It struck me during a second run-through of Katawa Shoujo when I was trying to unlock all of the CGs for possible use in future reviews. After the Emi anal sex scene where Hisao asks where he can find a sink to wash the santorum off of his cock I realized what a good drama is made out of.
It has nothing to do with anally fucking someone missing a large portion of her legs, my mind just has a tendency to wander. What hit me was thinking about the similarities between the Emi and Hanako arc and how they translated into the other ones, and that?s the detail that the drama was somewhat grounded in reality and the recovery process was something that affected both parties, not some bullshit story about some metaphorical superhero saving a crying girl after her puppy was struck by lightning. Or some evil ***** manipulating an emotionally retarded special infected with body glitter into making her immortal. With that in mind, how many good dramas would I actually find? I think the number could be fairly high actually. Maybe a whole two good items!
HA! Not fucking likely when the genre is typically aimed at brain damaged teenagers, but hey, I can dream. I could also dream that anime could provide another good comedy instead of one that burns out after four or five episodes.
This isn?t the case with Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei which loses it?s momentum but starts fairly strong, so I guess that counts for something.
For those of you who don?t know, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (Goodbye, Mr. Despair in context) was originally a successful manga series that received an anime. It?s a black comedy and social satire focusing on various niches of Japanese high school. You get an obsessive compulsive, someone who communicates almost entirely through e-mails but who is extremely abusive in them, a somewhat attractive hikikomori (essentially a recluse) and a few other entertaining students, all interacting with a teacher and the main student. The titular teacher is Itoshiki, a man whose name spells out ?Zetsubou? when written horizontally, Zetsubou meaning ?Despair.? Because of this, he lives a life of perpetual pessimism and, of course, despair, to the point that the anime literally opens with him being hanged.
But it turns out that it?s just a funny animation of this weirdly elaborate cell phone strap of the teacher hanging and several students dangling from his leg. Okay!
The next scene is him hanging himself for real.
What happens when you listen to too much Justin Bieber
Weirdly him hanging isn?t as big of an issue as you might think, it seems as though his windpipe has hardened to an almost steel toughness over all the attempts, so he survives even after a dipshit named Kafuka tries to save him from the noose by grabbing onto his feet and pulling him down. Kefuka and Itoshiki are the two main characters. Kafuka is optimistic and cheerful to the point that it creates multiple situations where she nearly kills her classmates because she doesn?t acknowledge the possibility of something negative happening, and this goes up against Itoshiki and his interaction with the students.
The problem with Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei aside from the fact that some of it?s humor is lost in translation is that it?s not actually a bad idem. It has a decent start when it?s introducing it?s characters and we see everyone react to one another, but once all the characters are established the anime has problems finding things to do with them. There are a lot of marks on the anime that seem to suggest it?s amateur work since half the time it can make things funny but the other half of the time it throws desperate pop culture references and this creepy bald guy at us.
Is it good? It?s hard to say. There are some aspects I didn?t like, but a few aspects I did. A few early jokes strongly hinted that Kafuka was actually psychotic and intentionally trying to murder everyone, something I totally believe since Kafuka looks cute, and it takes real issues to absurd measures for it?s humor a lot of the time, and at other times it got funny just how disturbing Kafuka behaved and how the teacher would go with it.
I?ll give you an example. In the second episode, the teacher is called on to talk to a student about her attendance record. The student, Kiri Komori, is a shut-in, but Kafuka refuses to believe shut-ins exist and instead chooses to believe Kiri is a type of demonic Home Alone kid that protects homes by playing practical jokes. Thinking the family would fall into ruin if Kiri abandoned her home, Kiri tries to seal her in the house. Don?t ask me how this happens, but it ends with the teacher hanging himself outside her window, Kafuka scaring her to hysteria, and then the teacher sort of flirting with her and getting her to start hanging out around the school, popping up in random locations. This created some weirdly humorous moments with just where she would pop up, but it gets weird later on when you see her in risqué situations with the school counselor Chie who seems to get breast enhancement somewhere between the pilot and episode three.
