Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei

I gave the manga comedy Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei a lukewarm review in a recent Comics Journal. But I've been watching the anime, which is remarkably faithful to the manga, and it's one of the funniest anime I've seen. I'm not sure what accounts for my differing responses. Part of it is that the anime has a much higher density of gags, many of which go by too fast to be seen clearly. But I think the main reason is that the anime has that anarchic spirit which the manga lacks, as I noted in my review.