of references from other anime, manga or events. Hilarity. There are tons of vector style art shown. Slideshowtic monochromes with the texts are also the elements that entertains our vision.

Sound is similar to art. Lot of random signals are there, sometimes, totally irrelevant sounds such as scream of ‘monkey’ randomly comes out. It creates even funnier atmosphere throughout the whole anime.

Also, OP and ED. Very unique. OP animation for first three episode is… blank, or occasional freakin bald guy or copy and pasted articles. After third episode… op animation can be VERY DISTURBING for some people though it was very creative. Op was sung by Kenji Ohtsuki, who also did famous ending theme for Welcome to the NHK. Ending animation also shows how unique animation style that SHAFT has. I enjoyed a lot.

Aha, the most important aspect of this anime, CHARACTERS. They are all extreme cases of phenomenon found in Japanese society. Extreme case of negativity, extreme case of perfectionism, extreme case of Hikikomori, extreme case of yaoism, extreme case of spirit personality… etc etc… Very stereotypical characters, but when all of them is in group... INSANITY. All the characters are lovable and unique themselves. Truely inspirational.

Voice acting; Superb. Kamiya Hiroshi's ‘Zetsubou Shita’ stings on our heart deeply. A lot of other voice actors/actresses are also great at their role.

I enjoyed this anime a lot. But, I have to say that this is NOT an anime that everyone likes. A lot of incomprehensible will make this show boring for some. Also, having little knowledge about Japan will decrease the humour in this anime dramatically. There are few segments that even myself thought ‘bah, it’s pretty boring’. If you haven’t watched many animes, you will miss out most of the references and get annoyed.

Also, this anime got lots of rave reviews from other countries like China and Korea, for being ethnocentric. There are few moments that even myself (Korean) felt, 'WTF THAT'S NOT TRUE'.

But, whether it annoyed me or not, fuck it; enjoyment 10/10

So, to sum up, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is a rare kind of anime you can't miss. If you want anime, with filled with satirical gags with full of despair, here it is; this is an anime for you.

Hmm... so the last word;

“絶望したっ!” read more