Subculture Anime Blog

I’m in despair! I’m in despair because there is only one more episode!

Summary:

The students walk out a movie theater, disappointed at what they just saw. The movie director suddenly appears, telling them that it only followed the original work. Nozomu has the director run away with him, and the students find themselves in Gensaku street after following. This is an escape route for people being insulted for following original works. Not only is the movie director there, but there are many others there who cannot do things they are expected to do. The students also find themselves at a recipe street, where they find a housewife who could not please the people she served. Around them are many other streets for people running away for various reasons. Chiri cannot accept these kind of actions, but Nozomu tries to convince her otherwise. He accidentally touches her boob, which makes Chiri tell him to take proper responsibility. Nozomu wonders if there is anywhere to run, so Kafuka assists him. Nozomu leaves it up to luck to choose a street, but he has not escaped Chiri. He gets stabbed in the back, and when some of the other students get there, they find that there are actually two knives in his back.

Later at Nozomu’s house, Majiru and Matoi sit with him under a kotatsu. He wonders when Majiru will go home, but he doesn’t mind Matoi. Nozomu also finds Kiri in his closet, who is taking refuge there during the school’s break. Harumi suddenly appears to warn Nozomu to run away with his important things. Chiri comes in to start cleaning, and Harumi expresses that Nozomu’s house isn’t the only one she’s visited. Nozomu finds that she disposes of some of his important things, but Chiri believes that it is all useless. The room becomes spotless when Chiri is done, but Nozomu begins searches through the garbage for his important things.

Kafuka and Maria appear at Nozomu’s house with cake, so everyone enjoys themselves. They express how clean it is, but Nozomu thinks it will just return to the way it was soon. Chiri scolds his actions as he prepares to sleep, but Nozomu says that it is his house. Chiri believes that these kinds of actions are for human failures, but Kafuka notes all the kinds of people hibernate before the spring comes. Nozomu suddenly asks Kiri if he can share the space she is in to hibernate. Kiri becomes embarrassed, but she allows him to come into the closet.

Everyone else finds there own reasons for hibernating, so preparations are made for them to sleep peacefully. However, Chiri whispers things into Nozomu’s ears to prevent him from sleeping. They each exchange blows to see if he will be able to sleep or not, and Chiri is victorious. However, the two find that they are becoming extremely sleepy because of what has been done to the room. They quickly open the rooms, and Chiri finds that Nozomu has run away afterwards. Nozomu believes that he may have to die, and Matoi screams at the sight of Nozomu getting hit by a train. All of the students gather in the hospital later, awaiting the results of Nozomu’s operation.

Impression:

With one more episode left in the series, we’ve given a huge cliffhanger. Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei indeed. There were so many funny parts of the episode, from “I love you” line in the theater to Nozomu’s taking back his noose as an important object. As usual, we got plenty of anime, TV series, and game references. Chiri’s entrance even reminded me of those cheesy live action drama scenes. We also got the typical running jokes such as Chiri’s “do it properly” to Nozomu. It really feels like she’s his wife sometimes! At one point in the episode, I had to go back to hear what Kafuka was saying because I was paying too much attention to Matoi’s “chiiiiiii~” in the background.

The theme of this episode was running away from life. The street signs and “running away” situations were hilarious. In case anybody didn’t notice, “gensaku dori” was a play on words. It means “just like the original work”, but it also reads as “gensaku street”. It was so ridiculous to see so many people running away in these streets at once, yet so true. People are always running away because of being judged. The “hibernating” portion of the episode was just as great. This reminded me of hikikomori, but it wasn’t quite like Kiri’s situation. This form of hibernation was like going to sleep because they didn’t want to face life. I loved how they finally realized that they could be in danger from the situation. Ah, I’ll never get tired of this show.

It’s really disappointing that there will only be one more episode. Just looking at the last scene, and hints from the rest of the episodes, there are so many characters that haven’t been introduced yet. Not to mention, there was plenty of manga material for them to cover on. The next episode will probably follow the SHAFT style by resolving the cliffhanger, then throwing out as much random humor at us as possible soon afterwards. Maybe it will be like Negima!?, and they’ll just introduce all the remaining characters to us in the span of 20 minutes. Either way, I’ll be pretty sad once this is over. This show will definitely remain as one of my favorites of all time.