Manga Review: Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei

Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei

• Author: Koji Kumeta
• Publisher: Kodansha (JP), Del Rey / Kodansha Comics (US)
• Volumes: 30
• Release: 27 Apr 2005 - 13 June 2012 (JP), 24 Feb 2009 - Present (US)

It seems as if humour is different across all cultures, eh?  I mean, look at the anime scene in Japan -- there aren't many examples of comedy anime series I can think of off the top of my head.  As in good comedy series.  That rely on actual laughs instead of being bizarrely Japanese.  (Why do I keep limiting myself?)  Well, there's Ninja Nonsense, Excel Saga (and everything else NabeShin's touched), I suppose you could make the case for Hetalia as well...  Man, I feel like an anime dilettante...  Oh wait, here's one you've probably never heard of: the manga and anime series Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei.

The first chapter begins with, of all things, our main character Nozomu Itoshiki having hung himself in a grove of sakura trees.  Strange for a story to end before it gets started, no?  Well that's where you're wrong, because along comes the schoolgirl Kafuka Fuura, who saves him against his wishes.  It turns out that she is a student in his high-school class, where we learn an unfortunate truth: the kanji in Nozomu's name, when written closely together, appear to form the word "despair" ("糸色望" becomes "絶望").  Thusly, he has lived out his life in despair at everything around him.  Kafuka, on the other hand, is an unnaturally cheerful girl, always assuming that there's a happy explanation to all the unpleasantries going on around her.  For example: when she saw her teacher trying to hang himself?  She thought he was just making himself taller.

And then, there's the other children in her class, including but not limited to:

• Chiri Kitsu, the de-facto class chairman, she suffers from some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and always demands things to be done precise and properly.  She may kill you if you don't.
• Kiri Komori, a hikikomori (one who stays locked up in his/her room); after Nozomu & Kafuka's intervention, she holes up in a room at the school instead.
• Matoi Tsunetsuki, a stalker who goes so deep into her "super-love obsessions" that she copies the person's dress style - including Nozomu's Taisho-era couture.  (I'll explain that later.)
• Meru Otonashi, a shy girl who sends text messages instead of talking - specifically, abusive and sarcastic texts.
• Kaere Kimura, a blonde-haired exchange student from not-Japan who is prone to panty shots, threatens lawsuits frequently as a result, and, under certain stress, switches personalities with a demure Japanese girl Kaere.
• Taro Maria Sekiutsu, an illegal immigrant who purchased her name and class registration from  a (male!) bum who sold everything he had.
• Nami Hito, the class's only normal girl.  She is not pleased at her status.

Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is one of those manga in which, rather than keeping a consistent story arc, each of its chapters are stand-alone stories focusing on a particular topic.  The best chapters are the ones early on, in which each topic is centred around the introduction of a particular character.  Obviously they can't very well do that all the time, lest the cast reach Negima proportions.  But as early as the second volume, a predictable routine sets in.  A situation is set up, and Nozomu complains about it.  Someone from his class, usually Kafuka, looks at the situation a different way.  Some sort of bizarre conclusion is reached, having no bearing whatsoever on the following chapter.  Sprinkle with pop culture references to illustrate both arguments -- the more Japanese, the better.  Bake at 451 degrees Fahrenheit for twenty minutes.  Serves 10 chapters per volume plus extras.  And yes, in case you couldn't tell, I seem to have gotten lost in my own metaphor.

But it's worth dealing with this routine to explore the world, this fractured take on 21st-century Japan.  In contrast with his students' contemporary uniforms, Nozomu always wears an old hakama and kimono ensemble dating back to the Taisho (1910s and 20s) period.  Plus, if you're familiar with the Japanese imperial calendar, note that they use dates as if Emperor Hirohito were still alive (i.e. AD 2013 becomes Showa 88 instead of Heisei 25).  The art style is heavily stylised, even by the standards of manga, as Kumeta-san seems dead-set on avoiding shading in favour of pure blacks and whites wherever possible, primarily in his character designs, not to mention a reliance on static plaid patterns, especially on Nozomu's clothes.  But that's not to say this series' art is devoid of detail.  For example, the translators at Del Rey Manga were nice enough to keep many of the background signage in Japanese, although they did translate some of the funny ones (what kind of school advertises a "Boys' Love Club"?).  In fact, there are such a vast quantity of references that only a Japanese reader would get, regardless of language, that each book ends with a heaping helping of translators' notes -- and even those can't cover all the details.

