#under a cut so the people who are in love with Kuniharu can choose to scroll past. get better soon <3

[no-psi-nan]

"Kuniharu is a kind and funny dad, you're misconstruing canon if you call him abusive!!"

Literal intro chapter, the very first serialized chapter & first episode of the whole series:

- Kuniharu lies to his son in an attempt to guilt-trip him

- Kuniharu thinks about, then suggests to his son that he start stealing money

- Kusuo himself introduces his dad as a shameless and pitiable sleazeball.

- Kuniharu dehumanizes his son by calling him "Kusuemon", a reference to Doraemon, a robot cat that serves a human.

- It's revealed that Kuniharu "carelessly flew into a rage and smashed all the window panes in the house" because his "beloved" wife ate one (1) dessert out of the fridge, and he thinks that's a just and proportionate response and that "[they're] both to blame".

For reference, their house looks like this:

That's a lot of windows!

And even in the case of it being a gag manga, smashing all the windows in his own house over a minor offense by his wife is a completely insane level of retaliation. It doesn't matter that his son can instantly repair the house, the fact of the matter is that he had a long and extended violent outburst against his wife IN HIS INTRO EPISODE!!!!!!!

Kuniharu was NEVER meant to be seen as a good person because he's not. He's (at BEST) a constant source of annoyance for his son and a crappy husband who can't even do his job right, licking shoes to compensate for his ongoing problems at work:

It's fine to enjoy him as a character, he IS really funny in his insanity, but to say that people are making stuff up about him being abusive is a ridiculous statement.

The concept of "child abuse" includes psychological and emotional mistreatment or neglect by a parent, it's not just about physical assault. One definition of psychological child abuse is:

"A repeated pattern of caregiver behavior or extreme incident(s) that convey to children that they are worthless, flawed, unloved, unwanted, endangered, or only of value in meeting another's needs."

Kuniharu hardly interacts with his son except to seek favors or to try to assert dominance/superiority. He constantly refers to Kusuo as a monster/robot/nonhuman (dehumanization, another form of abuse).

During the favorability/love meter chapter, both Kuniharu and Kusuo were certain that the love score would be very low due how little Kuniharu cares for his son. The fact that the score doesn't go down doesn't actually mean much if his literal mind-reading son could not tell that he was loved.

In fact, just as Kusuo's kindness can be explained by Kurumi's influence, Kusuo's tendency to self-blame, his trouble forming bonds with others, and his extreme conflict-avoidance can be seen as classic results of childhood emotional/psychological abuse.

And sure, Kusuke (who's introduced wayyyyyyyy later) might be the source of some of this trauma, but literally who raised him lol?

Anyways. You're ignoring canon if you think Kuniharu is a good dad or person, which is fine! Just recognize that.

"It's a gag manga, it's not that serious" <- Even in a gag manga world, Kusuo himself says that his dad is kind of garbage and that his mother is the only reason he hasn't exploded the planet. And the whole premise of the series is that he's fucking miserable.

The fact that bad things are presented in a funny way doesn't make them less bad, especially not from an in-canon perspective. A war in a gag manga is not really that funny to the characters themselves.

And exploring different aspects of a work is literally one of the main activities to do in fandom. If you only want to see exactly what's in the show exactly as it's presented in the show, then go rewatch it! Maybe you'll catch a few more details this time too.

[lynkolnevans]

New idea:

Saiki Kusuo is legally blind according to the government because his x-ray vision was so powerful during his eye exams, he couldn't see the eyesight test poster without blinking a lot. You could also combine this with many other power influenced issues (trouble hearing = so many voices in his head makes it hard to distinguish people talking, coordination issues = trouble controlling super strength, etc depending on what you wish to explore) Kusuo can apply for a service dog.

Obviously he doesn't, cause taking care of a dog whose thoughts he could hear 24/7, would be headache inducing. Especially since all he would hear is, “I help! Yes, do good help owner! Love you! Love you!”. So, he doesn’t, until Kurumi notices a sudden plunge in his mood, around the time Kusuo first starts resetting time to avoid the world’s destruction via volcano.

This, combined with Kuniharu’s whining about getting a pet dog to order around, Kurumi worried about her son’s health (and subsequently accidentally guilt-tripping him), the Saikis get a service dog!

Now this could be the end of it, as I think this idea can be cute as hell, especially as Kusuo really needs some kind of helping hand for all the shit he goes through. Instead, I got my grubby little hands all over this idea and twisted it into a self-insert prompt. If you want to hear rambling about that, then below the cut is for you. Otherwise, I hope this idea was entertaining to read and inspired you guys to create something cool!

So basically this whole idea started when re-watching Saiki K, as well as @oatmealcrisp-freak ‘s posts about Oda Cinnamon Nobunaga. I noticed some scenes in Saiki K where, under all the comedy, it creates some interesting parallels to real life troubles people with disabilities or medical problems have. This combined with @oatmealcrisp-freak ‘s posts and my own self-indulgent mind created a new idea. Hopefully, it hasn’t been done before.

We have a Self-Insert in the form of a German Shepherd, who gets reincarnated as a service dog and falls into the hands of the Saiki Family. Essentially it draws the same ideas in my super old post about my initial SI for Saiki K, mainly focusing on the SI being the antithesis to Kusuo’s powers and anime logic.

Thus, we begin the creation of the setting: Kusuo’s family pressure him to get a service dog, each parent having their own reasons. We get some reluctance and a “yare yare” or two, until Kusuo meets said SI. Huh, Kusuo cannot read the dog’s mind, what is it, a Nendo? Essentially, since Kusuo is being forced to get a service dog, he chooses to get the one whose mind he can’t read. This way it’s one less annoying mind to hear and a way to figure out why this one dog (a dog that is obviously very smart, unlike Nendo) does not have any thoughts to read.

We got a human who is now a dog with knowledge of Saiki K, who is at bare minimum also immune to telepathy. We also got a kid with enormous power just trying to live a normal life, even though his powers cause equal ‘benefit’ and stress.

I’ve already got some cool ass plot twists in mind.