The anime does have a few recurring jokes, but most of them are unnecessary visual gags. A golden opportunity was missed when they dropped the running joke of the counselor asking Itoshiki ?Why did you want to die today?? and they seem almost apologetic for it. After they noticed their jokes were starting to become less funny they began adding random implied yuri scenes as a form of apology.
The pop culture references also are worth mentioning, and I warn you now. Do not create a drinking game around them with anything stronger than root beer or your liver will melt. Actually don?t make a drinking game around it period, your bladder would explode five minutes in. Almost every time they change shots or change scenes there?s another reference, sometimes only on screen for three frames before shifting to a new one, and the variety is a little weird because it references American pop culture at multiple points including Charlie Brown and South Park.
It?s a little hard to talk about a comedy this unusual when it aims for quantity over quality. While I can?t say I agreed with all of the characters and the absurd dead end jokes like when they kept switching to footage of some gay body building program, but it does have a few high points. Kafuka surprisingly is a decent character because you know she?s killed before and is out to murder all of her classmates, and it came off as quite reasonable to me. After all, cute is evil.
Hold still. I've never done this before, and there will be blood.
But that said, I can?t recommend you go out of your way to find the item. While it does have it?s funny moments, a vast majority of the jokes in the anime fail miserably. Maybe the original manga is better, maybe the subsequent seasons are better, but for now all I can say is watch an episode just to get an idea of what it?s like but to not go past episode six if you do decide to keep watching. Oh, and one other thing worth mentioning:
The soundtrack is actually kind of good. Then again, considering how rare it is to find animes with soundtracks that aren?t pure fucking torture, this item may be worth checking out simply for that fact. But it?s still a comedy that loses momentum midway through, so I say watch the pilot only if you stumble upon it but don't go out of your way to do so.
Yes, I only added that Emi pic because I forgot to make that joke in my Katawa Shoujo review
--Pyramid Head
Next Review: Harem Month: Rosario Vampire (Anime and Manga)
It has nothing to do with anally fucking someone missing a large portion of her legs, my mind just has a tendency to wander. What hit me was thinking about the similarities between the Emi and Hanako arc and how they translated into the other ones, and that?s the detail that the drama was somewhat grounded in reality and the recovery process was something that affected both parties, not some bullshit story about some metaphorical superhero saving a crying girl after her puppy was struck by lightning. Or some evil ***** manipulating an emotionally retarded special infected with body glitter into making her immortal. With that in mind, how many good dramas would I actually find? I think the number could be fairly high actually. Maybe a whole two good items!
HA! Not fucking likely when the genre is typically aimed at brain damaged teenagers, but hey, I can dream. I could also dream that anime could provide another good comedy instead of one that burns out after four or five episodes.
This isn?t the case with Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei which loses it?s momentum but starts fairly strong, so I guess that counts for something.
For those of you who don?t know, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (Goodbye, Mr. Despair in context) was originally a successful manga series that received an anime. It?s a black comedy and social satire focusing on various niches of Japanese high school. You get an obsessive compulsive, someone who communicates almost entirely through e-mails but who is extremely abusive in them, a somewhat attractive hikikomori (essentially a recluse) and a few other entertaining students, all interacting with a teacher and the main student. The titular teacher is Itoshiki, a man whose name spells out ?Zetsubou? when written horizontally, Zetsubou meaning ?Despair.? Because of this, he lives a life of perpetual pessimism and, of course, despair, to the point that the anime literally opens with him being hanged.
But it turns out that it?s just a funny animation of this weirdly elaborate cell phone strap of the teacher hanging and several students dangling from his leg. Okay!
The next scene is him hanging himself for real.
