Recap: The gals become paranoid that one of them is a secret millionaire. After a fantastic dark comedy sketch you’ll remember who it is that wrote this story and then start to somewhat question the character design once you realize these girls are in their twenties.

First episode in, and I had a few laughs, but I was surrounded by negative opinion by my friends and doubt in my own heart whether or not this work could attain even a fraction of the brilliance of SZS. Still, with how heavily I sold the work of Kouji Kumeta before this show came out I felt obligated to keep up the faith, and with that I rolled into the second episode, and I was not disappointed.

I had put a lot of faith into this show because of its writer. Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is by far one of my top three comedies of the past decade, and when I heard another piece by the writer was becoming an anime, I jumped at the opportunity to cover it.

Now, in all fairness, this is still no SZS in terms of its ability to create fantastically insane characters and hilariously dark and absurd situations, but this week definitely brought the style of smart referential humor I’ve come to expect and the delicious dark comedy I’ve come to love. We start out with a simple discussion, one I’ve had with friends many times. If you won the lottery, what would you do with it? They proceed to spiral out from the topic and come to a train of logic that pits every girl against each other to figure out who’s been hiding a secret the entire time. It culminates in classic Kumeta fashion with a hilarious scene between the girls and randomly appearing set pieces, this time in the form of appearing missionaries.

The second act starts in Tokyo Tower. This part was definitely the weakest of the three. It’s a lot of word play that didn’t really work for me. The best part was the break image of mascot on mascot violence.

The third act is what really steals the show in my opinion. We start off with relatively benign flu talk, and then break into a really hilarious but perverted aside. Back to the flu and the conversation leads to who gets to be on the priority list for vaccinations. It starts out with a bunch of references most English speakers or non-longtime manga fans are going to get. Unforutnately, the noises they used to obscure copyrighted characters were incredibly annoying, and with even a well placed Black Jack reference getting really ruined by it.  Obviously the girls decide the best way to get to the top is to fake pregnancy. Kigu’s hyper realistic imagination and Kukuru’s psychosomatic breakdown steal the rest of the show. Yet, throughout the entire act there is a woman with a luchador mask on. She is never mentioned. She is never questioned. She is just there.

While I kinda think the character designs made by JC Staff make some jokes feel off, it does help when the jokes are incredibly bizarre that there is the juxtaposition of surreal events and a cutesy, safe animation style. I said this before but Joshiraku’s second episode really is bringing back a lot of memories of SZS’s fantastic dark humor by creating humor through uneasiness or ridiculous situations in a fantastic way.