The Funniest Show You've Never Heard Of: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

In February, Texas experienced a historic snowstorm that rendered me homebound for about a week. During that time I stumbled across a show on Netflix called "The Disastrous Life of Saiki K." Normally, I wouldn't watch an anime, (not that I'm opposed to anime for any specific reason), but I had seen a six-second clip of the show on tumblr and it looked really funny. So I thought, why not?

Since then, I have finished watching the entire series, almost twice, and have read the entire manga, which has been translated by fans into English and uploaded to various websites. I've also written over a dozen fanfictions for the show. Needless to say, I loved it!

What makes this particular anime so funny? Honestly, it's the absurdity. A lot of the characters are kind of stereotypes. They don't have a ton of dimension to them and are incredibly cliched. They take every trait of theirs and push them to the most extreme level. The ex-delinquent finds himself battling the urge to smash another student over the head with a fire extinguisher, just because his face was annoying. The snobby rich kid totally remodeled his house into a strange combination of a Six Flags and Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, just to impress the peasants at school. The most beautiful, perfect girl at school literally glows. These are just a few examples of the exaggerated characterization of the cast. Because of the characters' over-the-top personalities, they drag the protagonist into all kinds of ridiculous circumstances.

Speaking of the main character, Saiki is a psychic. He has an incredible repertoire of powers, including but not limited to: telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, levitation, and clairvoyance. Most of the powers have rules for how he can use them, but the show prioritizes humor above all else, so the rules can be broken if it makes for a sillier story. Saiki's biggest goal is to be average and go unnoticed by his peers. He hates his powers and because of them, he feels isolated from the rest of humanity. But before you think this story is angsty or anything like that, the truth is that he really does care about his friends and family, even if he denies it. This makes for some really heart-warming moments.

There are some references to other anime and manga in the series, and if you're like me, you won't get the jokes. But the jokes come so quickly that it doesn't really matter if you miss one. The show is incredibly fast-paced. The dialogue almost sounds like it's being spoken at 1.5x speed. This just means that you never go long without a laugh, though you do kind of need to pay close attention to what's happening.

One issue that the show has is that only the first season has been dubbed in English. The second season is subtitled. At first, I wasn't sure I could handle it because it's so fast. But really, there is plenty of time to read the subtitles, so you should be fine! It's just as funny with subtitles as with a dub, so don't be afraid of the second season. There is a third season produced and dubbed by Netflix. It's still funny, but not as good as the first two seasons. Part of the reason is that the third season is really just adapted chapters of the manga that didn't make it into the initial run of the anime. Basically, they were left-over stories and most of them feel that way. Another thing is that the English voice actors changed and aren't as good of a fit. But it's still worth watching.

Please give Saiki K a chance! To me, the straight-man main character surrounded by caricatures, thrust into absurd circumstances and problems against his will... It's honestly reminiscent of the humor in Seinfeld. Has anyone else ever made that comparison? Who knows! But anyway, it's a lot of fun and not very long, so take a few days and give it a shot!