But far be it for Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei to rely solely on referential anecdotes. Which is good, because as anyone who’s suffered through a Seltzer and Friedberg movie knows, references are lazy writing.  There are puns aplenty to be found, primarily in the characters' names.  As can be expected with most other instances of foreign comedy, these tend to require sufficient knowledge of Japanese language concepts, like the different readings of kanji.  Without such knowledge, you'll be scratching your head -- or flipping to the translator's notes -- for an explanation on certain gags, one noteworthy example being Chiri's sudden adoption of clairvoyant powers.  Fortunately, a good chunk of the humour transcends the language barrier by basing itself around the fourth wall -- or rather, the lack thereof.  Characters often refer to one another in terms of their respective specialties, for example Kaere being the designated panty-shot girl, and Nami being normal.  In addition to the aforementioned translator notes, the manga volumes also pack in bonus features such as previews and/or recaps which have nothing to do with the actual story.  There's even a chapter in one of the early volumes where Chiri and Nozomu get the chapter to start over -- all in the name of demonstraing the point du jour.  It's good stuff.

There is one issue that got me thinking, however, and that's Nozomu's repeated propensity towards attempting suicide.  This comes from a culture which has a well-known association with the subject.  I'm sure you're familiar with the rituals of seppuku and/or hara-kiri that were practiced every so often back in the day.  Yup, made in Japan.  Even today, in this post-war, commerce-driven age, Japan continuously ranks among the top 10 countries for suicides.  For example, the World Health Organization reports that ever since the mid-1990s, Japan experienced close to 30,000 suicides every year, having only last year dipped below that benchmark.  So that makes me wonder: is it right to trivialise a such serious problem like Kumeta-san does in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei?  Because by playing suicide up for humour, he's not exactly portraying it in an undesirable manner.  Then again, could Kumeta-san's approach be not an endorsement of suicide, but a parody of such?  Given the context of the series, this may be what the author had in mind.  After all, if you read about a guy who sought to hang himself at the slightest provocation, real or imagined, surely you'd think that he was being unreasonable at least once or twice, no?  This is a complex issue, and at times like these I think back to the words of the great philosopher Basil Exposition: "I suggest you don't worry about this sort of thing and just enjoy yourself!"  That goes for you all as well.

And it’s totally worth putting your reservations in the backseat, because Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei presents heaping helpings of hilarity to revel in. Yes, a sense of repetition creeps into this series the further you delve into it. But when it’s good, it’s nothing short of sublime. By not only breaking the fourth wall, but reaching out across it and sharing with the reader what it has learned about our world, Kumeta-san has created a surrealist masterpiece.

Artwork: 5 suicide attempts out of 5
Plot: 4 suicide attempts out of 5
Dialogue: 5 suicide attempts out of 5
Characters: 5 suicide attempts out of 5
The Call: 90% (A-)

In case you haven't noticed, up until now I've been primarily referring to Sayonara, Zetsubou-Senseias a manga series.  Well, there was an anime produced as well, which ran for three half-seasons in Japan.  The show was a product of Studio Shaft, and given their other works (Negima!?, Puella Magi Madoka Magica), you can bet this is one bad mother[Shut your mouth!]  What, I'm just talking about Studio Shaft!  [Then we can dig it!]  The animated version of SZS keeps the existing bizarre flavour of the manga whilst adding its own clever touches, such as non-sequitirs on the classroom chalkboard, some guy's head used as a censor, and the uber-bizarre opening and ending themes.  And for perhaps the prime example of Studio Shaft’s non-sensery, there’s a certain episode from season two.  The chapter it’s based on is a relatively straightforward one -- straightforward by its own standards, at least -- about a guy who think’s he’s Commodore Perry and goes around opening everything in the school -- and I do mean everything.  But for the anime, the dialogue was replaced with nonsense syllables, and the subtitles made the plot even more insane, if you can believe it, by telling some completely unrelated story about Goku finding the [bleep]balls.  And since my “Not Making This Up Disclaimer” can only go so far, just take my word for it.   Or watch it for yourself.

