The Disastrous Life of Saiki K Season 1 [DUB] (2016) Review

 The Disastrous Life of Saiki K Season 1 [DUB] (2016) 7/10

Hello and welcome to another anime review. Today, I’ll be reviewing the first season of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. Saiki K is a comedy anime with 24 episodes, with each episode having 5 shorts in it. The season ran from July 4 - December 23, 2016, with the show being produced by Egg Firm and J.C. Staff. This is one of the funniest shows ever, but it has some problems. Let’s jump right into it.

Our story follows psychic medium Kusuo Saiki as he tries to live a “normal” life free of drama. Problem is, drama seems to follow him wherever he goes. He is a psychic with all these extraordinary abilities. Because he’s completely overpowered, he wears control devices (his pink antennae) to restrict his abilities so that he doesn’t hurt someone on accident. Only his parents know that he is a psychic and the family tries their best to keep it that way. Saiki attends PK Academy where the rest of our cast attends. You got the dumb brute Riki Nendou, who is so stupid that Saiki can’t read his mind; Kineshi Hairo, the class rep who is obsessed with sports and physical activities and somehow can always amp up someone for anything; and Kokomi Teruhashi the most popular girl in school. Teruhashi is the “perfect being” with looks and personality and has made it her goal to make Saiki say “Oh Wow”. Up next is Shun Kaidou. Kaidou is the weird kid that believes he’s fighting a secret organization called Dark Reunion. He’s made up this whole story about himself, including that he has some awesome power that he has to keep restrained with his bandages and that his real name is Jet-Black Wings. Next is Chiyo Yumehara. She’s this side chick that originally had a crush on Saiki, but she eventually ends up with someone else. Through her time at PK, she eventually becomes friends with Teruhashi and develops crushes on other boys such as Kaidou. She’s basically your average high school girl. The last person I want to go over is Reita Toritsuka. Toritsuka is a psychic medium that can see ghosts and knows about Saiki’s powers. He’s pervy and uses his powers to try to get the upper hand on getting the ladies. There’s a lot more characters, but I’ll leave it at this.

I love this show. I really enjoyed this season despite the problems I’ll list in a little bit. Story wise, there’s nothing really here. It’s just a series of events that happens to Saiki. There are mini plots that happen in the show (such as the school trip to Okinawa and summer break), but no overarching story like with a lot of other shows. Nothing wrong with this, but I hope season 2 tries to do something with more substance. I like the characters, too. Everybody has a personality and everyone either undergoes a character arc or begins one by the end of this season. My favorite characters have to be Saiki, Nendou, Kaidou, Teruhashi and Saiki’s father Kunihara Saiki. These characters really helped this show stay afloat, especially Nendou and his blissful idiocy. The characters and the writing is the show’s strongest point. Like I said, there’s no overarching story, but the shit Saiki goes through in his daily life is hilariously written. Saiki will break the fourth wall on occasion, but not to the extent of Deadpool or Teen Titans Go!

I like the show’s art style. Sure it’s pretty basic, but it suits it since Saiki created “anime tropes” with his abilities (such as crazy hairstyles and colors). The animation is okay at best. The animators saved their budget when Saiki used one of his more powerful abilities (such as weather changing). Other than this, the show likes to make a lot of cuts and still images with moving mouths.

Music is completely forgettable. The OPs are okay, but I gotta say I like the first OP more than the second one. There is one tune though that plays whenever Kaidou starts his ramblings about Dark Reunion and it fits perfectly with his demented view of reality.

I watched this in English, which imo is a must. A lot of the jokes aren’t subtitled, so if you watch this subbed, you’ll be missing out on a lot of the jokes that happen in the background. The voice work here is decent as well. There’s only 2 voices that jumped out at me: Kusuo Saiki (Jerry Jewel) and Kunihara Saiki (Chuck Huber). And let me just say, every time Kunihara spoke, I just imagined Android 17 from DBZ acting like an idiot since they share the same VA lmao.

I know this is a gag show that’s not supposed to be taken seriously, but my main issue with the series so far is that I wish we get to see more of the characters' personalities besides just being annoyances for Saiki to deal with. Don’t get me wrong, this show is great, but I feel like it can be pushed to greater heights. Hopefully season 2 will have something a bit more fulfilling. I also feel like as a comedy show as a whole, the show can be better. I feel like this show could use some work with both the jokes and how those jokes are handled. Maybe upping the animation to allow more stylized facial expressions will help it a lot more.

Overall, this show is kind of a mixed bag for me. Certain parts of it are great, but other parts I feel like are being held back for some reason. If you want a show that’ll make you laugh your ass off and be a temporary distraction from your daily life, I recommend this show. I can’t wait to dive into season 2.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.