Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei - Episode 5

Almost a month without watching a single episode of this show? Yes, I was well and truly in despair thanks to a lack of witty weirdness courtesy of everyone's favourite teacher.

While episode four didn't particularly hit the right notes for me, episode five of Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei was a definite return to form, stringing together some wonderfully bizarre trains of thought and backing up with enough decent sight and set-piece gags to make me burst out laughinng on numerous occasions. Amongst the topics for discussion this time around was how everything in the world can be split into science, athletics and liberal arts (which made a frightening amount of sense in places), how Japanese 'fortune bags' prove that there's nothing good about leftovers, and that people shouldn't expect to be rewarded for acts of kindness.

It's this kind of thing which has really sealed Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei's irreverent style, and quite simply, it's what it does best, bombarding the viewer with informations and jokes aplenty safe in the knowledge that enough of it will stick to make for an enjoyable experience, with this particular episode probably the best example of what the series is capable of in quite a while. You can never quite tell whether the odd animation in places (showing just characters feet for entire segments) is there to make it cheap to produce or to add to the style, but again, it really doesn't matter when all is said and done. Simply put, when it's on-form this often hit and miss show is sheer genius.