There's just one problem: Media Blasters did licence the series for North America, with the intention to release DVDs in May 2010.  Unfortunately, in the almost three years since, they still have yet to show up on the market, and the company has said nary a word about its status.  Hey, at least Capcom had the decency to explicitly state that Mega Man Legends 3's production blew up in the hangar!  ...That doesn't excuse them or anything.  Anyway, this is the reason why I focused my review on the manga instead.  If an American video release was in the works, I'd need to know whether or not an English dub would be part of the deal, so I can include it in my judgment.  Still, whether you're willing to wait for an official release or jump the gun and watch some fansubs, I unofficially deem this anime a...

Manga Review: Spy Goddess vol. 2

Spy Goddess #2: The Quest for the Lance

• Publisher: Harper Collins / Tokyopop
• Writer: Michael P. Spradlin / Johanna Stokes
• Artist: Yifang Ling
• Release: 2009

One of the first reviews I ever posted on this site, and the first I'm actually satisfied with, was for the first volume of the Spy Goddess manga.  And it sucked.  Among its main problems were unlikeable main characters, choppy action flow, and plot holes you could drive the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann through.  (And for the record, that's not just the (Japanese only!) title of that show, but also the ultimate final form of the heroic mecha.)  Even crazier, it was a continuation of a novel series - which only lasted two books.  Welp, when I snarked at the end of that review that the villain only escaped so they could make a sequel, I was right: I hold in my hands (in between unexpected bouts of typing) the sequel, The Quest for the Lance.  One thing I should point out before diving in is that the co-writer, Rachel Manjia Brown, was swapped out for a miss Johanna Stokes, who has a considerably thicker resume of comics and TV works including SyFy's Eureka, so we might get a decent plot out of this mother for once.  ...Why do I delude myself so.

I'll assume you're familiar with our cast of heroes (protagonist Rachel Buchanan, esper Pilar Jordan, tsundere Alex Scott, gadget guy Brent Christian, and boss Johnathan Kim), so if you're not, I'll wait a moment for you to read my review of the first book.  Moment over.  So the book starts off with Rachel cornering her arch-nemesis, Simon Blankenship, who believes himself to be the incarnation of Mithras, an evil Roman bull god.  Fittingly, Rachel is in turn imbued with the powers of the rival goddess Etherea, no matter how much she tries to deny it.  Rachel holds her own in what turns out to be a training session, except for the part about it being a stealth mission.

Mr. Kim calls the gang for a briefing session, where he reminds everyone of the plot... as in Simon's evil plot.  Apparently he needs seven artifacts for a resurrection ritual or something.  Pilar tells everyone that she has been doing some off-page research which points to one of the objects being hidden somewhere in Brazil.  Now, despite Brazil being the largest nation in South America, the team decides to start searching on Rio de Janeiro, because we all know that's the only city in Brazil!  False, it's not even the capital city, nor even the biggest.  And don't get me started on Buenos Aires...  Rachel's on board with the idea too, but as a vacation, not a mission.  Alex is shocked at her treating their momentous quest so lightly, so she snaps back at him and everyone else, justifying with the fact that she's risked life and limb directly fighting the Mithras faction multiple times before.  This could make a thought-provoking arguement; after all, in pretty much any other story you can think of, how much should the hero work before he or she loses it, physically or mentally?  But the arguement falls apart in this case, because she's only been in three incidents so far, and if the manga's poor action scenes are anything to go by, she's had a rather easy time of it.  Sorry, babe, wake me when you've had one of your limbs hacked off or your nether region of choice beaten for torture.  Besides, I don't know about you, readers, but Rachel comes across as more of a spoiled brat.

