This society that has such crappy internet has left me in despair! After 2000KM’s worth of travel, I have finally gained internet access. While that’s real awesome and all, there’s a significant problem…

My internet connection is severely throttled and I can’t catch up on any anime. Not all is lost though, my internet-less last weeks let me go back to gems that I missed. I’m referring to Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, no less. It was hanging around on my HDD for a little while and I kinda forgot about it until this week.

For those unfamiliar with ZSZS, it’s the second season of the absolutely amazing Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. SZS is very culturally-heavy show, it has mountains of social commentary, awesome music and awesome characters (Nozomu Itoshiki and Fuura Kafuka in particular) Here’s a taste of the music:

I blazed through the second season and I loved every single episode, it mixed things up wonderfully throughout the season. The different kinds of mini-features helped lighten up the heavy dialog.

What keeps me going back to SZS is the duality between Nozomu and Fuura. As you may know, Nozomu usually opens the episodes with some social commentary with the most negative interpretation possible only to have Fuura spin it to a positive. She does it with mixed results and I think the author leaves a sort of Schopenhauerian pessimism throughout as fuura rarely makes any sense at all and looks delusional.

Yes, I just made a horribly obscure reference to a 19th century philosopher. I allowed myself because it matches the tone of SZS. It will have a perfectly accessible dialog for half of an episode only to come back after the break with some absurdly difficult to grasp second half. Not only that, the more serious parts will have some shamelessly lowbrow jokes hidden in the background. SZS is all over the place in a good way.

Another example of SZS’s various bifurcations: the episode where they use just about every animation technique in the book. From Clay Animation to cutouts in a single episode.

Ah it’s definitely one of the grand masterpieces of anime. Without a doubt, it elevates Japanese culture and your own if you watch it.

P.S.

I’ll be back home in a few days to post some more current stuff. I’m in Toronto and heading back to Ottawa soon.

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