Review of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan is one of the more unique kind of anime shorts to come out of 2016, that being broadcasted once a day only in a weekday, 120 episodes thus lasted 24 weeks AS well as broadcasting those same episodes into bulked combined 5 episodes each week. These broadcasts are really for those who wants a certain mood for it. So why did LA talk so much about the broadcast of Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan even before making a witty comment about this anime short?...because Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan is one of the funniest anime shorts a la Mob Psycho 100 but morein the comedic route. Which broadcast did LA watch?..the 5 minute broadcast every weekday...well with that out of the way, let's start shall we?...

Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan's plot by the premise about a one Kusuo Saiki voiced by Hiroshi Kamiya's wanting a normal life without the use of his powers as his powers isn't all that's cracked up to be especially in the comedic route it becomes doubly funny when Kusuo's powers backfires on him. LA did say it's like Mob Psycho 100 but more comedic route and really it has that vibe to it and if you watched Mob Psycho 100 and had that kind of atmosphere, then Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan will give off a similar vibe. By a simple premise Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan is really just about Kusuo's straining wanting of a normal life and NOT wanting to use his powers (unless if it has to do with coffee jello...uhhhh makes sense in context) but with the other characters...it can't be helped and hijinks DEFINITELY ensues.

In terms of characters, Kusuo Saiki being the central character and is one of the more self-aware character in which he KNOWS he's in an anime in this anime. Kusuo Saiki by all means really wants to be a loner (due to his childhood and ALL his powers making him turn into this cynical loner eg. he can't watch movies or TV shows as he would unconsciously use telepathy to get all the spoilers thus kill his enjoyment) but with his MANY contributing characters, he essentially is the straight man to almost every other character. You'd think that because of his cynical personality you'd think he's somewhat bland, on the contrary as since he's the straight man he becomes a reactant to most of the comedy and sometimes he's the punchline to the buildup of the episode (or episodes) with his powers (some which includes...teleportation, telepathy, time traveling, restoration, psychometry, weather manipulation, likability meters (no seriously), pyrokinesis and even memory manipulation...hmmmm felt like some of those powers were tangential to Kusuo's powers no?). Further down the plot especially by the start of the Kyoto Field Trip arc, Kusuo does show points where he wants to genuinely help someone (not as a comedic gag or anything)...Kusuo being a centralized character, he really does bring everyone together, not just comedically.

Now aside from Kusuo, LA has ALOT to talk about with the other characters within this anime short, let's start with...Riki Nendou voiced by Daisuke Ono. He's more or less one of the more unpredictable characters for Kusuo as Kusuo can't track or use most of his powers against Nendou, yes, he's a rock solid boke to Kusuo's tsukommi, ohh and his parents all look EXACTLY like him so Kusuo can't detect them either. Shun Kaidou voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki is your typical chunni. Shun Kaidou really is a satellite character as most of his comedy comes from the other characters reactants to him, some of his better skits are obviously with Kusuo but with him and Nendou they are essentially the three amigo's when it comes to comedy and their boke to tsukommi routine their chemistry together works wonders with Kusuo ostensibly telling us what we already know. Finally we have Reita Toritsuka voiced by Natsuki Hanae is a spirit medium but is an utter perv, he sometimes joins Kusuo and the three amigo's with their antics.

Next are the the "love interests", that being Kokomi Teruhashi voiced by Ai Kayano and Chiyo Yumehara voiced by Yukari Tamura, let's go with Kokomi first. Kokomi is a perfect/"pure maiden" of sorts but is a "alpha-bitch" in disguise as she KNOWS she is the perfect girl and she is HIGHLY obsessed with Kusuo and wants to get a reaction out of Kusuo of "woo~", she really isn't LA's favorite character and LA knows that LA isn't the only one, her personality can easily get on people's nerves and comedically her running gag with Kusuo is repetitive and annoying, the best thing about Kokomi is her voice actor Ai Kayano is her ONLY good trait about her, now on the opposite side of things, Chiyo Yumehara voiced by Yukari Tamura is LA more favourite character and although her screentime is NEARLY less than say Uryoku "Kouta Nakanishi" Chouno voiced by Showtaro Morikubo the "fake magician", you think LA really didn't like her because of that, but quite the contrary although Chiyo and Kokomi have the same goals and romance interest *cough* Kusuo *cough* and nearly the same plot points, but where Chiyo deviate from Kokomi as it's Chiyo's personality of being the typical romance love interest and is obsessed with Kusuo but she's the "sweetheart" of the series and just wants a bit of attention from anyone but especially Kusuo in comparison to Kokomi who gets ALL the attention, also it helps that Yukari Tamura voices Chiyo in which her likability increases a bit more and Chiyo really is LA's favorite character of the series. Chiyo and Kokomi later on get into a complicated mess of misunderstandings romantically with the tangled mess of Shun, Nendou, Kusuo and them...ohh poor Chiyo.

