Haven't You Heard? I Was Sakamoto

Sakomoto, the fictional dude who's cool enough to make it out of your screen. Let's leave the bittersweet ending of the parent show aside, there are those who say he really went to Mars, and there are those who believe that he died, but that's irrelevant because we get to see parallel versions of Sakamoto and his classmates in an American way and even a Martian way. You could say, it was more of a recap in a way, a rehashed version of that “How I met Sakamoto” episode, the new content was appreciated and the Engrish was strong with this one. Fun special.

This OVA is just a small set of recycled scenes from the original series, along with a few new ones where the first 1-2 minutes of the 1st episode are re-made in different scenarios (like everyone being an alien). It's boring and unoriginal, something to skip, but that's not where my very bad score came from: For those who didn't notice, Sakamoto desu ga? Ends with indications of Sakamoto being sick and near death, it's easy to miss but there's a few dialogues indicating that he's been to the school nurse's office frequently or things that allude to him being constantly sick, also in the endHayabusa points out that Sakamoto is lying about his NASA internship and Sakamoto doesn't even bother denying it, Hayabusa is onto Sakamoto's lie and asks if he's leaving with any regrets. You can google it, there's things like reddit threads with very good explanations, the main evidence for me is the last chapter's cover art where Sakamoto is seen in a school locker as if in a casket, with his arms crossed, this points to his imminent death. This is what made Sakamoto desu ga? Be all the more significant, it's not only a comedy but there's a big subversion of expectations that gives a deeper meaning to an otherwise silly story, it doesn't make it a masterpiece but it's a great element in the plot. That's why I give this OVA a 2, it is indicated in the OVA (through breaking the 4th wall) that the studio decided to make this because they didn't fill their 13 episode quota and only reached 12 so they're making the OVA hastily, this is not something coming from the original source, and it shows because they depict Sakamoto feeding birds in the US, meaning that he wasn't sick and went to NASA, this goes against the canon. Along with the disgusting lack of effort that makes this OVA unwatchable, this lack of attention to the story is what makes the OVA horrible.

Yeah, the main anime was horrible, but this special truly topped that and made something even more abominable. Not only is the entire special pretty much made up of clips from the real anime, the rest is seemingly just fantasies by his classmates about his stay at nasa. Oh, and those were truly annoying. It's hard to find something more retarded that this. The jokes from the first episode was re-used with one more joke added to the thing. Oh, instead of a chalk eraser, they used a hot dog. Wow, so intelligent. It's clearly pretty much full of racism and bad english as well. Prettymuch everyone at nasa had weird discolored noses and spoke like what you'd expect in a japanese anime. That weird, extremely bad english(both in pronounciation and grammar) that can barely be called english is just obnoxious to say the least. At least hire people who can speak english for real. But nah, let's just give the voice actors with no english experience a sheet of katakana versions of the english words. Hell, let's have the people who clearly aren't good at english write the script as well so that it'll be full of errors as well. It's somewhat even more infuriating that sakamoto speaks english a little bit better than the rest of them even if he's also extremely bad at it. No, I don't really care about the stereotypical, pretty much racistic image they have of foreigners(especially people from the USA). It's nothing unusual and I've seen it more times than I can count. It's just that in this instance, it adds nothing at all to the anime and is just plainly annoying because I see no reason for it being there. Usually they would add stuff like that as a joke, but it's really not funny in any way here. I wonder if the japanese people are so easily amused by subpar satirical depictions of foreigners? Kind of pathetic. Well, maybe it'd work better for people who are closed off from the rest of the world and finds it funny because they don't have any idea about the truth. No matter what, this anime overall, especially the "special" episode, shouldn't be watched, ever. Avoid at all costs, read the manga if you want to know what it's about, but you might as well skip that as well and read something else. Well, the first few chapters are pretty good because of novelty, although that's that.