Rachel does her best to patch things up with her allies on the plane to Brazil and at their hotel, but rather than R&R at the beaches or markets, the team heads straight for a library to research leads on the Mithras artifacts.  Tensions flare up again as Rachel grows immaturely bored, and Pilar begrudgingly lets her leave.  She gets lost in the Carnaval looking for someone who speaks English, because as we all know, Carnaval goes on all the time in Rio!  False, it only lasts a week or two before Lent in February/March.  Then again, they do have a tendency to party it up every day of the year.  Also, I am thankful that the writers chose not to touch on the fact that Brazil doesn't speak Spanish, because it's been done.  Besides, what we did get instead (Rachel can't even speak English good well) was just as funny.  So, back on track, Rachel runs into this piece of eye candy named Renard (I call plot significance!).  They share a date at a burger restaurant, but get interrupted by Alex, who for once is not so much annoyed at Rachel dating (Alex is already going out with Pilar), but Rachel dating when she could be working.

Under the stress, Rachel breaks up her date with Renard, but not before he informs her of a ceremony taking place at a mountain called "Grito do Touro", Portugese for "Cry of the Bull".  The scene cuts to Pilar and the others struggling at the library, almost quitting over their lack of progress, until Rachel barges in and says she knows where the artifact do jour is located.  Umm... okay?  Since she doesn't tell her team where she's talking about on-panel, I have to say this knocked me for a loop.  Let's rewind: Mithras, both the god and the organisation, have a bull motif (ridiculously so, if you remember the fight scene at the end of the last book).  So, apparently she makes a connection with the first thing she hears with the word "bull" in it.  I mean, couldn't there possibly be more mountains in Brazil named after bulls, to say nothing of other types of landmarks?


So the squad goes on a little hiking trip to Grito do Touro, and sure enough they find a cave.  Cliches abound, including being faced with a branching path and Rachel falling down a hole.  But it's worth it; she encounters an ancient lance behind a barrier of light.  As she goes to take it, she suffers a brief flashback wherein the lance was first laid to rest by the Romans (I didn't know King Leonidas was Roman!) and the goddess Etherea set up the magical ward which, being her reincarnation, Rachel is more or less immune to.  As she walks out with the lance, Simon Blankenship rears his un-ugly head, shows that he has the rest of her team taken hostage and - surprise, surprise, I said in sarcasm mode - he used Renard to bait the trap.


After a bit of negotiations, Simon convinces Rachel to give him the lance in exchange for not putting a knife through Pilar's throat, but he just has his men shoot the gang with arrows anyway.  Just then, Rachel blocks the arrows with a wall of energy as she transforms into Etherea.  Now her destiny, eternally fighting with her immortal enemy Mithras will be fulfilled... with one energy blast.  Simon is down for the count, and for no reason Rachel has de-morphed and fainted.  With the villain brought into custody, the team departs Brazil and Rachel patches things up with her friends once and for all.  You are now free to close your book.

This second volume of the Spy Goddess manga is, I must admit, a marked improvement over its predecessor.  The plot holes are far less frequent, and I like their attempts at character development, even if I still didn't walk away necessarily rooting for our heroine.  The art direction is still a sore spot for this series; fight and action scenes lack decent flow, leading us to wonder if we had skipped a panel here and there.  (Let me answer that for you: you didn't.)  Even in non-action scenes, the artist relies too much on blank or pattern backgrounds, cheating us out of detail whenever possible.  Further props to the writers for not focusing on the more touristy aspects of Brazil, but I'd much rather take a vacation of my own to fill in the blanks.


Artwork: 1 lance out of 5
Plot: 2 lances out of 5
Characters: 1 lance out of 5
The Call: 50% (D)

Next Episode: It's almost the end of the year, so I thought it would be a good time to break out one of my most shocking reviews ever!

Manga Review: Spy Goddess vol. 1

Spy Goddess #1: The Chase for the Chalice

• Publisher: Harper Collins / Tokyopop
• Writer: Michael P. Spradlin / Rachel Manjia Brown
• Artist: Yifang Ling
• Release: 2008

Totally Spies! is one of my guilty pleasures.  It's stupid, and can't stand up to real spy fiction plot-wise, but those girls are hot! ^v^  You can expect a review of that show later, but for now, we get... Spy Goddess.  It's got some of the idiocy of TS!, none of the fanservice, and a host of its own problems.

