Subculture Anime Blog

OP: “Kūsō Rumba (空想ルンバ)” by Kenji Ohtsuki – Holy crap! I was expecting the change this time, but this was still probably the best revision yet. I loved the paper dolls, as well as all of the other frantic action. There were also guest vocals differing from the usual Zetsubou girls this time around.

Summary:

• Nozomu and the students tell 100 stories, but instead of the usual supernatural themes, they use rather typical situations in their tales. This leads to some very humorous possibilities.
• On white day, two otaku present their gifts to a waitress. Although the two boys both declare themselves as better, Nozomu appears to call them both losers. This leads to Nozomu and the class describing many situations where two arguing parties both lose, until Kafuka appears to reverse the situation as usual.
• In the past, Nozomu had reached high school hoping to start a very positive student life. However, the first sight he met under the falling sakura petals was that of four men having hanged themselves from the nearby trees. Further more, while Nozomu hoped to meet a girlfriend at the school, all of the girls he met only presented him with letters to pass on to his other family members. Believing the source of his problems to be his glasses, Nozomu eventually came across a group known as the negative club. The group quickly gave Nozomu a new set of glasses, which caused him a great deal of pain whenever he said anything positive. With the negative club’s new teachings enveloped onto him, Nozomu’s life would be far from normal from this point on.

Impression:

More than a week late, but still faster than the subs right? Well, that’s it for the Goku part of Zetsubou Sensei. It’s hard to say if Shaft will produce more OVAs or series at this point, but the manga certainly isn’t finished yet.

The first two parts of this episode were humorous as usual, but they just weren’t as laugh out loud-worthy as some of the past episodes’ segments. A lot of the little easter eggs in the background were really fun though, and I’m sure a lot of fans have had a lot of fun rewinding to look through those already. I couldn’t help but recall one of my favorite xxxHolic episodes during the play on hyakumogogatari kaidankai, and the bon festival parody had me spending a few minutes researching some culture as usual. The whole ideology around winning and losing in the second part of this episode was the usual awareness parody, but as great as it was, it’s really hard to say anything new about this type of stuff anymore.

The third part of the episode was easily the most entertaining, with a look at how Nozomu came to become how he is in the present. Who would have thought Nozomu could be such a cliched and positive character? A loli Kafuka is win either way you look at it too. Better watch out, Ushio.