Best Quotes from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

What Is Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei?

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (or Goodbye, Mr. Despair) is a unique dark comedy anime. It's about a very pessimistic high school teacher named Nozomu Itoshiki. The show makes fun of Japanese society through his weird and depressing point of view.

The teacher, Nozomu, is in charge of a class full of strange students. Each student represents a different problem or personality type found in society. The show is known for its fast dialogue and weird visual style.

This article will share the best quotes from the show. These quotes are funny, but they also show the series' deeper themes about sadness and social problems. We'll look at quotes from each character to see what they add to the story.

The Best Quotes from Each Character

The characters in this show don't really change much. They are more like symbols for different ideas. The jokes come from the main character's negativity clashing with his students' weird obsessions.

Nozomu Itoshiki: The Teacher in Despair

Nozomu Itoshiki is the main character and is always depressed. His name in Japanese is a pun that spells out the word for "despair." He sees everything in the worst possible way.

His Catchphrase: "I'm in Despair!"

Nozomu’s most famous line is, "I'm in despair! has left me in despair!" He says it in almost every episode. He yells it when something, big or small, bothers him.

• "I'm in despair! This money-grubbing world has left me in despair!"
  This is his first big line. He says it about capitalism but uses it for small things, like paying for a plastic bag. The joke is how much he overreacts.
• "I'm in despair! The Internet has left me in despair!"
  He hates the internet because people are mean online but polite in person. He thinks it's a place where social rules break down. He gets mad that he can't confront the anonymous trolls.
• "I'm in despair! Society, which only rates the parts that they can see, has left me in despair!"
  Nozomu complains that people only care about things they can measure, like test scores or looks. He thinks a person's real value is hidden. This becomes a bigger theme later in the show.
• "I'm in despair! Curry which does not match the original has left me in despair!"
  This shows how much he hates change. If a movie is different from the book, he sees it as a huge betrayal. He wants the world to stay the same, but it never does.

His Thoughts on Death

Nozomu is always trying to commit suicide, but it's a running gag. His comments about death show he's more interested in controlling his life than ending it.

• "What if I had died!?"
  He says this when someone "saves" him from a suicide attempt. It's ironic because he wants to die, but not by accident. He has to be in control of his own death.
• "The meaning of love is found through death!"
  He romanticizes the idea of double suicide. He even carries a kit with a will and sleeping pills. It's a dark way of making fun of tragic stories.
• "I am a man whose life is worth nothing."
  When someone tries to cheer him up, he insists he's worthless. In a world that pushes everyone to be successful, he fights for his right to be a failure. It's his form of rebellion.

Kafuka Fuura: The Extreme Optimist

Kafuka Fuura is the complete opposite of Nozomu. She is so positive that it's actually disturbing. She refuses to see anything bad and reinterprets terrible things as happy events.

Seeing the World Differently

Kafuka's main thing is putting a positive spin on everything. She renames or explains away any tragedy she sees.

• "You didn't intend to die, right? You were just trying to make yourself taller!"
  She says this when she finds Nozomu hanging from a tree. She refuses to believe he's trying to commit suicide. She forces her happy version of reality onto him.
• "It's a pink slip!"
  Kafuka uses strange euphemisms for bad things. A layoff notice is a "pink slip" for a fun new adventure. A stalker is just a "devoted guardian."
• "Everybody in this class belongs to Sensei, so you have no chance."
  This sounds like a typical anime harem line at first. But the word "belongs" is important. Later in the story, this quote becomes much more literal and dark.

Her Hidden Sadness

Kafuka's cheerfulness is so extreme it seems like she might have lost touch with reality.

• "This is Earth, this is Earth. Is everyone doing well? Really? Planet Pororoca is currently experiencing a spring that comes once every fourteen years..."
  Kafuka sometimes talks about other planets as if she's an alien. It's played for laughs but shows she feels separate from everyone else. It’s like she’s escaping to a fantasy world to avoid pain.
• "How could [negative event] be possible? It could be that [implausible explanation]!"
  She uses this formula to deny anything bad. If Nozomu complains about being poor, she'll say he's just a "minimalist king." Her happiness comes from completely rejecting the real world.

Quotes from the Students

The students in Nozomu's class each have one specific obsession or flaw. Their quotes make fun of certain types of people in society.

Chiri Kitsu: The Perfectionist

Chiri is obsessed with things being perfectly neat and proper. Her need for order is so extreme it becomes violent.

• "I should really do things properly..."
  This is her catchphrase. For her, "properly" means everything must be perfectly symmetrical and equal. She represents the pressure to conform in society.
• "I'm in despair! Things which don't hold true to the original have left me in despair!"
  Like Nozomu, she gets upset about things that aren't authentic. But her despair is aggressive. She thinks any imperfection is a moral failure that needs to be fixed.
• "If the borrower fairy didn't return everything fairly, that would be fairly bad."
  Her dialogue is full of puns about fairness. Her idea of equality is dangerous. She would rather bring everyone down to the same level than lift people up.

Abiru Kobushi: The Tail Puller

Abiru is always covered in bandages, so everyone assumes she's a victim of abuse. But the truth is much weirder.

• "I just wanted to pull its tail."
  It turns out she gets her injuries from pulling the tails of dangerous animals at the zoo. The show plays with the audience's assumptions. We think she's a victim, but she's actually causing her own problems.
• "Tail..."
  In some episodes, her dialogue is reduced to just this single word. This makes fun of how anime characters are often simplified to one quirky trait.

