Random Comedy is Not Clever Comedy
This post is largely inspired by a Twitter debate largely between Sea Slugs! Anime Blog‘s Jesus159159159 and The Cart Driver‘s Scamp, over the respective merits and flaws of Excel Saga and Seto no Hanayome. For the record, I sided with Jesus159159159, but it’s quite a stretch to say either is an exceptionally funny, let alone clever, comedy. Don’t get me wrong, both shows have their moments. But they’re both, ultimately, random comedies, which means they struggle to be consistently incisive… let alone just plain consistent. (Minor spoiler warning for the tagged titles).
If I’m going to try to claim that random comedy isn’t clever comedy, then I need to define what both of those things are. The difficultly is trying to define anything to do with comedy, because it’s easily the most subjective genre. Nonetheless, I don’t think anime is at all a good place to look for clever comedy… one might make an argument for Genshiken or Bakemonogatari or the black comedy of Welcome to the NHK or even possibly Kannagi, but none of these anime are without their low-brow jokes, with more emphasis on physical humour than genuine wit. But that’s OK… humour isn’t generally a high-brow thing, and comedies that try excessively hard to intellectualize their jokes often come off as almost as forced as the fast-paced random comedies at the other end of the spectrum. I’m certainly not going to decry anime’s tendency for frivolous comedy… my two favourite anime comedies are Azumanga Daioh and Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and I’d rue to call either “clever”. The former gets past with its ineffable charm and brilliant timing while the latter is anime’s take on shotgun humour… I just happened to be walking through the blast zone when Shaft pulled the trigger (it’s clever at times, especially when it’s satirical, but more often, it’s about absurdity).
Clever comedy is often about ironic situations. It also tends to be extremely aware and plugged into the zeitgeist, making fun of society’s current fears and dilemmas. A classic example of what I’d class as a clever comedy is Stanley Kubrik‘s Dr. Strangelove. It’s subject matter, nuclear apocalypse, is one of the most black subjects you could possibly pick for a comedy, but Kubrik is masterful in the way he pokes fun at the flippantness with which those in power discuss the prospect of the world’s destruction. The entire thing is a devastating critique of the lunacy of mutually assured destruction, but is also laced with innuendo, making very clever and subtle jibes about the way power can either correlate with, or compensate for, sex.
OK, that’s a high bar. Of course anime has very little chance of producing a comedy as clever as Dr. Strangelove, a rarely disputed work of genius. But anime isn’t without its admirable efforts. One of anime’s cleverest comedies has a real Strangelove flavour about it, and that’s “Stink Bomb”, an episode from Studio 4°C‘s film, Memories. Much like Strangelove, “Stink Bomb” is a black comedy about a WMD, in this case, a biological weapon. But much of what makes it funny is the way all parties involved clumsily deal with a disastrous situation, especially on the part of the decision makers and the military. Throughout the whole ordeal there’s this interesting mismatch of agendas and motives that lead to different approaches to trying to neutralize the situation (more specifically, the bumbling main character at the centre of it all), with the Japanese military deciding killing him is the best way to minimize the damage, the Americans still wanting to salvage the “sample” and his grandparents just wanting the poor sod to be saved. The ending is wonderfully ironic, and the incompetence of the military when their guided weapons systems become ineffective is just spectacular (yes, there’s a bit of suspension of disbelief required during this sequence, but the pay-off is brilliant), and also ironic given that it all it took to ultimately subdue him was a taser. There’s also irony in the artistic presentation: a consequence of the weapon is that, while every living animal that encounters the smell dies, all nearby plants bloom… the director doesn’t pass up opportunities to highlight the juxtaposition of extreme death on a backdrop of extreme life.
Black comedy. Believe me, this is funny.
Clever comedy at its best is ironic in a way that comes full circle, and I daresay Seinfeld and South Park have, at times, shown a good grasp of this. Seto no Hanayome does not. Much like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, its humour works on an absurd level, but this is taken to a much more over-the-top extreme than anything in SZS and there’s pretty much no relevance to anything “real”. When it parodies something, it parodies fiction (which I’d say, these days, is a safe target, given how many other comedies do it), and almost everything is executed in an off-the-wall, visceral fashion. So is there anything wrong with this formula, of itself? I’m not sure, maybe there have been well executed over-the-top mostly-visceral random comedies in the past, but I can’t really think of any. (Maybe someone who’s seen it might wish to make the argument for Cromartie High School). It’s ultimately a matter of taste, as shown by the fact that SnH is a very divisive anime (I was surprised at how extreme the split in opinions over it was from those who weighed in on Jesus159159159 and Scamp‘s Twitter discussion), but this is what my problem with purely random comedy is: whether or not a viewer will laugh at the joke is entirely probabilistic. While movies like Dr. Strangelove and Memories‘ “Stink Bomb” weave ironic and subversive jokes into different layers of subtext and socially relevant hypotheticals, Seto no Hanayome, Excel Saga and other similarly random anime comedies rely on rolling a dice covered in punchlines and sight gags, hoping that the ones that come up manage to tickle the audience. One is much harder to write and execute than the other, which is why I have much more respect for one over the other.