Spy Goddess started out as a series of two novels written by Michael P. Spradlin, the first one released in January 2006.  This is the third book, and they already decided to switch to an OEL manga format.  Kinda jumping the gun there, are you?  The Artemis Fowl and Maximum Ride series had to wait at least twice as long before doing similar, to say nothing of actual street cred.  But Spradlin may not have been involved with this manga.  The script was written by Rachel Manija Brown, who wrote for several small boys' love manga titles, and the art is by Beijing-born Yifang Ling, AKA Rainbow Buddy.  She's gonna need a new alias once I'm through with this.

Our designated heroine is Rachel Buchanan.  In her backstory, she apparently got caught joyriding, and was given a choice of either going to juvenile hall or spy school Blackthorn Academy.  If you're expecting any sort of plot, not only will you be disappointed, but you could guess which one she took.  Oh, and she's a fashion-obsessed girl who sucks at martial arts - well, off and on anyway.  You call that a hero?

The equally unimpressive supporting cast includes:

• Pilar Jordan.  Is psychic, but not an awesome Psychic like in Sapphire.  What this means is she's prone to certain sixth-sense feelings.  It's an easy talent for the reader to forget about it - but don't, or else her scenes won't make sense.
• Alex Scott.  A frequently irate black-belt in tae kwon do, but he doesn't do much.
• Brent Christian.  The gadget guy, usually mute.  Also doesn't do much.
• Johnathan Kim.  Their boss.  A ninth-degree black-belt, not that he really does anyfighting for himself.  He actually has a good character design, a thirty-something with a thin beard, but said beard inexplicably shrinks throughout the book.  I never thought I'd see growing the beard in reverse. ^_^

The majority of this book takes place in Tokyo, Japan.  The problem with setting a story in a foreign location is the tendency to feel like a travel documentary with a plot attached.  I admit I fell into this trap, to some degree, while writing Sapphire, particularly Episode II which also takes place in Japan.  This can be done well, though, and make the setting that much more immersive.  But if the plot gets ignored, it tends gets overshadowed completely.  Our so-called heroes spend time shopping in Akihabara and Harajuku, eating at an Okonomiyaki restaurant (Okonomiyaki originated in Osaka, but it exists in all the big cities, so never mind), and soaking in a public bath before any of the real action starts.

In Tokyo, our five-man-band is joined by two Japanese investigators, Mrs. Kazumi Sato and Mr. Yoshi Tanaka, who are both blond... despite being of Asian descent.  Now I know about the whole Sailor Moon thing, but this here isn't that fantastical.  Yoshi arrives later, at the Okonomiyaki restaurant.  During the lunch, Rachel and Pilar have a private chat in the bathroom, where Pilar informs that she sensed an evil feeling during the shopping trip with Rachel and Kazumi.  They then proceed to steal Brent and Yoshi's PDAs to check for any incriminating messages.  Presumably on the latter, using the former to do the hacking.  It's never explained why they need the two, but with Brent on their team, I had to make that connection myself.

Now that we got all that out of the way, the plot supposedly involves a chalice stolen from a Tokyo museum of Roman artifacts.  The obvious choice of culprit is Simon Blankenship, the villain from the two novels who is convinced that he is a reincarnation of the evil Roman god Mithras.  And yes, he left a calling card in the form of a gold trinket.  I never got the idea of these calling card things.  The theft of the chalice was caught on security video, perpetrated by his anonymous horned-helmeted goons.  Look carefully and you'll see it's not even a chalice - literally, cup - that was stolen, but the thing is instead a vase.  But worst of all is that the thing is never mentioned again, and only shown in two more panels.  AND THIS THING'S PART OF THE FREAKING TITLE!!!

After leaving the museum, ruining her new outfit by falling in a koi pond, and being treated to a public bath, Rachel gets captured.  Some heroine.  Pilar investigates the room, discovers a couple of clues, and fingers the suspect...  Yoshi Tanaka!  What!?  It's not Kazumi?  Pilar had her sixth sense go off with her nearby, and in the baths, she even tipped off Rachel about the phony hair treatment where she would get abducted!  Okay, so that feeling was about another unnamed enemy spy, and Kazumi probably didn't know about the trap.  Again, I'm making that last part up myself.  But Yoshi is indeed a Mithrian, and manages to run away into the crowd.  But Alex tracks him down, having placed a tracking dot on him.  ...Or not.  The aforementioned Mithrian spy snuck a tracking dot onto Rachel's new trenchcoat, and during lunch we saw it again, still on the trenchcoat, but that's it.  There's nothing in this book even implicitly showing that Alex took the dot off and planted it on Yoshi, or even used a new one on him!!  ...I hope my anger's showing through in my writing, because this plot hole deserves it.

