Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Mangaka: KUMETA Kohji
Age Rating: Teenagers
Genre(s): Comedy; Drama; School Life; Shounen; Slice of Life
Volume(s): 12 (Ongoing)
Archive: 2005
Status: dropped
Summary: “Sayonara Zetsubō Sensei revolves around a very pessimistic high school teacher named Nozomu Itoshiki who, at the very beginning of the series, tries to hang himself on a sakura tree. Despite this effort of self-destruction, he is saved by an extremely optimistic girl known only as Kafuka FÅ«ra (it should be noted, however, that in her effort to save his life, she almost kills him). She explains to him that it is simply unforgivable to hang himself on such a nice day, especially in front of such beautiful trees. She decides to nickname Nozomu “Pink Supervisor” (桃色係長, Momoiro Kakarichō?), and offers to pay him fifty yen to call him by that nickname. After having enough of the strange girl, Nozomu bolts to the school and starts his homeroom class, but the attempt to escape was in vain as he finds that the girl is one of his students. Not only that, but Kafuka is just the tip of the iceberg: each and every student in his class presents a new personality quirk or bizarre obsession, posing challenges that the suicidally-inclined teacher must overcome in spite of himself.

While ostensibly set in the present day relative to its original serialization, the manga utilizes a variety of aesthetic tropes that evoke the early-to-mid Shōwa period. This is exemplified by the main character’s consistent wearing of a kimono and hakama (largely relegated to special events in modern Japan), but is also evident in stylistic choices such as the anachronistic appearance of architecture, vehicles, and technology such as televisions. Chapter title pages are drawn to resemble karuta cards, with an illustration in a silhouetted kiri-e style. Chapter titles are oblique references to literature, modified to suit the needs of the chapter. The anime carries this further through a washed-out, grainy visual style that mimics film, and frequent use of katakana (rather than hiragana) as okurigana. The anime also regularly refers to the date as though Emperor Hirohito were still alive, such that Heisei 20 (the twentieth year of Emperor Akihito’s reign, or 2008 by the Gregorian calendar) becomes “Shōwa 83″.”

~Wikipedia, src

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