Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei/YMMV

• Awesome Music: The soundtrack varies between hauntingly beautiful orchestral pieces as season main themes, great piano minuets for Nozomu, and the rather light, silly fare used for the rest of the show.
  • The opening themes all use a mixture of punk vocals (for the main singer), J-poppy backup singers, grunge guitar and (for the fourth OP) soaring piano melodies. The ending themes are an appropriately crazy mix of styles that manages to mesh, from swing jazz to surf rock to punk-infused cabaret.
  • RUMBA RUMBA RUMBA RUMBA RUUUMBAA
    • Ureshii himei ga kyou mo kikoeru...
  • RINGO MOGIRE BEAM!!
    • Zetsubou Restauraaaaaaaan...
    • Also, Kurayami Shinjuu Soushisouai.
• Acceptable Targets: Frequent targets including pervy Otaku or NEET guys, immigrants, and China "a certain country" whose constant spying on Japan goes unacknowledged by the government for political reasons (North Korea gets a similar treatment).
• Crosses the Line Twice: Suicide, not funny. Suicidal teacher winning the love and affection of his students by promising to take them with him when he does it, hilarious.
• Ensemble Darkhorse - Chiri gets an awful lot of fan art dedicated to her, and she seems to get more screen/panel time than any of the other Despair Girls except maybe Kafuka (who's probably closer to a main character since she's explicitly Nozomu's foil). I guess people like their Yandere Knife/Shovel nuts?
  • It's quite possible to say that nearly every single recurring or main character has their own fandom.
• Fan Nickname - The Despair Girls, for Nozomu's Unwanted Harem.
• Fridge Logic: Lampshaded once during the whole "thank-you thievery" bit. During a rainstorm, Chiri gives Harumi a drink pouch under an umbrella (Harumi is holding it initially). Harumi then holds the drink pouch in one hand and a manga volume in the other, and Chiri has her hands at her side, visible. No one is holding up the umbrella.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: The last picture of Chapter 16, "The People Are At The Breaking Point", depicts the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant cracking and saying "kaboom". This predates the Fukushima Nuclear Plant crisis by 5 and a half years.
  • From a few chapters later...

Nozomu: To get a stable electrical supply, we have unstable nuclear plants!

• Harsher in Hindsight: The Magical Girl opening may nowadays bring back horrifying or tear-jerker memories of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
  • And then there's the "promotional manga" informing the public on the use of spent nuclear fuel in manga Volume 4, supposedly put out by a Paper-Thin Disguise for the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) (complete with Maria briefly turning into a marionette with visible strings). TEPCO of course became the most notorious utility company in Japan (and perhaps the world) after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown.
• Hell Is That Noise: episode 4, when Meru "speaks."
• Les Yay: Chie and Kiri on occasion.
• Memetic Mutation: "X has left me in despair!", especially quoting the Meru's Introduction episode variation.
  • Zetsubou-Sensei is in Super Robot Wars!
• Paranoia Fuel: Episode 1 of Goku hints heavily that the things we see on air, surreal as they are, are actually just censored versions of much more disturbing things.
• Squick/Nausea Fuel: The chocolate heart that Chiri made for Valentine's Day. How? It's a realistic looking chocolate heart. Half of it.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Starting with Volume 5, the English edition of the manga goes from being translated by Jason Thompson to David Ury. There are now much fewer annotations for the references and cultural notes, and the wording of all the character's catchphrases has changed.
  • It's definitely a mixed bag. Vol. 5 doesn't have nearly as many dense references, and a lot more of them are directly explained in the text; the really unfamiliar things are still explained. The original translation of Zetsubou-sensei's Catch Phrase wasn't exactly like what we're used to, but changing it to "I've lost faith in [whatever]" is a major downgrade. The new translation also downgrades Kafuka's blatant Cloudcuckoolander-ness, although Chiri is still just as much of a psycho.
  • As far as the anime, if various comments within Zan and the No Man's Land/Bangaichi OVA are any indication, Japanese fans are saying this about Zan, specifically how the animation quality has dropped rather noticeably and it lacks Shaft's trademark quirks that were so prominent in the first two seasons.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: Slice of Life on crack and LSD.
  • It's also like tripping into drugs without taking any.
• Values Dissonance: Or rather, cultural beliefs dissonance. Nozomu is Squicked out by the Christmas holiday because he was born on November 4 and thus follows the still-prevalent Asian belief that the average human gestation period is 10 months and 10 days...thus he thinks he was conceived on Christmas. It's even worse for Kageru, since he was born on December 24 and thus believes he was conceived on Valentine's Day--two romantic holidays in one stone.
• Wangst: Played for comedy, of course.
• The Woobie: Maria, who woobifies herself and even makes Nozomu pity her.
  • • Then the whole class end up wanting to protect her. Even Chiri. Sometimes.
  • Abiru Kobushi both subverts this trope and plays it straight, in that, on the one hand, all of her injuries are actually the result of her animal abuse and therefore entirely deserved, while on the other hand she was fooled into thinking her teacher returned her feelings, a notion which he coldly disabuses her of.
  • The author himself. Be sure to read his notes at the ends of volumes.

I think I'm creepy. I just can't stand any part of myself. If I went to a picnic and saw my ugly face reflected in the lake, I'd just jump into it. If I went shopping and saw my ugly figure reflected in the show window, I'd bang my head against the glass and cut my throat with a fragment. My TV is always on. That's because if I turned it off, I'd see my ugly reflection. On sunny days, I have no desire to leave the house. Even my shadow is ugly. I'm an ugly manga child who'll never see the day when I become a swan.
I changed the lightbulb over my sink to the lowest wattage.

• • Poor Minami is stuck working several dozen part-time jobs to pay off her unfaithful husband's debts, and she just accepts it all. Aw...