Matoi Tsunetsuki: The Stalker

Matoi is a parody of the overly devoted girlfriend. Her "love" is actually just criminal stalking.

• "I'm behind you." / "I'll always be with you."
  Matoi takes these romantic phrases literally and physically follows Nozomu everywhere. Her character makes fun of stories that portray stalking as romantic.
• "I have a friend that always crushes on a flavour of the month boy..."
  She criticizes casual dating to make her own stalking seem like a pure, superior form of love. She thinks a restraining order is just a test of her commitment.
• "I'll die with you whenever you want. Then bon voyage."
  When Nozomu suggests a double suicide, she agrees immediately. This scares him because he wasn't being serious. It shows his own talk about suicide is mostly for show.

Kaere Kimura: The Split Personality

Kaere has a split personality. It satirizes how Japanese people sometimes see Westerners versus the ideal Japanese woman.

• "I'll sue you!"
  As her "Western" personality, this is her catchphrase. It makes fun of the stereotype that Americans are always suing people.
• "Japan is a beautiful country..."
  When her traditional Japanese personality takes over, she becomes super polite and humble. This contrast makes fun of Japan's identity crisis between Western culture and its own traditions.

Meru Otonashi: The Abusive Texter

Meru only communicates through text messages. She represents how cruel people can be online.

• "You're balding." / "Die." / "Gross."
  Meru is very shy in person, but her texts are incredibly mean and direct. She is a perfect example of a keyboard warrior. She uses her phone as a shield to say things she never would out loud.

Table 1: Character Quotes and Satirical Implications

Themes and Deeper Meaning in the Quotes

The dialogue in the show is full of cultural references and jokes about Japanese society. To get all the jokes, you have to know a lot about Japan and anime.

Jokes About Society and Culture

The show’s script is hard to translate. It's full of fast-paced humor and references to things happening in Japan in the mid-2000s.

Old-Fashioned Style and Politics

Even though the show is modern, it has an old-fashioned feel. Nozomu wears traditional clothes and speaks like someone from an old novel.

• "Showa 83"
  The anime pretends it's still the Showa era, an older period in Japan. This is a joke about wanting to go back to a different time. It contrasts the "noble" despair of old literature with the "cheap" despair of today.
• Political References: The dialogue also references real politicians and news stories from the time. This grounds the show's weirdness in real-life issues.

Jokes About Books

Many of the chapter titles and lines are puns on famous books. This turns serious art into silly comedy.

• "Confessions of a Pseudonym"
  This is a pun on a famous Japanese book called Confessions of a Mask . The show uses this serious title to talk about something silly like online usernames.
• "No Longer Human"
  Nozomu is basically a parody of the main character from the book No Longer Human . He acts like a tortured artist but applies it to everyday failures. The joke is in the drop from serious to ridiculous.

Making Fun of Anime

The show also makes fun of anime itself.

• "Zetsubou-sensei Drawing Song"
  The characters sing a simple song about how to draw him, like on a kids' show. But the lyrics describe a disaster, which is funny and dark. It makes fun of how children's shows can be overly cheerful.
• "Don't say 'normal'!"
  One character, Nami Hito, gets angry when people call her normal. The show uses her to mock the bland "everyman" characters in other anime.

The Real Meaning of Despair (Spoilers)

The show's jokes slowly build into a serious point. Lines that were funny at the beginning turn out to be hints for the tragic ending.

What Is Real?

The dialogue often makes you question what's real. Kafuka’s extreme positivity and Nozomu’s deep pessimism are shown as two different ways of distorting the truth.

• "There is no such thing as [concept]."
  Nozomu often says things like "hope" don't really exist. The ending shows that the class itself wasn't what it seemed. It was a group of people connected by a shared, hidden trauma.

How the Ending Changes Everything

The manga's ending changes the show from a comedy to a psychological tragedy. It's revealed that Kafuka Fuura is actually dead. The girls in the class received her organs after their own accidents or suicide attempts.

The "Kafuka" we see is a shared hallucination or spirit. The girls act as her to keep her memory alive for Nozomu. This new information changes the meaning of many earlier quotes.

1. "Everybody in this class belongs to Sensei..."
   This line stops being a joke about a crush. It becomes literal because the girls are carrying the organs of the woman he loved.
2. "You're just trying to make yourself taller!"
   Kafuka’s denial of suicide is now much sadder. "Kafuka" is the memory of a dead girl, so she can't accept the idea of suicide. Her optimism is a defense mechanism for the entire class.
3. "Possession" and "Integration"
   Jokes about characters acting like each other are no longer jokes. They hint at the girls' physical connection through the organ donations.
4. "I am in despair!"
   Nozomu’s catchphrase is not just a joke about small problems anymore. It's a real cry of sadness for the woman he lost. His pessimism is his way of grieving.

The Language of Grief

In the last chapters, the comedy fades and the dialogue becomes serious.

• "There was Despair. For us it was our last hope."
  This line explains the whole point of the series. Nozomu's despair gave the girls a reason to live. Having a teacher who understood their pain helped them survive.

Conclusion

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei uses language to build a world that is both funny and sad. The characters and their catchphrases show us the anxieties of modern life. These include our obsession with perfection and our need for connection.

The show is clever because its jokes become clues for the tragic ending. The reveal about Kafuka changes the meaning of everything said before. It becomes a story about grief and how people help each other heal.

In the end, the quotes from this show are memorable because they say things we often feel but don't say. The show suggests that you don't have to get rid of despair to be okay. Sometimes, facing sadness is how you find a reason to keep going.

Table 2: Thematic Dualities in Dialogue