This scene warmed my heart.
One random comedy that I did like recently was Seitokai no Ichizon, but the ironic thing about this series was that it wasn’t the comedy I ended up liking it for. Seitokai no Ichizon made sure to set aside reasonable bouts of downtime, which it used well to add depth and meaning to the characters, so they didn’t come off as quite so frivolous and pointless. So it’s not really full-throttle random like Seto no Hanayome. Attempts to add meaning or drama to comedy are often wrought with danger… most comedies (harem or otherwise) that resort to this tend to be half-assed anyway, and the shoehorned attempts to implement elements of an actual story just further highlight how tepid the execution of each disparate component of comedy and drama is. The perception is that, if you only attempt one thing, you’re more likely to get it right. Whether this perception is true or not, who knows, but sometimes I doubt it, since the best titles seem to be able to seamlessly blend lots of different genres together, without one impeding or compromising the other. Would more downtime have made Seto no Hanayome‘s characters easier to connect with on a level deeper than just laughing at their gags, or would it have needlessly interfered with its one (and arguably only) strength? Like most things, it’s a question of execution… one only needs to look at this season’s take on random comedy, Baka to Test to Shokanju, to see how attempts to implement serious moments into an off-the-wall over-the-top comedy can come off as tacky.
This scene made me feel exactly nothing.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, one of the points of this article was to rant about how bad Baka to Test to Shokanju is. Man, that show is terrible. The entire thing just screams “trying too hard”. Whereas Seto no Hanayome had a small handful of very funny episodes (pretty much any episode with Luna’s father, and the first two eps, which had a good sense of controlled insanity, but the “controlled” unfortunately disappeared from then on), Baka to Test has yet to made me chuckle more than twice in any given episode. Hideyoshi isn’t funny (and forget attractive). He’s a meme, cynically pushed by the show’s producers in the same way as K-On!‘s “moe moe kyun” joke was last year. And, just as with K-On!, I feel like I’m being pandered to with Hideyoshi… which isn’t a feeling I’ve ever appreciated while watching anime comedies. (It’s worse in this case because of the homoerotic overtones of the way they present the entire character… I kinda wonder about the closet homosexuals that dig this sort of stuff). The other characters aren’t too much better: Yoshii: dumbass; Himeji: useless moeblob; Shimada: emotionally constipated tsundere; Tsuchiya: annoying perv; Shouko: violent control freak. The only character that I find remotely sympathetic is Yuuji. I just can’t laugh at a show when I so dislike almost all of the characters. The ridiculous execution and random, absurd humour just make things worse.
Seconded. Some series try way too hard to be funny, replacing humor with random, and it just doesn’t work. Baka Test was interesting in the beginning, but after the unique premise faded away at the second episode, it turned into a steaming pile of crap. Hideyoshi is indeed a horrible forced character (and I couldn’t agree more with the comparison to ‘moe moe kyun,’ +1 internets for you for that), but the character that has bothered me the most is the stalker guy.
Jesus Christ. Even the girls of Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei have more depth than him. He’s a stereotype pushed to the max, to a point where he has become less a person than a personification of an originally un-funny joke.
But as for the actual argument, I don’t think it matters if comedy is clever or not. In my opinion, the best comedies are the ones that make me laugh the most in retrospect, regard?ess of what kind of humor it is, slapstick or clever.
I’ve slowly discovered that just about the only times when anime ever seems to really make me laugh is when the shows act like well, cartoons. I’m thinking of something like Inukami here. Otherwise, the attempts at comedy almost always fall flat for a variety of reasons/theories:
Lack of sarcasm/irony in Japanese culture
Cultural history of dull comedic forms (manzai, etc.)
Generally poor writing in the medium in general
The last one is the one that I’d probably put the most blame on.
Also, a fourth reason: working in the framework of the otaku database mindset where what really matters is really just like providing the viewer with a bunch of elements that they are looking for (“I want am looking trap that is placed in various homoerotic situations, and Bakatest provides this”)
Agreed on Seto and Excel Saga.
Detroit Metal City is the most clever anime comedy I’ve seen. It never takes a day off. Analyze the way the jokes are set up in any episode. It’s a thing of beauty. One thing DMC does particularly well is using past punchlines as setups for future jokes. For a show that could’ve been successful settling for one low-brow joke at a time and moving on to the next, it’s amazing that it tried so hard to do better. For that I respect it. When have low-brow humor and the power to make it clever, you have an unstoppable hilarity machine. It’s why I worship Maddox and recently finished watching all the AVGN videos to date.
Azumanga Daioh gets too much credit. Anime fans hold in high regard because it was ground-breaking, not because the humor was particularly clever. A lot of the humor was random, if not most of it. Think of the penguin tipping over the pail, otou-san flying around, or Osaka talking about pretty much anything. Many other jokes were pretty simple. Long story short, if Azumanga Daioh were released for the first time today, I wonder if anyone would care.
