I had forgotten how much of a fun ride Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei was.

For those that It may concern, my desktop has been tweaked a bit. The gnome-theme has been changed to something just a little more awesome Metacity Mutter theme has been changed to something deliciously simplistic.

Additionally I now have a window list, places menu, better tabbing, and I don’t have ta hold down alt to shut down the computer any more. There are a few more tweaks here and there to help with my workflow, nothing earthshaking. Still one or two things i’d like to fix though. If I right click on somthing in the notification area the menu spawns a few pixels too low, I want to be able to go into activities mode with my 8th mouse button, and want to make the top left hotcorner toggleable somehow.

But that’s another story.

A friend of mine had just recently finished Madoka Magika and I wanted to introduce her to anime that was in the same vain but also matched the type of anime that she likes.

Oh by the way, she friggen loves Madoka Magica, but really that should go without saying.

The two anime that I recommended to her were Clannad (because it is moving and funny – but not at the same time) and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (Because Shaft and high-tier openings and endings).

In the spirit of things I decided to go rewatch the first episode.

After that I decided to re-watch the second episode, and after that the third episode and in the end I re-watched all three seasons and the five OVAs here and there.

And they were fantastic, just freaking fantastic.

Well to start out, the plot for this anime is just plain genius. It opens to a beautiful spring scene where a lone student finds a man trying to hang himself.

This man turns out to be her schoolteacher.

A man who can only see everything in a negative light. A girl who can only see everything in a positive light. ~ A meeting that was never meant to happen. ~ *que wistful music*

(They actually first met long before this time but you don’t know this yet.)

And that by itself would be fantastic enough, but it gets even better. Every single one of the students in the class is extremely unique in some way. The girl with OCD, the guy who can turn anything into a fairytale story, the shy one  who communicates only through mail, the balding class president that will forever go unnoticed, the girl who appears to be a victim of domestic violence – and many many others. I think it was 32 students in that class, and there are a few in other classes and an ex-student.

Even the few characters outside the classroom are fun.

Each episode satirises some aspect or aspects of Japanese culture or subculture.

These episodes happen after (or perhaps, while) characters are being introduced, but the character introduction episodes are great anyway.

Initially my friend did not like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (Granted, it did not help that she watched the first episode of the second season first – that episode is kind of creepy and is my least favorite. Half babies hanging from the ceiling can be legitimately traumatizing.), but after convincing her to give it a second try she as admitted that it is the funniest thing she has seen all summer.

And that should be good enough for you to at least give the anime a shot, don’t you think?