Kafuka Fu’ura is an angel
From the very first episode, you know that Fuura is special. When the rest of the characters are introduced, you know that something weird is going on with Fuura. Why is she the only one with a pen name? Why is she seemingly more important than the other girls? After finishing the show and analyzing the openings (especially the Goku OP), you may come to a speculation that Fuura is actually dead. But this still makes no sense because everyone can see her.
When you read the last 10 chapters (or all 300 if you’re a real man), there is no way you could have predicted what the actual truth was. What was introduced as a gag in a random chapter (that was not in the anime) turned out to be the glue that was keeping this entire cast together. Who would have thought that transplantation induced memory transfer was behind everything?
This is a story about hope. A girl who died in an accident but was so stubborn and hopeful that she refused to remain dead. A girl so hopeful that pieces of herself being transplanted into suicide victims is enough to save them from the despair of their life. All of the girls are truly damaged individuals whose negative traits were possibly what drove them to attempting suicide, but Fuura was the beacon of hope that turned their life around, which is why these traits that originally brought them all despair are now a source of comedy instead.
The other person who was saved by Fuura was Nozomu himself. When he is first introduced, Fuura has to literally save him from hanging himself. This is Nozomu’s first meeting with his love who is supposed to be dead. A meeting that was never meant to happen. Eventually, we learn that Nozomu secretly does not want to die, and there is a gag about how he trains his body to survive these suicide attempts (neck training for example). Fuura’s revival is what is keeping him alive. She is what gave birth to his new life, along with the other students’ lives. In the first episode, Nozomu’s line “I am a person whose life is worth nothing” hits much harder when you read the final page of the manga, when he says, “I have no special talents and I am a simple man of no merit”.
The Zetsubou Sensei anime inspired me to be unique and laugh at all of life’s sorrows. It also inspired me to create; haven’t you seen the animation clip at the start of this review? I hope that this obscure Japanese gag manga can potentially save someone the way Fuura saved everyone. Because that’s another special thing about comedy. Being able to joke about taboo and dark topics is what keeps people from being exhausted. We know there’s nothing we can do about most of our and society’s problems, so what’s the point in being miserable? Comedy should be about laughing at the darkest parts of the human condition, and I think that’s the reason why Zetsubou Sensei is so special to me.
Even if people watch the show and just like it because it’s an obscure gag show that’s kinda wacky and they don’t care about reading the manga, that’s fine. Even if nobody will ever understand this show, I hope it at least made them laugh, because there will never be another comedy like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.
