Sunday, February 24, 2008

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, episode 5

The world fills with Itoshiki-sensei with despair, his class is filled with mutants, and each episode takes everything to its ridiculous, illogical extreme, constantly driving the teacher into the comforting oblivion of suicide. While not as hyper as traditional crack-comedy like Excel Saga it's just as - if not more - random, constantly taking impossible-to-predict-but-hilarious turns. The unique visual style of the show is similarly varied, with art style and color palette changing as rapidly as the tone and ridiculous storyline.

It's no surprise that the director had previously worked on Pani Poni Dash!, as both shows share the same uncontrollable randomness. His work on SoulTaker also shows through in the wild shifts in perspective, lighting and color. While it's not as cute or quite as anime-typical as either, it does manage to avoid being weighed down by a massive cast with more distinctive character designs - and frequently not really expecting or needing you to remember who's who. Sayonora Zetsubou Sensei seems to draw from smarter source material with sharper (and more risqué) jokes. It's not just loli-con snipes or running gags; it keeps building as more and more screwed up students are introduced.

This is one of those titles I'd watched one episode of and knew I was going to like it, so I put it aside for quite some time. Now I've gotten back into it and I'm at a loss to really explain why I didn't keep up with it. Really brilliant stuff, one of the best comedy anime in quite some time. Highly recommend to anyone who doesn't need their anime to constantly make sense.

based on 5 episode : ANN : Wikipedia


1 comment:

  1. Second season has been a marked improvement, doing three manga chapters instead of two and making at least one of them a berserk dadaist experiment.
    I was terrified when I heard who was directing it (having hated Soul Taker) but he's really outdone himself; not sure if he turned out to be a perfect fit for the material or if he finally found the material he was born to make or if those two things are actually the same idea if different wording, but I'm really satisfied with the way it turned out.

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