Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

This is a comedy/satire anime and the jokes are generally based on the problems and absurdities of society and humanity as a whole. It's full of references to the anime industry: both to series, producers, voice actors, character stereotypes etc. To understand many of the jokes, you have to have watched a lot of different animes and know your terminology, otherwise you will instead of laughing end up with a question mark on your face. A lot of jabs are also aimed at recent and old happenings in Japan and are thusly hard to understand for viewers without a profound knowledge of Japanese culture and ... history. This is not that big of an issue, and of course not a flaw of the show, but it deserves to be mentioned as it might affect your viewing experience. It should also be noted that the the comedy in Zoku often ventures into the completely absurd, even more so than in the first season.

The "story" revolves around a high-school class full of different, crazy students and their mentally unstable techer: Itoshiki Nozomu, Zetsubou Sensei. He sees everything in a negative light and always falls into despair when he thinks about all the everyday trials one has to face and endure. Together with his students and many other wacky characters, he drives all the issues to their extreme and the end result is often hilarious. Some reoccuring jokes, like panty shots, become annoying after a while, but the diversity is still very good.

Often, there are so many things on-screen that you have to pause to see them all, since the pacing is very high. This is one of the few actual flaws this anime has. There are very few new characters introduced, but there isn't a really a pressing need for any, because the cast is already big enough. This also prevents Zoku from taking up too much time with character introductions, which was the major problem of the first season.

Zoku sports the same innovative aestethics as the first season and the quality of art and animation hasn't improved noticably. It's hard to describe the visual style accurately, but it's generally simple and 2D-ish, with some interesting special effects. Throughout the series, there are however many different art styles utilized, enhancing the relative "drama" and sheer randomness of particular scenes.

The BGM is used nicely, and while not being particularily memorable, it does a great job of helping the jokes hit home. As for the OPs and EDs, they're all great and suit the series perfectly. Kuusou Runba is undoubtedly one of the best OPs I've ever had the pleasure to hear and it fits the intro flawlessly.

To summarize, Zoku is an excellent second season that surpasses the first season in all ways possible. While the episodes differ in terms of qualitative - and understandable - jokes, they're generally ingeniously executed and highly entertaining. However, this series does demand that you as a spectator has a decent knowledge of the anime industry and Japanese culture; if you don't, you will miss out on a lot of the fun. So if you for this - or some other - reason didn't like the first season, there's no reason for you to bother trying this. And vice versa, of course.

My friend asked me what this anime was about and I looked her right in the eye and asked, “Do you know what a dank meme is?” Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, the second season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, is a satirical comedy that pokes fun at our everyday behaviour whilst simultaneously bringing to light the more serious issues in modern society.

The protagonist of this anime is Nozomu Itoshiki, a seemingly depressed young man whose name literally spells out “despair” when written horizontally. Itoshiki likes to portray himself as being pessimistic and suicidal, although upon ... closer inspection, one would notice that he is neither. In direct contrast to him, is Kafuka Fuura, a cheerful optimist (though again, the genuineness of her persona is questionable). Itoshiki lands himself a job as the homeroom teacher of Fuura’s eccentric class and soon embarks upon several adventures alongside his students.

The art is unique but not especially breath-taking. However, it is clear that the hues are carefully chosen to set the mood. The soundtrack, again, is nothing special. The opening and ending songs are great but the lyrics are somewhat nonsensical (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

The characters are definitely what give Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei its flavour. The new characters introduced in this season include: Manami Ookusa, an okusama-nami (married person); Ikkyu, an “old friend” of Itoshiki who is obsessed with all old things; Kuniya Kino, a student of 2-H with an unconventional taste in clothes; and Marui who has a crush on Kuniya but is appalled by his sense of fashion.

Personally, I found Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei to be extremely enjoyable and I highly recommend it. This anime does seem to be targeted towards the more cynical individuals of society. That being said, it isn’t overwhelmingly deep/philosophical so even if you’re just looking for a good laugh after a hard day’s work, you’ll find this anime pleasurable.

tl;dr: A continuation of the formula from the first season, and though one that is starting to get more random and a bit repetitive, one that still holds up reasonably well.

