Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei 2: The Power of Negative Thinking

may have way too may cultural references for the average manga reader but Sayonara, Zetsybou-Sensei v2 continues its smart, sharp and morbidly funny story telling. the writing in clever and humor biting and very different than any other humor titles i have read. its a comedic slice of life from a passive aggressive manic depressive's point of view.

Volume 2 contains chapters 11 to 20 and plenty of bonus pages and translation notes.Again, this book is a 16+. You don't want your children to read this and learn how cruel life is and become suicidal... or something.Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei revolves around a teacher called Zetsubou-Sensei (real name Nozomu Itoshiki) and his class of unique students. Zetsubou-Sensei is one of the most depressed people you will ever read about. All he wants to do is die. His strange personality is somehow attractive to the females in his class such as a super positive girl, a hikikomori, a stalker, a foreigner, a quite girl, a perfectionist, a girl with a tail fetish, an illegal immigrant and more! Every single character (apart from the ordinary girl who says she isn't ordinary) is really strange!Basically, this manga is about a class full of strange people who talk about everyday things but delve deeper into the truth and make them seem really odd/bad/funny.Anyway, with most of the introductions out of the way (see volume 1) we start learning a bit more about why sensei wants to die so much. From the truth of the universe to report cards and unstable weather, just about anything can make someone sink into despair.We also meet some more new characters in this volume. The chairman who lacks presence, a manga loving girl who's addicted to coupling and sensei's family.To be able to fully understand Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei volume 2, you need a little bit of japanese culture knowledge although the translation note pages cover most of the references.

After spending the last 10 issues introducing most of the core cast, the second volume of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei mostly focuses on the plot. There were a few new characters introduced, but they were fairly minor ones so far, and they're dwarfed by the best premises for a despair rant this volume gave us. Some Highlights:The first chapter starts off exploring the Japanese tradition of hanging wishes on trees to having them granted, snowballing into the Despair class starting a new religion.Nozumu decides to give out non-report cards, choosing that ignorance is bliss. Going from one extreme to the other brought on some great comedic whiplash.Nozumu distresses over being overshadowed by...well everything.Nozumu's family invokes an old tradition to try and get him married off. A few students from class try twist it for their own ends.Nozumu gets the class involved in Criticism training, basically toughening them up by insulting them. Trust me, the reactions are priceless.Overall, I would prefer the story to be a bit more serialized instead of ending a subject in one issue. Hopefully that will come in in Volume 3.

Volume 1 will always be one of my favorite manga volumes of all time, so anything following that one was going to have a hard time living up to my expectations. Volume 2 isn't bad at all, but it does lack the lightness and (wonderfully dark) humor of its predecesor.First, the good:-We get to meet some more students, which is always really awesome. They're not the most important of the bunch, but I'm sure they'll add some more variety to class 2-F.-The art is still wonderful, infused with details that you could easily miss. But that's what makes it fun! Sort of a Where's Waldo, but with Matoi instead.-More Itoshiki family members. Yup.-There were a couple of chapters that were downright hilarious but...The not-so-good:-...sadly, not all of them were. Most were just too heavily packed with cultural, social and political references that they were impossible to get through without the translator notes, which were also somewhat lacking. Knowing some Japanese does help with the puns, but naturally, nearly every reference in this volume went straight over my head.-It's a bit exhausting to read in one sitting. While I devoured the first volume, the lack of accessible humor and the sheer number of satirical elements makes this volume super tiring super fast. It just doesn't let up, except for a couple of chapters.I recommend this volume for hardcore fans of Japanese culture and those who are willing to learn more in order to understand the references.

I love this series so much, one of my all time favorites.I was really excited for the manga and I bought it used and it said good condition.When I opened it, it had a pretty wrinkled spine at the top which wasn’t too big of a deal but it wasn’t ideal either.The back of the book was really bad though, there was this big brown stain on it, of which I am not sure what it was..?