Review of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.
Comedy animes are bad, at least, most of them, and that's a fact. Repetitive, sexually related jokes, that over time become boring, if they weren't boring in the first place. Gladly, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K is not part of them. This chaotic anime has the most entertaining 5min episodes ever and, as a matter of fact, is hilarious, as it is supposed to be. The story is simple, a kid was born with supernatural abilities and is trying to live a normal and boring life without being noticed, but instead, his presence is frequently acknowledged, and he ends up in the most weird andchaotic situations with lots of extravagant people surrounding him. A straight-up premise that works amazingly, despite its simplicity. A story doesn't have to be mind-blowing to be good, it just needs to have good execution, and Saiki K nails it.
Something worth mentioning are the characters, every single one of them is charming in their own ways and their dynamics are excellent, Yumehara and Teruhashi, Kaido and Kuboyasu, Saiki and Nendo… Everyone in the cast is interesting to watch on the screen. The only character that is questionable is Toritsuka, most of his jokes are sexually related and unfunny, but he still has some jokes that are great, and something interesting about him too, so he’s not that bad.
It's time to talk about the main character, Saiki Kusuo. His mission is to live a normal and boring life without his powers being discovered. The list of the powers he has is extremely HUGE, so he is overpowered, however, it works, because he doesn’t like his powers and it’s an important part of the plot. Something great about him is that, even if he is technically a god, they took the time to give this guy likes and dislikes, the reason for some of his actions and the details about his design, even the persons he likes the most; for example, the reason why he doesn’t use his powers for evil is because his mom would get mad. In general, Saiki is an awesome main character, and even if it doesn’t seem like it at the beginning, he’s a good guy.
There’s something about the show that might get on people’s nerves at the beginning, and it is that The Disastrous Life of Saiki K’s execution and jokes are fast paced, REALLY fast paced. The characters speak quick and is complicated to keep it on when you’re not really into it. Everything happens in only 5 minutes and when it finishes, you’ll keep thinking: “What was that?” because there are a lot of things to process. Even with this, the show manages to make it work out, and it’s good. This demonstrates that this show trusts its audience, and that they know they will understand the jokes and the dialogue.
A detail about the show that differs it from another ones is that the characters remember what happened episodes before, time passes as usual, but every situation is very different from the other ones, so this show might appear like it’s episodic, but not completely. It’s oddly satisfying to watch when they remember some scene that you liked. Even when you notice there’s something wrong with pacing, this show WILL give a reason why it is happening.
Related to the last sentence, in this show there’s an excuse for everything. When something weird is happening, they will give you an explanation, there are details everywhere, and if you skip an episode, you will probably miss something important.
In conclusion, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K is an amazing show, and you totally should give it a try! It’s hilarious and in general gives you a great time while watching it. 9/10