XLIV: "Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei!" series

Imagine being a Japanese teacher void of all hope, willing to do away with himself at the best chance possible. Not too great, is it? Now imagine being that kind of teacher who tries to educate the class about the despair and darkness in life, while trying to put up with their special personalities. Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei is just that. It's an anime that has the Absurdist and satirical nature.

From the get go, Nozomu Itoshiki is initially filled with despair, as to why the series starts off kinda... horrifying. As to try to solve this, he tries to... hang himself (trust me, I'm not making this up!) Yet an over-eccentric, highly optimistic student who is known as Kafuka Fuura stops Nozomu from killing himself, though her effort to rescue him NEARLY kills him. Later, he is shown to be a teacher to the students of Class 2-6/2-F (2-H in the anime), which has an assortment of students, though the ones that are usually rattling him are the females in the class, each with their own bothersome trait. Among these students is Kafuka, the girl who saved him and gave him the name "Pink Supervisor." Throughout the anime, he tries to teach them the harsh reality of despair and hopelessness in life, in spite of either Kafuka contradicting his teachings with her optimism, or Nozomu being attacked by those very teachings. the series name translates to Mr. Despair, which is, ironically, the title of Nozomu when his name is horizontally written.

The anime has Nozomu teach them a depressing trait of life, as opposed to being the opposite. Alongside this, a certain student is focused on, and her personality, or disorder, is revealed, some being worse than others. Along the way comes its moments of awkwardness, satirical comedy, and even fanservice at times. Some scenes even go as far as to parody various things. A running gag is that he yells whenever he is in despair. Ironically throughout the anime, there are characters seen as part of Nozomu's family, and when horizontally written, normally by Kafuka, their names bear a meaning similar to how Nozomu is identified.

To knowledge, SZS has three main anime series:

• Sayonara, Zetsubo Sensei!
• (Zoku) Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei!
• Zan: Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei!

Accompanying these are OVAs of the second and third sereis, referred by some as Series 2.5 and 3.5 (respectively). Goku: Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is series 2.5, while
Zan: Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei Bangaichi is the promoted 3.5. Okay, so in truth, there are 5 installments of the series. Each one has Nozomu being depreseed, mostly about the trivial things, each apparently takes shots at culture or an anime, and they pretty much have their absurdity and silliness about them.

Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei!, as a whole, gets a 6.5 of 10. I feel this isn't the best I've seen that deals with an oddball of a teacher, but it did have me for laughs.