Next up (yup still not done), are the more satellite characters, Kineshi Hairo voiced by Satoshi Hino who is your extreme vers. of the hot-blooded, no-"can't sit down and calm down" kind of character, weirdly because he's a catalyst to make "stuff happen", lots of the non-speaking characters rally to him due to his personality and it's to be expected
that Kusuo really doesn't want to be near him. Chisato Mera voiced by Maaya Uchida is an all working-kind of character but melded with the eat anything archetype and is Chiyo and Kokomi's friend. Takahashi voiced by Taishi Murata is the butt monkey...no that's about it for him. Makoto Teruhashi voiced by Tomoaki Maeno, Kokomi's older brother and is utter obsessed with Kokomi a la a siscon and he's a talented actor...it's to be expected LA really didn't like him either. We also have Aren Kuboyasu voiced by Yoshimasa Hosoya a delinquent wanting to have a normal life but the other main characters (sans Kusuo) keeps alerting his delinquent side, LA thought he could have been developed slightly but his running gag becomes his personality by the end of it. Finally to round it up, we have Kusuo's parents Kuniharu voiced by Mitsuo Iwata and Kurumi voiced by Rikako Aikawa and really they are the love-sweethearts/sudden arguing to make the relationship better...worse? kind of relationship, Kuniharu is the idiotic dad that ALWAYS needs Kusuo's power to hep him with his job, Kurumi more or less falls into the oblivious mother, but Kurumi is also kind of a threat not to be messed with so she's good in LA's books...seriously DON'T PISS HER OFF. (ohh also great voice work by the both of them but especially Rikako for her tranquil fury vocals).

Really Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan's strengths lie in how it works the characters and their wacky chemistry together (for what little screentime they get each episodes it's a great feat for an anime short nonetheless) in specific situations and how it plays off to it, whether it's one of Kusuo's friends, parents or external forces that instigates and Kusuo "fixes" it and a side effect causes the punchline of the episode or Kusuo is in/directly responsible for what happened, the character jabbing and the meta-joke done by Kusuo are just an extra bonus. Well even if LA says this, comedy is subjective and you can quite easily see this kind of constant boke to tsukommi routine as repetitive, for LA?, it's unpredictability along with it's punchlines made the comedy pretty well done and it's episode length (5 minutes in LA's broadcast) levitated the "monotony" of the boke to tsukommi routines though it never dissipated.

In terms of animation by JC Staff and Egg Firm, the animation was without a doubt consistent though the anime only lasted 5 minutes each, from the colorful character cast designs to the typical "decent" backgrounds. The anime being a comedy anime short, there also tends to be some detailed scenes at times to emphasis the seriousness to the ridiculous scenarios.

In terms of voice acting, well LA already said that Kurumi Saiki had a pretty erratic voice actor and her voice actor Rikako Aikawa was LA's favorite in the series, next to Yukari Tamura. LA will say this as something quite obvious, due to the length of each episodes, it's to be expected that most if not ALL the voice actors in Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan to talk extremely quickly (mainly because, they need to setup the punchline of the episode/s, make frequent jabs at the situation or characters and the punchline itself) and LA utterly loved how quickly they talked especially Hiroshi Kamiya at the constant jabbing of the situation/characters...nonetheless voice acting even in an anime short such as this, the voice acting is above-average top notch.

Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan is definitely an anime short from 2016, in which you NEED to see, especially if you watched Mob Psycho 100 and liked it for it's comedy, then Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan take it's comedic settings of Mob Psycho 100 and runs with it. Sure Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan has TONS AND TONS of characters and they don't really get all developed, but it's what Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan's comedic timing and constant situation/character jabbing AND how meta Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan is which can easily grab people into carrying on watching it, you just want to see what hijinks Kusuo and his classmates get to and how Kusuo gets roped into all the crazy antics of the boke character cast. Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan is a great anime short, sure it's HUGE run time of...425 minutes (7 hours 5 minutes) makes it unique to ALOT of anime shorts and even MORE with how it was broadcasted...but it's where Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan's comedy and it's wacky cast where the anime short strives and the anime itself manifested to Kusuo (oddly enough as much as he's an antithesis to it all) knows it.

UPDATED NOTES from Ep. 85 to 120 - So with newer characters getting into the mix as well as some old ones mixing into it, Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan does do a good job at bringing back in the underdeveloped characters (like Chiyo and the before underdeveloped Aren making himself into the peanut gallery of annoyance for Saiki). New characters like Saiki's grandparents was also a welcome of new skits such as Saiki's grandfather's blatant tsundereism that was pretty funny. There were some new characters who LA felt replaced Aren's underdevelopness due to their "one to 3 episode" status to them such as Tsuyoshi Kongou the REAL delinquent and the one-time villain to Saiki because of Kokomi, Saiko Metori. There was however one "arc" that was more or less focused and kinda reigned in a sorta antagonist in the form of Saiki's older brother Kuusuke voiced by Kenji Nojima, due to an incident, Saiki's family go find Kuusuke and him having a massive sibling rivalry complex leads Saiki down an elaborate game of cat and mouse (easy?...no really if you add in Saiki's annoying peanut gallery best friends). Really Ep. 85 to 120 helped with some of LA's problems such as lacking development to some of the characters like Chiyo and "at first" disliked Aren and even adding in newer characters that both had the same problems before but it worked well as the newer characters with more screentime blended into the comedy and it's cast pretty well mainly again because Saiki is the catalyst to make it happen.