At their Anime Expo 2019 panel, Right Stuf Anime announced the first ever release of beloved 2007 anime Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei by studio Shaft. The dark comedy follows teacher Nozomu Itoshiki and the high school girls he teaches as they satirize all aspects of life from education to politics to media.
In the late 2000s, the show became popular in the west thanks to fansubs, but has never had an official release. The gallows humor (literally, as the show opens with Itoshiki-sensei’s attempted suicide), as well as the gratuitous amounts of trademark Shaft fanservice made it one of my personal favorites and I’m glad I’ll be able to own a proper licensed Blu-ray in 2020.
The panel host could not speak to whether or not all three seasons of the anime would be released together, or whether it would include specials and OVAs. Nor could he answer whether there would be an English dub. These unanswered questions have left me in despair.
The same panel also announced a release of El-Hazard: The Magnificent World, with which I am personally much less familiar, under their Nozomi Entertainment brand. El-Hazard, El-Hazard 2, and The Alternative World will all be released on Blu-ray in 2020 with both English and Japanese audio.
