Reviews

Oct 6, 2007
Preliminary (7/12 eps)
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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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