Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan (ONA)

Believe it or not, Saiki Kusuo no Ψ Nan had the most polarizing effect on me to date, and considering it is of a mere 16 minutes, that is quite something.
Now this one is a pretty odd stand-alone episode. The viewer is greeted with the most basics of animation. At first, I thought out to myself "What the hell? This has drawings worse than that of the two eternal classics, Mars of Destruction and Tenkuu Danzai Skelter+Heaven." The episode starts off with an angsty looking teen whose name is Shun Kaidou who seems like your average shounen MC. His talks are so cryptic as ... well as he calls himself the "Black Wing", a special boy with supernatural powers whose identity is hidden in order to keep of the "Dark Union", a mysterious organization pursuing to get hold of the powers inside of the boy to create a new order in this world-- blah blah blah and what-not. Sounds pretty dumb, right? Well, yes but not so quick...

"Don't worry, that's only a MSSYS (Middle School Second Year Syndrome)." says the guy with ACTUAL supernatural powers. Honestly, that one scene cracked me up so much that I caught myself saying "Wait, this is actually... funny" *LOL*. It wasn't so dramatic that I laughed my pants off or something I would remember for days to come, but the sheer unexpectancy of it made me giggle quite a bit. Saiki Kusuo is a guy who actually has powers such as telepathy and uses it to read the minds of people. The other guy, uh... what was his name again? Shun, yes. No, he's just a very insignificant side character who has the MSSYS and thinks himself as someone special, and his classmates make fun of him for this too. Coming back to the actual cool MC again, yes, but there's a small catch. He can read anyone's minds within 200 metres, but there's one guy, his classmate Nendou, that he just cannot seem to know what he's thinking of. Now this isn't some type of rivalry brewing, but its just because that Nendou who is a punk, is actually a dense idiot.

There are constant scenes of humor and jokes thrown in between the 16 minute episode, which might not be groundbreaking in comedy, is actually pretty fun.

Saiki Kusuo no Ψ Nan is a heavily voice actor driven show. Since the art is so basic and with a very few characters to play around with for a mere 16 minutes, the voice actors have the task to do the dialogues and mix the humor in properly and it works.

I only checked this video which I found on Youtube because of the anime adaptation due this Summer. I am totally oblivious to the manga so I had no idea what this stand-alone ONA video was about. This was a funny experience and I suddenly got a liking to the MC so I'm highly anticipating the anime to come out. I know that the art will be much better and I also hope the humor will be too.

I have mixed emotions about this Saiki Kusuo OVA. The art is absolutely terrible, I have no idea if it was a team that worked on this or just one person. Unlike some bad art spots in the good anime actually making the anime funnier at points, here it doesn't add any value to the show. The pacing feels incredibly odd and makes the jokes feel stale. While the actual good Saiki anime feels perfectly paced which makes its jokes land perfectly, this OVA doesn't do that. What's odd about it is that you KNOW the jokes are funny, but instead of laughing you tell ... yourself in your head, "This would be so funny in the original anime series".

An interesting thing about this OVA actually is the Voice Acting. Saiki I actually question if he was voiced by Kamiya Hiroshi in this OVA or not (probably should have done the research) but if its not him then the VA did a great job at slightly recreating his voice. The voice actor for Nendou is hilarious. There are some scenes where I burst out in laughter because the noises the VA makes are so damn hilarious. Maybe its pretty fitting for that character? The side characters also make some hilariously odd noises that come out of nowhere. If I were to recommend this OVA it would be for the very odd voice acting segments.

Overall id say if you are fan of Saiki K, watch the OVA for the wacky voice acting and a free log to your MAL. Yeah I did crap on this OVA a lot, but the random noises the characters make alone warrant a 5/10 from me.

Don't watch this. Even if you're a fan of the manga or anime series, just don't watch this. It's legitimately not worth it.

It has actually the ugliest "animation" I have ever seen in my life (I say "animation" because it's moreso a slideshow of still images which occasionally has someone grab one of the pictures on the slide with their mouse and drag it across the screen) which legitimately looks like it was drawn by a middle schooler.

The content isn't exclusive. It adapts an early part of the manga which the 2016 anime series also adapts, but the 2016 series just looks and sounds way ... better. The 2016 series also had more time to get settled into the world before jumping into this particular skit. The 2016 series does this skit way better in every regard.

I also think that this particular skit just...isn't all that funny. I mean, it's not bad. it's somehwat funny. It's Saiki K---it'll never not be funny. But in comparison to many of the other skits in the series, this one isn't its best.

I am generously giving it a 3 because like I said: Saiki K. will never not be funny. it's adapted from a pretty damn good source material. you have to be trying pretty hard to fuck up Saiki K. so badly it deserves a 1.

But really, don't waste your time. It's 16 minutes of a pretty mediocre (by Saiki standards) skit that the 2016 series also did except better than this garbage in every way.