English Dub Season Review: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K Reawakened

Our Take:

Saki’s psychic abilities are numerous: he can teleport, project his thoughts onto paper, communicate telepathically, even stop cosmic disasters. There’s even an episode where his limiter malfunctions, and he starts to spawn a lot of useless and random abilities. This has been something that has been with him since birth, and it’s both a good and a bad thing. The fact that the cast is so wild that Saki, with his incredible psychic powers, is the most normal person there, says a lot. This guy just can’t catch a break.

It’s hard to tell whether there’s a plot, although you can definitely tell time passes, and different characters that pop up and are introduced still remain. The general thread is that Saki is surrounded by a weird cast of characters, but just wants to keep his powers hidden. Some people already know about them, as there are people with legitimate psychic powers that are aware of him, he still wants to minimize his interactions and fade into the background. Instead of being the protagonist, most of the the time, Saki doesn’t cause most of the incidents– other people do, and he’s forced to solve them.

The season ends where he seals his powers away, having grown tired of them and wanting to live like a normal person for once. In doing so, he realizes that he has an over reliance on his psychic abilities, as he can’t even think through the simple process of taking a book down from off a high shelf. It also leaves him more vulnerable, as he is unable to use his natural abilities to protect himself, or even sense basic danger. He is riled up from people coming up and talking to him, because he’s so used to having sensed them beforehand. He acts mostly annoyed by his friends over the course of the series (even if he does look out for their wellbeing) and seeing them worry over him is different. He comes to realize that he does have people who care for him, so that when a major incident occurs, he ends up taking a stand (even though it’s still from the background). It’s a small moment in a chaotic gag series, but it shows that Saki actually does care for his friends.

Japanese gag is very hit or miss for me; I loved Pop Team Epic, but sometimes really absurdist gag goes over my head. This one I found myself enjoying a lot; the jokes are very rapid-fire so there’s never really time to rest, but the comedic timing does work. Even though the plots are not particularly nuanced or surprising, I had a really good time sitting through them. It’s fun to see just what wild things will happen next, because something wild always happens. Or to see how exactly Saki will solve the situation, because even though he has incredible power, that’s not always enough to full fix things.

It’s not a particularly deep or nuanced show, but it’s definitely something to put on the background, or watch when you need some cheering up. I didn’t think I’d like this, but I actually had a good time.

Very relatable feeling of how done Saki sounds all the time.