anime/manga review: Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

My School Comedy jones continues unabated, so today I’ll be taking a look at a new favorite – Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (or in English, “Goodbye, Prof. Despair”), which attempts to answer the immortal question: what happens when the world’s most negative man meets the world’s most positive girl?

Moody and melancholy high school teacher Nozuma has decided to end it all by hanging himself in a grove of cherry trees….only to find out that his suicide attempt has been by Kafuka, an insanely optimistic school girl who can’t believe he’s attempting suicide on such a wonderful spring day - and in front of her favorite cherry trees to boot!

Rather than be subjected to her positivistic prattle, the wane young man bolts, and Kafuka continues on to school….where her new homeroom teacher is none other than, yes, Nozuma. To make matters worse, Nozomu realizes that the uber-optimistic Kafuka is the least of his problems - every student in class appears to be total head cases, rivaling their new teacher in neurosis. It’s up to Nozomu to help his student resolve their issues….and serve up a heaping dose of negativity to boot.

SZS is one of those cases where “the whole is more than the sum of its parts” – the theme of “eccentric teacher helping his eccentric students work through their problems” is a withered old chestnut that’s been used by everyone from Great Teacher Onizuka to Welcome Back, Kotter. But creator Koji Kumeta takes this standard school comedy formula and twists it into something utterly unique, mixing blacker-than-black comedy along with offbeat wordplay and pop-culture in-jokes, all done in a refreshingly gothic/minimalist art style – imagine a manga Edward Gorey and you’re almost there.

Visually, this is one of the most striking and original series I’ve watched/read lately, with simple, almost Osamu Tezuka-influenced character designs, eerie gothic flourishes, and a black/white contrast that rivals even Jamie Hernandez (Love and Rockets). Kumeta ups the weirdness quotient by adding vaguely out-of-date clothing, TVs, and buildings, despite the clear inference that the series is set in the present day.

Although most of SZS’s offbeat and dark humor can be easily understood by most readers, I fear that some folks many be put off by how Japan-specific some of the jokes are – like Yakitate Japan, the puns and wordplay comes fast and thick, and the references to Japanese culture (both high and pop) make leave some readers scratching their heads. However, ambitious readers will be rewarded with a bleakly hilarious take on “modern Japanese visual culture”.

It also bears mention that this is the first series that I’ve read/watched that was entirely online – no DVDs or print manga have appeared in the USA as of yet (Del Ray is planning to release the English-language version of the manga sometime in 2009); in the meantime, you can check out fan-subbed versions here:

http://www.sidereel.com/Sayonara_Zetsubo_Sensei
http://www.onemanga.com/Sayonara_Zetsubou_Sensei/

ANIME REVIEWS – Kujibiki Unbalance and Doki Doki School Hours

In the course of this blog, I’ve touched on a few different genres in anime/manga – Best in Japan (see Yakitate Japan), magical girlfriend (Oh My Goddess!, DearS), harem comedy (Love Hina), space opera/big robots (Gundam ad infinitum), etc. – and today I’ll like to talk about Kujibiki Unbalance and Doki Doki School Hours, two example of School Comedy, a genre that I’ve been increasingly interested in. Like Great Teacher Onizuka, Negima, Azumanga Diaoh, Full Metal Panic! FFUMOFU and School Rumble, Kujibiki Unbalance and Doki Doki School Hours are set in a place where many of us had to spend way more time than we wanted: high school.

Kujibiki Unbalance has a typical set up - hard luck guy Chihiro and perky tomboy Tokino are childhood friends who’ve just entered the prestigious Rikkyouin Academy. On the first day of school, all students are required to draw lottery tickets (kujibiki) – and Chihiro and Tokino find that they’ve won the job of President and Vice-President of next year’s student council! Along with Secretary and Treasurer-to-be (the crabby, undersized mad scientist Renko, and shy grade-schooler Kyoyi, respectively) next year’s student council must fulfill increasingly outlandish tasks by the order of the current student council (under the command of the mysterious and icily beautiful half-German/half-Japanese Ritsuko Kubel Kitterand)….and if Chihiro, Tokino, Rendo, and Kyoki fail at even one, they may find themselves expelled!

Although appealing in its own way, with occasional flashes of screwball humor, KU remains a very average series; ironically so, because it was meant to be a parody of/homage to contemporary anime trends. KU is actually a spin-off of Genshikan (a “slice of life” manga/anime about a college anime club) and KU was the “series within a series” that the members of the club watched obsessively - so it’s “averageness” seems like a clever design element. That’s not to say that there aren’t uniquely…disturbing elements to the series; despite the fact it’s played for laughs, even for a seasoned fan like myself found the incestuous attachment Chihiro’s older sister has for him to be more than little unsettling.

Visually, it’s definitely moe, resembling Ken Akamatsu’s Negima to a great degree (presumably intentional) and its theme – romantic situations resulting from childhood promises, madcap humor and bizarre plot turns – are typical of Akamatsu’s work as well.

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Just as KU is heavily influenced by Negima and Love Hina, Doki Doki School Hours draws a perceivable influence from Azumanga Diaoh – even sharing origins as a 4-panal manga. Like AD, it centers around the daily interactions of an eccentric high school teacher (the baby-faced and somewhat immature Mika Suzuki, aka “Mika-sensei) and her equally eccentric students – the sarcastic Tominaga, ditzy Kobeyashi, goody-two shoes Iinchou (the girls); and dumb jock Suetake, prettyboy narcissist Seki, nerdy otaku Watabe, and stoic Nakamura (the boys).

Pretty standard stuff, but what I found extremely unique about this series was the inclusion of two clearly homosexual characters into the class: the lesbian Kitagawa and male homosexual Kudo. Neither character is treated as being anything other than normal, and aside from their occasional inappropriate methods of expressing their desires (Kudo’s romantic fantasies of dumb jock Suetake result in constant nosebleeds, and Kitagawa can’t keep her hands off Mika-sensei), neither character is treated as anything outside of the norm. Even at this point it’s still relatively uncommon to see an openly gay character on conservative American TV, so seeing openly gay teens in an anime is surprising - and refreshing.

Another interesting element of DDSH is the fact that Mika-sensei is a “parasite single”, an unmarried adult living at home with her parents even though she’s in her late 20s – an increasingly common situation in modern Japan. Despite the protests of her snarky mother, Mika-sensei’s soft-hearted dad continues to spoil her by feeding, clothing, and even driving the pathetic Mika-sensei to work in his car. Although with the homosexual characters, this plot element helps to ground the series in day-to-day reality; in fact, I wish more anime and manga were willing to incorporate elements of the “everyday” rather than rely so heavily on their trademarked escapism.