AKA: Repent Goodbye, Mr. Despair, 懺・さよなら 絶望先生 (Japanese)
	Genre: High school comedy / satire
	Length: Television series, 13 episodes, 24 minutes each
	Distributor: Currently unlicensed in North America
	Content Rating: 16+ (violence, suggestive themes, fan service)
	Related Series: Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (OAV), Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei Bagaichi
	Also Recommended: Cromartie High School, Pani Poni Dash
	Notes: Based on the manga by Koji Kumeta, currently running in Japan in Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine. It's currently available in North America through Del Ray. This is the third TV season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and the fourth series overall.
	Rating:

Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Synopsis

Nozomu Itoshiki and his students go through yet another round of dark humor, satire, and in Nozomu's case, despair, in the third TV seasons of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.

Review

They say the third time's the charm. Unfortunately, such is not the case for Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, which is definitely the weakest entry in the series to date.

One of the biggest problems is that the episodes have topics divided into two parts, concluding in the following episode. Often you'll find yourself forgetting a topic, only to have the show remind you of it again, along with repeating the footage from the previous part.

Speaking of repeating footage, each episode now ends with a song about drawing Nozomu's head, a parody of drawing songs that air on kids' shows in Japan. While amusing for a couple of episodes, it's done at the end of all of them. And although the series tries to spice it up by having two different characters almost every episode, it's the same damn song every time, and it gets annoying to watch very quickly.

Speaking of things annoying to watch, Chiri is more psychotic and twisted than ever, and not in a good way. She also has the annoying habit of having commas, periods, question marks, and exclamation marks appear, with sound effects, whenever she talks. Like the drawing song segments, this is amusing once or twice, but quickly wears out its welcome. And her bouts of violence and bloodshed are so much more common that some of the cast members aren't even phased by her antics!

The animation has taken a dramatic hit as well. Characters barely move, and with the exception of the last topic in episode 8, there's no stand-out artistic moment in the series like, say, episode 7 of the previous season. The Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei series has never been known for its high budgets, but it was at least always interesting to look at. That's less noticeable here.

But what about the topics themselves, you might wonder? There's still a few funny ones: third topics, ignoring things in life, surprises, deceptively cheap products, things being correct but not necessarily right, intentional trolling. But for every funny topic, there's one that is utterly stupid. One fine example is a two-part series where Nozomu's sister Rin is under house arrest, but she wants to eat ramen. So what does she do? She destroys all the houses around her in succession to the ramen shop. Another stupid topic has Nozomu and his students finding a missile, which they try to hide...only to be hit by an actual one at the end of the episode.

Granted, the series is just as amusing as it is not, if not more so, but it's obvious that SHAFT was putting far more attention to Bakemonogatari (which aired at the same time that season) than they did this. Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei starts off with the weakest material in the series before recovering itself, and even then it contains some of the weakest/stupidest topics in the entire series. The new OP is great, and the new ED is good, but the actual series itself has definitely overstayed its welcome. I'm hoping that the new OAV, Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei Bagaichi, helps return the series to its formal glory.

The third time is definitely not the charm for the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei series. It does, however, result in exactly three stars, if only because traces of the series' once hilarious storytelling can be seen now and again. — Tim Jones

Recommended Audience: Chiri is a lot creepier than earlier series, and several topics end with the characters "dying". There's also the typical suggestive themes and fan service shots of Kaere as well. Older teenagers and up only.