With that hangup out of the way, Rachel is introduced to Simon Blankenship, here a black-haired bishônen decked out in a caped Romanesque costume, complete with bull horns on his helmet... and even the toes of his boots.  Hope you like Rachel calling him out on this fashion faux-pas, because she milks the joke for all it's worth.  He explains his evil plot - sacrificing the goddess Etherea to allow Mithras to return - but we're led to ignore it in favor of Rachel and Yoshi arguing.  Oh, I forgot to mention - Rachel has been imbued with the power of Etherea, a little deus ex machina that comes in handy with her duel with Simon/Mithras.  And by the way, the two fight scenes in this manga are rather poor as well.  The poses chosen focus more on the reaction than the action, and fail to flow well together as a result.  You'll often wonder how one move led to another, or if it did so at all.

Meanwhile, the other five heroes reach the base to rescue Rachel.  At one point, they are faced with an entrance which Brent indicates, through the power of his magic PDA, is booby trapped.  A seriously funny little scene ensues in which he imagines what would happen if one of the invisible lasers were to be tripped, completely overkilling Alex as a demonstration.  Alex is not amused.  Pilar dives through a gap in the lasers, attempts to disable them using a voice command which she just happened to make up on the spot, and as luck and her psychic feelings have it, it works.  ...That's kind of a bit to buy, book, and I'm already broke.  But it turns out there's one more trapped door left, which Alex senselessly triggers in order to reach Rachel.  The trap here is... some kind of blade...  The only indication we get is a panel of some slicing wind, and another of drops of blood on a white background.  I can understand if they were trying to hide some of the violence, but like I said, I'm broke.

The team follows to find Simon/Mithras knocked into the wall by Rachel/Etherea... the duel over after just one blow.  So once again the day is saved, or something.  Kazumi proceeds to arrest Yoshi, and oh, look! Alex's arm was cut up after all!  On the flight home, one final text message comes in: "Simon Blankenship has escaped."  Oh, right, because they want to make a sequel.  ...*sigh*...  This is the *worst* manga I have ever read.  Almost all of its problems, be they the lack of explanation, poor character and plot development, or choppy fight scenes, can be traced to the fact that this book feels short.  The target size for a tankôbon manga volume is 180-200 pages, but this clocks in at 163.  Oh, and it's a one-shot; a full-length story crammed into these six tiny chapters.  With something this bad, you wouldn't think I'd be asking for more, but expanding on this would make it at least readable.  Everything else, such as Rachel being a poor excuse for a heroine, is of course a problem of the source material itself, so there's no helping that.

Artwork: 2 vases out of 5
Plot: 1 vase out of 5
Characters: 1 vase out of 5
The Call: 25% (F)

And now for a segment that I and TVTropes like to call "Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking", where after listing all these serious criticisms, I go after something trivial.  At one point early on, Kazumi joins our heroes by some vending machines.  Vending machines are everywhere in Japan; I can attest to that first-hand.  But one of the machines here sells iPods, which leads Brent to deem Japan the greatest country in the world.  Never mind that the iPod, unlike many electronic devices, is an American invention, or that it's capitalized incorrectly (Ipod) in the book.  I'm just not comfortable with this level of product placement, even if it is unsponsored.  I'm not sure that we're at the point where iPod is a generic name for this kind of thing, like what things like Xerox, Photoshop, and Google have become.  Besides, keeping things that expensive in a vending machine is just stupid.  In stores, they have to keep these things behind the counter!  Oh, and speaking of product placement, this book name-drops various anime titles - Naruto, Fruits Basket, and Full Metal Panic, plus a cameo of some Doraemon and Sailor Moon toys - but they have to make up a video game series, Neon Apocalypse Engine.  I assume they were riffing of of Evangelion, but this kind of dichotomy is just weird.