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The Spring 2016 Anime Preview Guide
Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto

How would you rate episode 1 of
Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto ?
Community score: 3.8



What is this?

No one quite knows where he came from, but Sakamoto is the coolest guy in school. There's nothing he can't do – rescue birds from storms, sit on a missing chair, use his compass like chopsticks, or save classmates from fires – and what makes it even more amazing is that he elevates all of these things to the level of art. The girls fawn over him and the boys want to be him, or at least wish he'd get out of their way. But Sakamoto is so awesome that he turns every bully's plans around to show them why they ought to be worshiping him too! What's a class to do when someone like Sakamoto is in the room? Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto is based on a manga and can be found streaming on Crunchyroll and The Anime Network Online, Saturdays at 1 AM EST.



How was the first episode?

Jacob Hope Chapman

Rating:

So I was a naughty critic on this one and read everyone else's take on Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto before writing up my own. (In fairness, I watched the show before reading any of those takes.) After reading my fellow writers' opinions on this show, I learned two things: A) this manga is much more well-known than I was aware, because it seems like everyone but me has read it and B) this show kinda feels like a slow-paced low-budget version of the comics and you should just read them instead.

That may very well be true, but speaking as a scrub who's never read the manga, I thought Sakamoto's slow pace was at least half of what made the show so damn funny. I definitely think you should go into this show unaware of the punchlines if you can, because this adaptation intentionally languishes for as long as possible on the setup before turning things around. If you already know what's coming, this oddball "humor-from-agony" might not play as intended. Of course, this style of humor might not work for you period. It helps to be a fan of Shinji Takamatsu's previous comedies, because his sense of timing is definitely divisive. While not all his work is the same, he's always been fond of the pregnant punchline. Both School Rumble and Daily Lives of High School Boys rely heavily on unbearable buildups to stupid unexpected punchlines, so Sakamoto's premise seems ripe for his sense of timing. We know Sakamoto is going to win over every bully that tries to unseat him (sometimes literally), so drawing out the "how" as painfully as possible makes every twist feel earned. (And the original author, Nami Satō, has clearly come up with a ton of creative twists for her one-gag protagonist.)

Basically, if a distant 90-second shot of three guys playing volleyball (in a repetitive cheap animation loop) that starts with tripartite grouchy bravado, moves into the three accidentally flirting with each other, and concludes with an awkward silence as the ball bounces away doesn't have you in stitches, Sakamoto's bizarre brand of deadpan absurdity may not be for you. It's not laugh-a-minute entertainment, it's "die laughing once every five minutes" entertainment, which is so hard to get right that I'd easily crown Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto comedy of the season. I loved every second and can't wait to see more, but one man's laugh riot is another's agonizing eyeroll. At least we can all appreciate that Cool, Cooler, Coolest opening theme song.


Lynzee Loveridge

Rating: 3.5

I had the pleasure of reading the first two manga volumes of this popular series, but this is definitely one of those cases where watching blind increases the enjoyment level. The story's mysterious protagonist is good at literally everything and able to escape even the most dire of circumstances by being absurdly prepared and looking suave doing it. How far can this one gag go? Well, the only limit seems to be Nami Satō's creativity and comedic timing, something she has in spades.

The anime's adaptation is practically a frame-by-frame recreation of the first volume's early chapters. This is one of those cases where adherence to the source material, despite how good it is in its own right, could hinder viewers' enjoyment if they've read the manga. A pure comedy, especially one whose jokes rely on an element of surprise, isn't going to hold up when you know all the punchlines. I watched this with my husband, who hasn't read any of the manga but loves over-the-top comedy that catches him off guard. He laughed hysterically from the first gag to the last.

Despite knowing all the jokes, I did feel the overall concept works better animated than it does as a manga. Physical comedy, like Sakamoto sparring a hornet, chasing after a sparrow in a wind storm, and dancing back and forth around a fire worked better for me in motion than they did on the page.

The team did a stellar job bringing Sato's cool protagonist to life. The show is backed up by a smooth jazz soundtrack, with one specific sequence used to denote every time Sakamoto successfully dodges an embarrassing situation. The musical signal practically established itself as its own joke by the end of the episode. The opening sequence denotes some of the absurdity ahead with the protagonist rocking out with a makeshift broom-mic and posing amid action lines while doing really mundane tasks like eating curry.

Sakamoto is certainly its own brand of humor. It's not the same as high-energy slapstick many shows fall back on, and it probably won't suit viewers who favor the more cynical, dialogue-based wisecracks we get from light novel adaptations. It's definitely worth testing out to gauge your own mileage for the humor.