This season continues the despair filled stories of the strange Nozomu Itoshiki and his just as strange class. In many ways its simply a continuation of the previous season, however I feel that it was different in a number of ways.

In terms of the structure of the show, just like before its a series of short episodes. However, I feel that in this season they have even less plot to them than the previous season. ... The first season was used mostly to introduce characters, and though it didn't do much with them beyond that, since it was introducing the large cast of characters it didn't feel like an issue at the time. This season continues using those characters with a few added in, but also doesn't do much with them either. This is further exasperated due to how the show seems to be adapting the manga in a completely random order. I get that the first season did that as well, but it didn't seem as much of an issue then, while in this season it actually felt like there were instances where it felt off having shown something before something else. As a result of these two things, this season is simply gags and pessimistic social commentary without any sort of overarching narrative or character progression. Furthermore, it felt like it was moving through a lot of this too fast and hence I wasn't a fan of the pacing. As for the gags themselves, they were pretty solid just like the first season. The core of dark comedy heavily based on social commentary was still really interesting and worked incredibly well. However, it felt like it veered from that quite a bit into gags that were purely random. Now the first season had a bunch of random gags as well, and I'm not opposed to them in general, in that I actually like them from time to time. But here it felt like it was used too much and often in ways that didn't seem to have any sort of point other than being random for the sake of randomness, which got kind of old as it went on.

The art was still really bizarre, but it tried to do a bunch of things to make it more interesting like changing styles and such, which was hit and miss. The OP was fine audio wise, but bizarre visually, though how it changed was pretty cool. EDs were pretty good.

If you’re not Japanese, you’ll enjoy this. If you are, you’ll really enjoy this as a lot of jokes are mainly directed towards Japanese society and culture and a lot of inside knowledge is needed to truly understand and appreciate the jokes.

This is among the first anime that directed studio Shaft towards their unique directing, and the unconventional directing styles fits this equally odd anime with a whole bunch of entertaining eccentrics like a glove. This show was also among the few who pioneered the names of characters being their personalities much like Komi-san. The music reflects the absurd nature of the show; self ... aware and constant yet never tiring self-deprecation.

Overall a really humorous, intellectual and simultaneously stupid (intentionally), and a gag anime that stands out.

＊My mother tongue is not English, so I use a translator.

While gags are fired off one after another, there's a prevalent impression of many Japan-specific jokes. It seems highly regarded overseas as well, and I'm amazed that anime fans are familiar with Japanese culture to such an extent. Right from the start, even the protagonist's name becomes a clever wordplay - Itoshiki Nozomu (糸色望). The characters '糸' means 'thread,' '色' means 'colour,' and '望' means 'hope.' When you place these characters side by side, it forms 糸色望, which reads as '絶望(Zetsubou),' meaning 'hopeless.' Thus, 'Itoshiki Nozomu' translates to 'Hopeless Teacher.' Moreover, the sound '(糸色)Itoshiki' can ... also be interpreted as 'beloved,' resulting in 'Beloved Teacher.' Such wordplay appears throughout. By the way, my favourite moment is the reference to Gaban/Gavan in the fourth episode. I couldn't stop laughing. "Jouchaku!"

I thought the humor sense of the original author, Kouji Kumeta, is similar to that of the comedy duo "Rahmens," but interestingly, there are panels in the original manga that mock Rahmens. I wonder if this is a form of self-deprecating humor.

Either way, the anime is even more crude, and it's all about constant silliness, which is great. However, the unnecessary and excessive insertion of panty shots, as seen in some scenes, would be open to criticism in today's Japan.

The Japanese-style and flat screen composition are techniques that were later inherited in the "Monogatari" series. It's a brilliant approach by Akiyuki Shinbo and Shaft, which both reduces animation effort and maintains a stylish presentation.

The anime is a delightful mix of logical gags, nonsense, wordplay, and parody. Truly an entertaining work!

If it had been on television, it would have been a delight to watch every week. Base score 5/10; add one point to give it a 6/10, as its energetic silliness and outstanding voice-over performances are still present in the second season.