Review of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.
I watched the first season (24 full-length episodes) of Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan. Here are my thoughts: This is a comedy show, the main shtick of which is that the main character has psychic powers. Sometimes the humour is unique and creative. Mindreading and psychic powers are used to put a unique and entertaining spin on absurdist and situational humour. The show consists of short (~5 min.) skits. These skits are hit and miss in terms of my enjoyment of the comedy. I watched the ~25-minute episodes which consist of 5 skits. Longer stories are presented as multiple sequential skits; the longer stories never exceed thelength of a single episode.
Decent voice acting that enhances the humour — especially Nendou, whose voice is hilarious. Everyone in the show speaks very quickly. I'm not sure if they literally sped up the voices post-recording, but in any case it made the show more digestible. The fast dialogue combined with short skits makes it easy to burn through episodes. In terms of music, some of the OP and ED songs are pretty good. However, the OST has a seemingly small number of tracks, given the length of the season. Some tracks are repeated very frequently. Sometimes the music does enhance the humour. In fact the familiarity of songs that are played exclusively during humorous moments can help increase my anticipation of a punch line, or something of that nature. For example, the unforgettable "Judgement Knights of Thunder" song which plays when the chuuni character is doing chuuni things. I'm even chuckling to myself now thinking about that song because it was always used during comedic scenes. It's like a Pavlovian effect.
Although not a huge issue for me, the visuals in this are poor. The art style is very lackluster and the animation appears low budget. Furthermore, there are barely any lighting effects at all. The character designs are also very simplistic. All this said, exceptional visuals would probably just be a distraction from the show's true appeal, which is its comedy. My most significant critique in this regard is that I would have liked to have seen more detail in facial expressions.
The show is shounen target demographic, which was cause for my apprehension going in. The show is okay, but a lot of the humour does revolve around typical highschool anime scenarios. Many of the jokes are the same tired school-setting comedic scenarios that are recycled but with a psychic spin, instead of something truly unique. The writing is clearly targeted towards a young teenage male audience. I think I would have enjoyed the anime more if it were not in a typical school setting. It felt like the creativity was nerfed somewhat by the need to appeal (and be relatable) to the teenage audience. Additionally, a lot of the humour revolves around parody of typical shounen tropes, which is funny the first dozen times but eventually becomes tiresome. Despite my criticisms here, the psychic powers schtick is often applied in refreshing and creative ways that I have never seen before in comedy media. However, I don't think the true strength of this humour mechanism was ever fully realized, mainly due to the limitations associated with the target audience. Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan doesn't feel like an authentic expression of someone's artistic vision; it feels like it was shrewdly engineered to sell manga to teenage boys. Maybe it's silly of me to want more than this from a shounen anime.
Seinen anime are hit and miss with me, but I think the premise of this anime would be great for seinen. The psychic mechanism would be a terrific way of exploring more mature themes and complex characters, while still generating creative humour. Instead, we are subjected to the artistically bankrupt highschool setting, and its accompanying tired schoolyard humour, likely because the author is looking to maximize sales.
The entire cast consists of very simplistic characters, but this is kind of a necessity for the style of humour and length of the skits, so I'm just stating this as a neutral observation. It would be unfair of me to expect otherwise. However, I don't particularly like the personality of the main character. His internal dialogue is used to narrate the show, but it means he's simply apathetic to everything. I get why the writer would want a blank template to work with in this regard, but it would have been nice to see him exhibit some more emotion occasionally. He's also condescending and frequently treats all the other characters poorly, which becomes very tiresome after a while. I'd like to see a spinoff show with an entirely new main psychic character (and a different setting).
After watching the first half of season 1, my enjoyment of this anime began to significantly decline. In addition to the aspects outlined above that I disliked, the show became somewhat repetitive. This is partly due to the simplistic characters and highschool setting, but probably also due to every joke involving psychic powers in similar ways. Although I enjoyed the beginning of season 1, I'm no longer enjoying this anime enough to justify watching another 24-episode season. Particularly because the next season involves the exact same characters in the exact same setting. I would be far more interested in watching another season if an entirely new cast of characters were used.
My personal rating for season 1 of Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan: 5/10
A young teenager would probably enjoy this show more than I did. I think that for a comedy fan, this show is worth sampling, but be warned that it is somewhat repetitive. During the first quarter of this season, the show was a solid 7/10 for me and I was enjoying it. Unfortunately, that initial enjoyment was diluted by the many other episodes. Maybe I will give the next season a try in a few years when my recollection of the past comedic material has faded.
Nendou and Kaidou are the funniest characters (although equally as simplistic and repetitive as everyone else). The rest of the cast is comparatively less funny, in my opinion.