Rbastid

This is quite possibly the stupidest show to ever be made……and I love it more than I can say.

Story - 5/10

For the most part the show follows your typical school life show, but in a much looser fashion than you might be use to. If there was ever a plot point in an anime series, then TDLoSK touched on it, though often in a mocking manner.

Each episode is composed of five to six skits that appeared in the original web series, so every few minutes you get another completely random plot to follow, with only a few stories actually taking up more than one segment. 

The overall gist is that Saiki has psychic abilities, which help him deal with the group of goofballs at his school who think they are his friends. Often he’ll try to use his powers to do all he can to avoid the other students, though their persistence tends to win out in the end, leaving Saiki to just have to endure what ever silly activity they have planned.

Despite not having a very robust story, the show is still very entertaining, and is much more coherent than many other series that try to create overly complex, and often jumbled, story lines.

Animation - 7/10

The animation for the show is pretty good, but nothing out of the ordinary for a school life comedy series. Since they’re often mocking other shows you’ll get scenes that resemble something out a romance or action genre, as well as having our characters resemble people from other popular series.

One thing I love is how they have an explanation for all the different things you’d normally see in anime. For instance many of the characters have different color hair, which is explained away by saying that only Saiki was born with colored hair, but to not stand out he used his powers to alter the DNA of everyone so that unnatural colored hair became common.

Considering the genre, and how the show stresses it’s comedy over everything else, they did a great job doing what they needed to when it came to the animation.

Sound - 7/10

All our voices are very well done and the characters they are matched with are spot on. 

Using Jerry Jewell for Saiki is a very good choice, as the character’s calm demeanor is similar to that of another one of his anime jobs, Taira from Beck. Using that dulcet tone also made perfect sense, as Saiki is never actually talking, everything we hear from him is either telepathically sent to those around him, or just his inner thoughts, so theres little need for screaming.

Everyone else follows suit in not only sounding great, but also just being acted out as well as you could wish for, considering how even just reading these jokes off a script needs near perfect comedic timing. Like with the characters themselves, Nendo’s VO artist stood out, doing a great job hitting all his over the top notes.

The themes for the show are just okay. The first opening is what you’d expect from a traditional school life show, and while the second also might be a decent match, it was quite annoying. The two closing songs were completely different, but almost similar to the openings. The first is a wacky over the top song, that matches the series but sounds awful. The second is much more in line with the serious version of this genre, and the music itself is actually pretty good.

Characters - 10/10

Although Saiki is our main character, he often feels like not much more than a tour guide through our sea of entertaining secondary characters. He’s required to play the straight man to almost a dozen goofballs, and while at times he has some funny moments, he’ll more often than not be the one looking on in embarrassment.

The obvious choice for breakout star of the show in Sakai’s classmate, who also believes they’re best friends, Nendou. Despite looking like your typical dumb bully character he’s actually a big softy, though still a complete an utter moron. Because of his lack of intelligence he’s actually what scares Sakai more than anything, since his practically missing brain makes him very spontaneous, so his thoughts are hard to read. Often characters like this could become quite annoying, but his goofy over the top personality ended up being great from start to finish.

The other schoolmates of Saiki play just slightly less entertaining roles than our big doof above. Shun is supposed to be a character from pretty much every supernatural school shounen, except he is a complete weakling who’s abilities only reside in his head. Taking up the role of another shounen trope is Hairo, the energetic athlete who pumps everyone up as he tries to be the best not only for himself, but for all his teammates. The female who has all the boys wrapped around her finger is Teruhashi, though her only goal right now is Saiki, as he’s the person who can see through her “Little Miss Perfect” act. 

There are a few other students who reoccur throughout the series, both male and female, but none seem to get even a tenth of time as those mentioned above.

Despite being a very calm and calculating person, Saiki has none of the qualities of his parents. Both tend to be quite scatterbrained and often rely on their son to fix their problems with his abilities. Like pretty much every character in our series, they work as a perfect accompaniment to to Saiki, providing the humorous situations for him to opine about.

Overall - 10/10

I wouldn’t think it was even possible, but somehow the creators of the show managed to make an almost perfect mix of Cromartie High School and Excel Saga, but at times making it even funnier and wackier. The show started off hilarious, and I had my doubts that it could hold up throughout the entire series, but even in that last episode I was thoroughly entertained.

Even though it had a storyline that does loosely follow the entire series, you’re not going to be watching it for that. Instead it’s the constant flow of jokes that will allow you to enjoy each episode, either during an extended viewing or just throwing it on for a short segment or two.