The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. Characters

A PK Academy student born to ordinary parents with almost every psychic power imaginable. Powers only ever bring him trouble, so he hides them, keeps his grades and sports results deliberately average and wishes for a quiet, ordinary life. His pink hair stands out, but he uses mind control so that nobody finds his looks odd; the two antennae on his head hold his ever-growing powers in check, and his green glasses stop his gaze turning people to stone. He loves sweets, above all coffee jelly, and cannot stand bugs.

A big, cheerful classmate with a Mohawk and a scar over his left eye, who looks like a delinquent and is avoided by most of the class. He is the one person at school whose mind Saiki cannot read, because he acts without thinking at all, which makes him impossible to predict. Overly friendly and carefree, he treats Saiki as his best buddy and keeps inviting him for ramen. He is loyal and kind to anyone weaker than him, and when the rich Metori Saiko offers to pay him to be his underling, Nendo says he would rather just be friends.

A slight classmate who calls himself the Jet-Black Wings and is convinced he is secretly at war with an evil organisation, the Dark Reunion, which exists only in his head. He is shy, easily fooled and weak at sport, so the act often slips, but his sense of justice is real: on the Okinawa school trip he stands up for Chiyo Yumehara against some local troublemakers, and she starts to admire him. His mother is very strict about his studies, and his little brother looks up to him.

The most beautiful girl at PK Academy, admired by almost everyone and followed by a fan club, the Kokomins. She plays the modest, perfect girl in public and works hard at it, learning every student's name and noticing the smallest change in people, while secretly loving the attention. Saiki is the one boy who never reacts to her, which makes her determined to win an awestruck 'Oh wow' from him, and before long she falls for him. In the anime she is usually drawn surrounded by a golden glow, and her one weak spot is small children like Yuta.

Saiki's class representative: a red-haired, hot-blooded, honest student who throws himself into sport and every school event and tries to fire up everyone around him. He is in the tennis club and sees the naturally strong Nendo as his rival. He is even harder on himself than on others, which is why his classmates trust him, and when Saiki walks home with him in season 2, he finds Hairo cannot pass anyone in trouble without helping, all the way to stopping a criminal.

A medium who has been able to see and talk to ghosts since childhood. He learns about Saiki's powers from a ghost, turns up at his house asking to become his apprentice and then transfers into the class next door. He mostly wants to use his gift to become popular and rich, which Saiki finds tiresome. He helps out at a temple, starts the school's Occult Club and later pushes its presidency onto Saiki, and with Saiki and Mikoto Aiura he forms the PK Academy Psychic Kids.

A dreamy, romantic classmate who sees life as a romantic comedy and falls in and out of love quickly. She starts the series with a crush on Saiki, who works to put her off, and then dates the smooth-talking Takeru. On the Okinawa school trip she comes to admire Shun Kaido after he stands up for her, and she joins the Occult Club because of him. She becomes friends with Kokomi Teruhashi, and in season 2 a Valentine's Day mix-up over a love letter ends with her and Kaido agreeing to stay friends.

A transfer student with rectangular glasses who seems like a quiet, serious boy but used to lead a gang of delinquents at his old school, following in the footsteps of his parents, who were delinquents too. He has moved schools to leave that life behind and live a normal life, but bullying or rudeness still sets off his short temper. He loves motorcycles and spends part of the summer at a motorcycle-licence camp with Kaido.

A cheerful gyaru (gal) who transfers into Saiki's class in season 2 and quickly becomes popular. She is a genuine psychic who tells fortunes, reads auras and judges love compatibility, although Saiki's aura is too strong for her to read. She came to PK Academy looking for the soulmate a vision showed her, someone with pink hair, a power and the initials S.K. Once she learns his secret she keeps it, works with him to protect Chiyo from a danger she has foreseen, and joins him and Toritsuka as the PK Academy Psychic Kids, though she does not get on with Toritsuka.

Saiki's older brother, a genius inventor whose oldest memory is losing to his little brother: he has never beaten him at anything. He studied Kusuo and built the limiters that weaken his powers, then left home to study in England, where he invents a way to block Kusuo's telepathy. He fixes the broken limiter in season 1 and challenges Kusuo to a game of tag across London, later moves in with their grandparents, and in the Conclusion unleashes a replacement robot, Kusuomega, before offering Kusuo a device that removes his powers.

Saiki's father, a manga editor at a publishing company that looks suspiciously like the real-life Shueisha. Easy-going and a little hopeless, he is forever running to his son for help, sometimes paying him in coffee jelly to be teleported to work. He and his wife Kurumi are still a lovey-dovey couple, and they took their baby's powers in their stride and raised him at home as normal. His father-in-law, Kumagoro, cannot stand him.

Saiki's mother, a gentle, loving housewife whose kindness is the main reason her son never used his powers for anything bad. She is trusting to a fault and keeps falling for salesmen and scammers, and at New Year she lets slip in front of Saiki's friends that he is a psychic. On the rare occasions she really loses her temper, even her all-powerful son is a little afraid of her.