#saiki asks

iirc he was a big fan of dempagumi.inc before he got married so it's not entirely unbeliveable, but also I've never seen anything about this before now and I couldn't find anything after a quick google in Japanese, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's 100% made up either.

If anyone can send me one of the authors tweets or interviews where he says this I can at least verify if that's accurate to what it says in Japanese or not, but otherwise I don't really want to spend hours trying to do a deep research dive to try and find something that may or may not exist haha

I did find an article that featured the below photo/color cover comparison which is p fun: they had Furukawa Mirin be Aiura and Aizawa Risa be Teruhashi though so I don't know if that proves or disproves anything lol

Oh that's really cool! There's a ton of neat things about the Gyaru subculture- I especially like gyarugo/slang words: they're super fun from a linguistics perspective (albeit a pain to translate)

Speaking of which: Aiura does use quite a bit of slang when she speaks. I can't remember any specific examples off the top of my but I definitely remember struggling to localize some of them haha

like, her hard to follow slang is even the whole joke of the volume 17 cover, which features the following:

とりま/Torima/Toriaezu ma/For now

よろぴく丸/Yoropikumaru/Yoroshiku/Nice to meet you

テンアゲ/Ten-Age/Tension Ageru/Get Hype

I mean, I don't think he advertises "ask me questions" or anything like that, but it looks like he checks his mentions occasionally and will sometimes answer questions people tweet about Saiki or his other manga or even about other non-manga things (like what his Myers-Briggs type is)

The answer to the Kuboyasu question was: "I never really planned out Kuboyasu's guardian spirit in detail, but it's probably something like a strong and silent battle-worn samurai type of guy."

He also answered one about Toritsuka's first love (Miyo-chan the ghost, mentioned in volume 3) whether Toritsuka knew she was a ghost before he fell in love or didn't find out until after:

Oh this one they explain in ch190: the restoration does also effect people and everything else on the planet, not just the earth itself (see below toddler turning back into a baby)

So yeah- Volume 0 is made up of the oneshots from before Saiki was serialized as a weekly series, so the real answer to your original question is: it's "semi-canon". The powers and stuff are inconsistent because they were written for one-off chapters without needing to consider details/limits/consistency to fit a long running series, and we're not supposed to think too hard about it because it's just a gag manga.

But the fun answer is: I like to think it's fully canon. While the characters & powers are a little inconsistent, iirc there's nothing that fully contradicts what we're told in the series. The oneshots in vol 0 take place during Saiki's 1st year at high school but the actual series takes place in his 2nd year, so maybe some stuff just changed over the course of the year.

for example: Vol 0 says that telekinesis is very tiring for Saiki to use because it's hard to hold back, but maybe he practiced enough during that year that it was no longer a problem when volume 1 starts?

and hearing Nendou's thoughts are the biggest inconsistency, but it's entirely possible that he just... stopped thinking lol. In the first oneshot he has plenty of thoughts in his head, but by the second oneshot they establish that his thoughts are now only a split second before his words.

It's not unthinkable to think that his thinks would go extinct after a year.

So the real answer is: that popularity poll is based on the results of a "vote for your favorite Saiki characters" survey answered by Japanese manga readers. He's popular in the chapter because he's popular in real life, and he's popular in real life 'cause he's such a fun character.

The in universe answer is: Looks like a little of both! Girl's are kya kya-ing over him and getting his autograph and stuff, but someone also mentions needing his strength for some kind of sports.

plus it's not totally unthinkable for Nendou to be seen as attractive: it was pretty much the whole plot of that one chapter where they got haircuts. The main reason why he's not popular in universe is because he's gross and dumb (and also his hair is weird)

hey thanks for the message!

I actually spent a lot of time thinking about how to translate that one "like" 'cause the word Saiki uses in Japanese is a weird one:

Instead of the usual 好き/suki, or 気に入る/ki ni iru (which both mean "like", and can be used platonically but tend to have romantic connotations) Saiki uses 好感を持つ/koukan wo motsu.

I did a lot of searching and from what I found, koukan wo motsu can mean anything from "has a favorable impression of" to "feels kinship with" to "is in love with".

I settled on "like" because it gets the point across that he sees Satou in a positive light, but still keeps the ambiguity: while it does not explicitly say he loves him, it could still be read that way.

oh nice!!!