Sayounara Zetsubou Sensei is the tale of a teacher who lives a life of despair. Each episode is generally split into one or two short stories about an interaction between Itoshiki Nozomu and one of his homeroom class students, each of whom has some terribly-exaggerated characteristic, ranging from the perpetually-optimistic Fuura Kafuka to the vocally-withdrawn Otonashi Meru (who is horribly abusive via text message).

Each of the characters’ names are what amount to Japanese-language puns reflecting their personalities. For example, Itoshiki Nozomu is spelled 糸色 望. If you compress the first two characters into one, you get 絶望, which means “despair.” The cast, while individually quite shallow, make for a variety of great comedic gags when mixed together. When Chiri, the obsessive perfectionist, forces herself into a love triangle with the stalker-girl Matoi, the jealousy and moral indignation that follow are simply hilarious.

Production values are excellent, with a rather bold tendency towards switching up the visual presentation at key moments, replacing scenery with solid colors, dramatically altering lighting, and inserting photography to disrupt or enhance the mood of the scene. The production studio, Shaft, goes so far as to oscillate between soft sepia tones with fake scratches and dust to bold colors and high contrast mid-scene. The character designs lend themselves well to character close-ups, which is put to great effect when a character’s forthright attitude in a conversation is reflected by the camera shot: straight on.

On an unusual note: the opening theme song is actually a pretty passable tune. This flies in the face of my general impression that the Japanese should not be allowed near guitars.