The Representation and Meaning Within

This is an opening for a series called Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei(Goodbye, Mr. Despair). Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is a manga created by Kumeta Kōji. It's a black comedy/satire series with many absurdities. The series center around an extremley negative teacher, Itoshiki Nozomu who views the world and see everything in life as negative. As he sees the world as negative, he tries to portray his point of view to others (mostly his students) and make not see the world and every single aspect as positive but negative and that we should despair over it. This series satirizes almost everything. From media, to politics, Japanese and Western Culutre, but mostly Japanese society.

The manga was later adapted by animation studio SHAFT who have worked on many other series such as Hidamari Sketch, Pani Poni Dash, Mahou Sensei Negima, Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase, Arakawa Under the Bridge and Puella Magi Madoka Magica (see Tina's post below about it). The opening above was used for their OVA's series called Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. The OVAs was a three episodes series and the opening video for each of them are actually in someway continous. This is the first opening out of the three OVAs and I recommend to check all of them out. I should also mention the three OVA openings are a follow up to the second season, Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. If you see Zoku's opening, you'll see that they're quite similiar.

If I can describe this opening, all I can is pure chaos and depressing. When I first saw this, I was extremley overwhelmed by what I had seen. From every single scene was gruesome, depressing and hectic. While it isn't unusal to see Zetsubou-Sensei hanging himself to attempt suicide, all the imagery were just beyond distrurbing; from severed arms and leg, tons of things appearing and moving at random, etc. Even if it just seem like this is some random opening, I felt like this really represents the series as a whole. Itoshiki Nozomu sees the world as only a negative place and as we see where his reasoning and logic is coming from throughout the series, it's not that hard to see why he's in despair and why we should be as well. The world of Zetsubou-Sensei has a lots of negative things, some that we aren't even aware of which are shed light.

I also feel like this type of opening is something that only SHAFT can pull off. SHAFT has a very interesting art direction and style compared to most other animation studios which are done in a more regular manner. SHAFT uses many close up scenes, actual digitial images that blends with the animation, screen cards or title cards that contain different images and typography to represents either what's happening on screen or as hidden or symbolic meaning to represents something. Theses examples are found in many of their other series like Hidamari Sketch, Pani Poni Dash, Negima!?, Bakemonogatari and even Zetsubou Sensei. Sometime they change art style completely at one scene or in a different episode. They always play around with different art styles and background which you might not even take notice of unless you replay back the scene.

 Maria Holic's opening, another one of SHAFT's works. (Warning: NSFW) 

Ef- A Tale of Memories's opening, again another SHAFTS's works.

It's a style that not everyone likes though. Some people finds SHAFT way of doings thing annoying or distracting. It's something that not everyone would prefer but I actually like SHAFT unique ways of trying different art directions and styles. It's a method they use in order represent or show the meaning behind these scene in a artistic way. Yes, sometime their methods are indeed random(mostly their comedy shows) but I feel like they serve a purpose. Some find it pointless and it breaks flow of the show but I feel like it works well together as a whole and create something completley different that not many other studios does it. I find it artistic.

The art style that was used for the first opening of Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei was used later on for SHAFT's other series such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica, including opening and endings like Maria Holic's ending video. These are actually done by a duo of former Gainax animators who call themselves "Gekidan Inu Curry". They also done the animation for Maaya Sakmoto's "Universe" music video.

I recommend people to at least give Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei a try. It may be hard to follow as some of the jokes and references are really obscure and it's mostly targeted toward the Japanese audience. However, even though is mostly about Japanese society, an average Japanese person wouldn't be able to get all the jokes and references either as Kumeta also injects Western references as well. I would also recommend to try other SHAFT's series as well like Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which got highly appraised for(Tina would probably recommend it too lol), Ef- A tale of memories, Bakemonogatari, Arakawa Under the Bridge and my own personal favorite, Hidamari Sketch.

-Jungwon