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Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
Series Review: Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
Jan 15th
“You were…trying to make yourself taller, weren’t you?”
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is a funny kind of show.
Naturally, I mean that in both senses of the word. First off, it’s a ‘funny’ show in the same way that someone like me might smell ‘funny’, with a style far removed from most slice-of-life shows. You come to SZS expecting a standard bright, cheerful school-life comedy and what you get is something you might expect from the British and their flying circuses.
It’s a type of show that’s insulting and off-the-wall, with continuity thrown to the winds in favor of sheer insanity in numerous disconnected sketches. And compounding this is that distinct SHAFT style, with the plentiful camera cuts, the occasional strangely-framed shot, and parody after parody of every aspect of both anime and society.
It’s quite simply, an anime that you’re unlikely to see the likes of again (barring its sequel, Zoku SZS), in style and in concept, for good and for bad. A show like this feels highly experimental in nature (at least for me, who is used to comparatively sane slice-of-lives), a kind of ‘what happens if I press this?’ on a six-hour scale, and naturally as a result it has its great moments and it has its annoying moments.
Luckily enough, for the most part Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is ‘funny’ in the gut-busting sense of the word as well.
(Unless you’re prepared for spoilers, that is.)
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Bookmaking: Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
Aug 10th
Again the topic of weird ways to start series is brought up, and for a strange series there is of course a strange method of initiation.
At this point perhaps I would be expected to say I started watching Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei because of the fact that it was subbed by a.f.k, a translating group that I’m quite fond of. I’ll admit that’s why I started Lucky Star.
But there are actually odder reasons, such as the fact that a guy on one of the other message boards I frequent said he started watching it because of that factor…and hated it.
“Hmm, so it’s no good…but it has moe hikikomori!” said I, bringing the second factor into account, the ever-humorous blog posts over at AoMM. The combination of 1) bad plus 2) hikikomori plus 3) moe?? was too ridiculous to ignore, and so a despair-filled adventure began.
Amusingly enough the show turned out to be almost even more ridiculous than the three elements I initally took into it; except actually in a really good way. As such I feel a bit better about myself in that I still can enjoy something that’s not packed-to-the-hilt in moe characters and character designs and catchphrases and artwork.
Rather, Zetsubou Sensei is what could aptly be described as “different” – maybe it wouldn’t be so if I had watched some of the previous works from the animation studio called SHAFT (which apparently has a bunch of other strange works out as well); but with a background filled with magical girls, horribly friendly harems, and pastel hair colors, Zetsubou’s strange dark humour blended with, for all I know, social commentary, makes it a standout and still very appealing combination.
As this is the first look at an anime, the trademark comments-cleverly-disguised-as-bet-making will follow after the jump.
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