The second season of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. is based upon the four panel manga, and is 24 episodes long. Similarly to the first season, each episode is comprised of five short clips. The protagonist is Saiki, who is a powerful psychic. However, he’s trying his best to hide his powers. Saiki is effectively the most powerful person in the world, being able to teleport, high athletic ability, psychokinesis, mind-reading and much much more. It’s practically limitless but he does have some restrictions on how often and how long he uses his powers, otherwise the anime would be too boring.
Saiki attends a private high school and despite his best efforts, he’s amassed a number of good friends. There’s Nendo, the muscle head who doesn’t have a brain; Kaido, the delusional one who’s has a severe case of chunibyo; Teruhashi, the most beautiful girl where even god will intervene, so she gets her way, and others, even new characters introduced during this season. While Saiki thinks of them as annoyances and planned to ditch them several times, deep down, we can see that he cares for them.
Also despite Saiki’s best efforts in detaching himself from others, his friends have found out his weaknesses. As the viewer, we already know he has a craving for sweet things, especially coffee pudding but his friends know it too, and often uses that as the bargaining chip or thing that pulls him over the line into helping them. It’s funny and heart-warming at the same time when that happens as it makes Saiki that much more relatable and human.
The anime is enjoyable because the characters and especially Saiki himself gets into over-the-top situations, where Saiki ends up being forced to use his powers in order to bring some resemblance of normality back and diffuse the situation. It’s great when it works, although the beginning of the season had some of the weaker clips. It felt like they had to go more and more out there in order to keep up the surprises and humor, whereas the best clips were the ones that were closer to normality.C
Then there is the trend of multi-part arcs. There are a lot more of them this season, and they’re longer too. We’ll have a single story thread spread over seven episodes and while it’s not bad, since we’re so used to the short sharp self-contained clips, sometimes these longer arcs can outstay their welcome. The season does get better as it progresses, with some really good episodes from the middle onwards, with the quality on par against the first season.
Saiki himself has changed a lot compared to how we were initially introduced to him. He willingly interacts with his friends a lot more now. However, the humor now stems more from over-the-top or outrageous situations rather than the mundane events of the first season. This doesn’t make it bad, the anime’s just moved on and having to up the ante in order to keep the quality. The humor is great though, and definitely love Saiki’s down to earth reactions compared to his friend’s crazier expressions.
The anime has a clever way of explaining the setting, like how the characters are always in the same year of high school. Since Saiki himself is self-aware of what’s happening, it makes it all the more amusing when we’re shown some crazy, yet strangely plausible, explanation for anime cliches. There are a lot more references to other anime too, from shameless plugs to parodies.
Nonetheless, there are constantly threats to Saiki’s secret of being a psychic. He had already unwillingly been forced to reveal his powers to several people, but he still doesn’t want the general public to know. Yet there are constantly new adversaries popping up to try and confirm their suspicions of him. It is impressive in these scenarios that Saiki doesn’t just use his powers for more selfish reasons.
The season ends with an episode that’s slightly different from ordinary ones, with Saiki himself aware that it is the final episode. As a result, it has some of the hallmarks of a goodbye in it, only for a two-episode conclusion to happen straight afterwards. However, the two episode conclusion was great, as it concludes what is arguably a problem that had been lingering in the background, the resolution of which does bring closure to the series. At which point, Saiki can move on, as can everyone else, and while it seems a bit of a shame, the final scene of course shows that maybe not all is as it seems. It ultimately ended up as a pretty good payoff, with the assistance of several characters that you thought may have been one-shot characters.
Overall, the second season of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. stays strong. It’s a funny anime that manages to hold onto its charms, although there are definitely a few points where it can feel a tad bit stale. Nevertheless, it’s unique points and trademark characterisation of its characters is on point, and for such an episodic series, it manages to produce a satisfying conclusion that brings about proper closure.
-----------------------------------------------------------
For other anime reviews, have a look at this page.