What happens when you listen to too much Justin Bieber
Weirdly him hanging isn?t as big of an issue as you might think, it seems as though his windpipe has hardened to an almost steel toughness over all the attempts, so he survives even after a dipshit named Kafuka tries to save him from the noose by grabbing onto his feet and pulling him down. Kefuka and Itoshiki are the two main characters. Kafuka is optimistic and cheerful to the point that it creates multiple situations where she nearly kills her classmates because she doesn?t acknowledge the possibility of something negative happening, and this goes up against Itoshiki and his interaction with the students.
The problem with Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei aside from the fact that some of it?s humor is lost in translation is that it?s not actually a bad idem. It has a decent start when it?s introducing it?s characters and we see everyone react to one another, but once all the characters are established the anime has problems finding things to do with them. There are a lot of marks on the anime that seem to suggest it?s amateur work since half the time it can make things funny but the other half of the time it throws desperate pop culture references and this creepy bald guy at us.
Is it good? It?s hard to say. There are some aspects I didn?t like, but a few aspects I did. A few early jokes strongly hinted that Kafuka was actually psychotic and intentionally trying to murder everyone, something I totally believe since Kafuka looks cute, and it takes real issues to absurd measures for it?s humor a lot of the time, and at other times it got funny just how disturbing Kafuka behaved and how the teacher would go with it.
I?ll give you an example. In the second episode, the teacher is called on to talk to a student about her attendance record. The student, Kiri Komori, is a shut-in, but Kafuka refuses to believe shut-ins exist and instead chooses to believe Kiri is a type of demonic Home Alone kid that protects homes by playing practical jokes. Thinking the family would fall into ruin if Kiri abandoned her home, Kiri tries to seal her in the house. Don?t ask me how this happens, but it ends with the teacher hanging himself outside her window, Kafuka scaring her to hysteria, and then the teacher sort of flirting with her and getting her to start hanging out around the school, popping up in random locations. This created some weirdly humorous moments with just where she would pop up, but it gets weird later on when you see her in risqué situations with the school counselor Chie who seems to get breast enhancement somewhere between the pilot and episode three.
The anime does have a few recurring jokes, but most of them are unnecessary visual gags. A golden opportunity was missed when they dropped the running joke of the counselor asking Itoshiki ?Why did you want to die today?? and they seem almost apologetic for it. After they noticed their jokes were starting to become less funny they began adding random implied yuri scenes as a form of apology.
The pop culture references also are worth mentioning, and I warn you now. Do not create a drinking game around them with anything stronger than root beer or your liver will melt. Actually don?t make a drinking game around it period, your bladder would explode five minutes in. Almost every time they change shots or change scenes there?s another reference, sometimes only on screen for three frames before shifting to a new one, and the variety is a little weird because it references American pop culture at multiple points including Charlie Brown and South Park.
It?s a little hard to talk about a comedy this unusual when it aims for quantity over quality. While I can?t say I agreed with all of the characters and the absurd dead end jokes like when they kept switching to footage of some gay body building program, but it does have a few high points. Kafuka surprisingly is a decent character because you know she?s killed before and is out to murder all of her classmates, and it came off as quite reasonable to me. After all, cute is evil.
Hold still. I've never done this before, and there will be blood.
But that said, I can?t recommend you go out of your way to find the item. While it does have it?s funny moments, a vast majority of the jokes in the anime fail miserably. Maybe the original manga is better, maybe the subsequent seasons are better, but for now all I can say is watch an episode just to get an idea of what it?s like but to not go past episode six if you do decide to keep watching. Oh, and one other thing worth mentioning:
The soundtrack is actually kind of good. Then again, considering how rare it is to find animes with soundtracks that aren?t pure fucking torture, this item may be worth checking out simply for that fact. But it?s still a comedy that loses momentum midway through, so I say watch the pilot only if you stumble upon it but don't go out of your way to do so.
Yes, I only added that Emi pic because I forgot to make that joke in my Katawa Shoujo review
--Pyramid Head
Next Review: Harem Month: Rosario Vampire (Anime and Manga)