Nick Creamer

Rating: 3

I was really curious about how this one would get adapted to anime. The Sakamoto manga is fun, but it's the kind of fun that seems like it would only work in a quick, almost disposable narrative medium. The story is essentially one joke over and over - Sakamoto is unbelievably cool, his classmates resent him for being unbelievably cool, and their attempts to bring him down only end up making him look even cooler, winning over all his detractors. It's basically “what if Jotaro Kujo from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure attended a regular high school, but was still a JoJo character.” And the manga manages to find a lot of comedy mining that vein!

So far, the anime is turning out roughly as well as I could have hoped. Sakamoto's joke works partially because it's executed so quickly in manga form - the setups and punchlines of things like Sakamoto's desk being stolen work not just because they're ridiculous and well-executed visually, but because they generally happen over just a page or two of manga real estate. In anime, jokes that would be a matter of six or seven panels can end up occupying a couple full minutes, and this definitely hurts the humor. The show's comedic timing is intelligent, but this is a work that's just somewhat less suited to anime, period.

On the other hand, this adaptation certainly nails the essence of the material. The opening song embodies the show's spirit perfectly, and even though most of what's happened so far has essentially been adapting the manga's early chapters panel-for-panel, the story's detailed, retro visual style remains intact, and little embellishments like the absurdly over-long conversations between Sakamoto's attempted bullies add their own unique sources of comedy throughout. I believe the one entirely new segment in this episode was the middle section, where Sakamoto ends up battling all the forces of the elements to rescue a bird, and that sequence demonstrates the show at its best - wordless visual comedy that continuously one-ups itself, buoyed by a fantastic jazz soundtrack that offers its own consistent source of tension and comedy payoffs.

For all that, I doubt I'm going to continue watching Sakamoto. The premise inherently rebels against any emotional investment, because the protagonist is himself the joke, and for all this episode's successes in adapting the manga, I didn't actually laugh very often. If you're new to this material or Sakamoto's premise and style of absurdism really appeals to you, this is as good as the adaptation could hope to be. But Sakamoto's big joke has already worn a bit thin for me, and a full season of watching more riffs on it be stretched out into full minutes doesn't sound all that appealing.


Rebecca Silverman

Rating: 3.5

Who is it who can look cool when his classmates steal his desk? Who takes an umbrella into the bathroom and makes it work? Who looks so distractingly sexy that thugs use his picture as their phone wallpaper? Haven't you heard? That's Sakamoto. Based on the award-winning manga, Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto is in line to be the most absurd full-length show of the season, and it really is kind of glorious. Sakamoto's mysterious past and utterly perfect present confuse all of his male classmates and make him the object of adoration for the girls, and while this episode is chopped up into several segments, it doesn't feel particularly unnatural, mostly because Sakamoto’s humor is best taken in small doses. To that end, I almost wish this had been a short; the style of humor may have worked better in five-to-eight minute episodes rather than a single one with lots of parts.

Of course, director Shinji Takamatsu is fairly adept at this kind of absurdly humorous show. If the volleyball game in the beginning didn't give away that this was another series from the director of Daily Lives of High School Boys and Ixion Saga DT, the fluidity with which the episode moves through its chapters should; it actually moves a lot like Daily Lives of High School Boys. It's not quite as laugh-out-loud funny as that other show, it more provokes a constant giggle, but it also doesn't drag the way other fragmented episodes can. Part of my issue with the episode was the constant music – the jazzy soundtrack does hit the right note between cheesy and classy, but it feels overused, backing up nearly every one of Sakamoto's moves to help emphasize his awesomeness. Sakamoto's plenty cool without musical accompaniment, as proven by the source manga, so the soundtrack feels a bit like it's trying too hard. That's an interesting contrast with the visuals, which use just the right amount of sparkle and flash to off-set Sakamoto's heroics, a good juxtaposition with the more “realistic” look of the characters, who lack the uniform appearance of most school anime casts. One character, Sena-kun, is even drawn as slightly pudgy without having this pointed out by everyone when he takes his clothes off, and no two people really look alike. In fact, only Sakamoto himself has a fairly typical “anime” look, which further emphasizes his amazing qualities and skills.

Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto does lose a little something in the transition from manga to anime, making it not quite as enjoyably bizarre in this format as in the original. The music is part of it, and to a degree so is just giving Sakamoto himself a voice, although Hikaru Midorikawa is great. Largely, however, I think the issue is in the length of the episode, which overwhelms you in a way the manga doesn't – in a book, you can stop reading when the jokes aren't hitting anymore, but in a regular length episode, there isn't that breathing room. And much as I love Takamatsu's work, that volleyball gag has gotten really old and doesn't add anything here other than to scream, “Hey! Shinji Takamatsu directed this!”

All of that aside, this episode does provide the humor it promises. Sakamoto is delightfully bizarre and his classmates are so flummoxed by him that they stoop to new lows of weirdness to try to bring him down, not to mention consistently overestimating his motivations, which is almost always funny. This may not be guffaw-funny, but it still is enjoyably silly and makes for a nice interlude of insanity when you need one.


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