Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan Review: Psychic Just Trying to Navigate the World [Season 1]

Saiki K: Comedic Chaos

24 Episodes
Spring 2013
Genre:  Comedy, Sci-Fi, Slice of Life, Supernatural
Studios: J.C.Staff, EGG Firm

 "Every chapter of the manga [written by Shūichi Asō,] gets it's own episode in this series..."
Must be a VERY enjoyable and loved manga series in Japan.

~━━━｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━∘◦ ☆ ◦∘━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✧˚☽˚｡⋆༄━━━~

Short Summary

A zany 4th wall breaking anime about a pink haired high school psychic named Kusuo Saiki who is just trying to live a normal life while having multiple powers. However, this wouldn't be a comedy show without Saiki having numerous obstacles with friends and navigate daily real life problems while having unthinkable abilities than a normal human.

~━━━｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━∘◦ ☆ ◦∘━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✧˚☽˚｡⋆༄━━━~

Characters

Saiki Kusuo: Using his powers as discrete as possible, Kusuo Saiki tries to live a "normal life." Powers include: Telekinesis/Psychokinesis,Mind Control,Memory Alteration,Clairvoyance, and more.

Riki Nendou: A young man with a heart of gold, and a mind that Saiki can not read because of his blockheadedness.  His actions might not be the best at times, but he has the best intentions of helping everyone. Very comic relief character, even if some characters find him terrifying by his appearance.

Shun Kaidou: A White haired teen who has a comical ideology that brings fun and flavor to the show. He thinks he is chosen from the Jet Black Wings to over turn the ploys of Dark Reunion literally at every turn...yes its as funny as it sounds and does not get old giggling about that.

Teruhashi Kokomi: "The perfect pretty girl." [her words not mine] Her beauty knows no measure and is adored by everyone everywhere.

Hairo Kineshi: Class rep & a leader by nature to help those who need support and always there for a pep talk to not give up.


Yumehara Chiyo: Middle school student who has dreamy romantic fantasies about her crushes, yet also has painful experiences in the love department.

Parents:
His mom is taken advantage of by door to door salesman, but kicks butt at taking care of bugs in the house.

His dad has a shoe lick fetish or something? But also works at a manga publishing company.

~━━━｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━∘◦ ☆ ◦∘━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✧˚☽˚｡⋆༄━━━~

Art

There are great visual moments and the character design add to this colorful pallet in an anime.
The art also adds to the slap stick, random, comedy scenes.
There are not over the top action scencs standing out.
The serious faces make it so worth it in this show.
The neck turn of Nendou, WHAT! Hilarious!

~━━━｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━∘◦ ☆ ◦∘━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✧˚☽˚｡⋆༄━━━~

Music

Good! Nothing super stand out but the sounds are not over the top when used and when implemented do enhance scenes.

This however…




Kinda a masterpiece when Kaidou is on the scene. Every time without a doubt this plays.
😂😂😂
~━━━｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━∘◦ ☆ ◦∘━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✧˚☽˚｡⋆༄━━━~

Voice Acting
[I watched the dub for this series]

Jerry Jewel: Kusuo Saiki's voice actor who also voices Kyo from Fruits basket,. 
SPOT ON choice in my book for Saiki. 

David Wald: Riki Nendou's voice actor who also voices Gajeel the Iron Dragon [Fairy Tail],
Hannes [AOT],Real Steel [MHA].

Tia Ballard: Kokomi Teruhashi's voice actress who also voices Happy [Fairy Tail], 
Nanami [Kamisama Kiss], Zero Two [Darling in the Franxx]

Micah Solusod: Shun Kaidou's voice actor who also voices Yuno [Black Clover], 
Yuri P. [Yuri on Ice], Soul Earer Evans [Soul Eater], Yukine [Noragami]

Kyle Philllips: Kineshi Hairo's voice actor who also voices Denki [MHA],
 Eclair [Overlord], Waltz [AOT]

Jill Harris: Yumehara Chiyo's voice actress who also voices Noelle [Black Clover], 
Aura [Overlord].

Parents:

Morgan Garret: Kurumi Saiki's voice actress who also voices Rei Todoroki [MHA],
Yuko [Nichijou], Shiki [World Ends With You]

Chuck Huber: Kuniharu Saiki's voice actor who also voices Heie [Yu Yu Hakusho], 
Kululu [Sgt. Frog], Stein [Soul Eater].
~━━━｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━∘◦ ☆ ◦∘━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✧˚☽˚｡⋆༄━━━~

My Final Thoughts

At the start of this series I was worried if the jokes would grow old and I would not enjoy this series as a whole. I admit that I usually enjoy more plot centered anime because if it gets too zany I kind of loose track of what is happening. Ex: Poni Poin Dash is one I can think of. But I highly enjoy Nichijou.

One thing I did not notice at first, that Saiki's mouth does not move unlike the other characters.

Enjoyed the 4th wall breaking in this because it builds on Saiki's character and abilities. His vague awareness is hilarious because of the constant mentioning of the Manga and character of the same name as him.

Definitely recommend. Though it’s not near the top of my all time favorites list [probably high on my comedy list though],I still enjoyed this! It kept my interest, and the fact that it didn’t evoke much from me apart from some laughs is exactly the type of thing I feel like we all need from time to time.

The hilarity and its bite-sized chunk episode structure makes it easy to pick up and can either binge watched in a day/weekend or watch it small sessions at any time.

From meta humor to visual gags to witty comments this is good sit back and relax series, good in-the-background series.

Filled with references I had to go back and re-watch episodes to craft my batch reviews.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡.⋆｡⋆☂˚｡⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆.  *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

⊱ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ .⋅🦊 ⋅.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⊰

Rate:

~━━━｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━∘◦ ☆ ◦∘━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✧˚☽˚｡⋆༄━━━~

Notes

[Note Linked below are my thoughts of episodes I found hilarious in batches of 10.]
[Note: I did not cover ALL the episodes because some of the humor did not connect with me.] [My thoughts on the Openings and Endings are also in these batch reviews.]

1-10: https://the-weeb-den.blogspot.com/2022/04/saiki-k-episodes-1-9ish.html 

11-20: https://the-weeb-den.blogspot.com/2022/04/saiki-k-episodes-11-20ish.html

21-24: https://the-weeb-den.blogspot.com/2022/04/saiki-k-episodes-21-24.html