Agreed on Seitokai no Ichizon.
Now for Baka to Test. The non-stop fetish pandering doesn’t appeal to me in the least. With that said, there are some clever jokes once in a while. I’d give some examples, but it’s hard to track them down since they’re totally overshadowed by the sexual/fetish jokes. I’d offer to tell you the next time I see one, but I’m lazy and probably won’t.
Cromartie High School has a higher success rate with its jokes than, say, Excel Saga (the fact that its episodes are a little more than 10 minutes each helps a lot), but ultimately it has about the same ratio of good episodes to bad episodes as most other anime comedies (maybe a bit better).
Generally, series that focus purely on comedy just aren’t that funny to me — often because, as you say, they try WAY too hard. They usually end up flaming out after a while, with rare exceptions (like Azumanga Daioh); BakaTest is a good example of this. Even shows I dig like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei end up flaming out a lot of the time (Zan is a disappointment on just about every level).
Really, comedy is much better as a secondary element of a series. Toradora! is one series that does a good job of balancing the dramatic elements and the comedic elements in a cohesive way.
By the way, definitely appreciate name dropping Dr. Strangelove — that’s my personal favorite movie.
If you want to look at a baseline or fundamental element for humor, it’s the suffering of others. It’s always someone getting the short end of something:
being embarrassed or shown up
trolled
physically hurt (but not really), i.e. faceplants, other acts of clumsiness
getting ‘just desserts’
…among others. Humor is the original guilty pleasure — to laugh at someone’s suffering (along with tragedy due to taking pleasure in another’s pathos).
Comedy, on the other hand, is the craft of setting these things up and wrapping these things up. I disliked Azudai because outside the random stuff, the punchline lingered on for way too long.
I find Lucky Star funny, but I wouldn’t call it a good comedy (to satisfy formalist standards). I second Baka-Raptor re DMC. That show was crafty about its lulz.
well, jpmeyer just outlined why I think anime comedies usually aren’t as clever: “Also, a fourth reason: working in the framework of the otaku database mindset where what really matters is really just like providing the viewer with a bunch of elements that they are looking for”.
In any case, I don’t think a comedy needs to be high-brow like Strangelove (wooo, go my favourite director Kubrik!) and Stink Bomb (wooo, more people should watch Memories!) to be clever. Even though, like you say, comedies like Kannagi is without low-brow humour, I would argue that it is very clever in its execution. I mean, you’d have to be clever to come up with Karaoke episode and It’s Sony moment. In that sense I would also add Ouran, and even the first season of Hayate and Minami-ke (I would say Haruhi is celver, but not clever comedy).
although DMC is, like Baka-raptor have mentioned above, one of the most cleverest comedy mentioned here.
It took me about a year to figure out why “You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!!” was funny (I watched it when I was little), but once I did, I haven’t stopped laughing since.
Strangelove’s brand of humor definitely wins me over and Monty Python’s works are something I’ve referenced a few times because the wit the former possesses and the absurdity inherent in the latter makes for good times. Which is why I (and most others) enjoyed Zetsubou Sensei so much.
Also, jumping on the DMC bandwagon once more. It controls its humor well enough so as to never become tiring.
Precious bodily fluids…
Mel Brooks put it best:
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when YOU fall down an open manhole and die.”
Comedy and humor seem to be polarizing no matter what style the presentation. I, personally, hate a lot of shows, specials, or movies that are supposed to be comedies. “Everybody” thinks Spongebob Squarepants is funny except me. “Everybody” thinks Superbad is funny except me. “Everybody” thinks Seinfeld is funny except me. “Everybody” laughs at The Family Circus except me. Nobody thinks Tim & Eric are funny, and yet there they are.
Stupid comedies. Slapstick humor. College humor. Black humor (not to be confused with Black comedy). Sex humor. Parody. There’s a lot of different types of humor and not all of it works for everybody. I, personally, laughed my ass off when Eddie Izzard said “This was during the whole B.C. / A.D. changeover there. You didn’t have to wind your watch then, you had to get a new bloody watch! And the Muslim people are going ‘A.D.? Who’s he?’”. I was the only one who did, tho.
I find, sometimes, that funny people are much furnnier when they’re not working with scripts. Robin Williams, for example, is damned hysterical when he’s in one of his mania moments and doing full improvization. I think Sarah Silverman’s show was hideously bad, but in interviews she’s a pretty funny person. I still don’t quite get Tom Green. And Ali G was never fucking funny. Neither was Borat.
Where am I going with this? I don’t fucking know. Perception, I think. I’ve laughed a few times at anime but rarely am I going to proclaim an anime comedy to be anything but dreck. Too much of the humor is simplistic and reactionary. And knock off the “boke” shit.
Maybe the problem is that Japanese people just aren’t funny. They can act goofy and do the visual comedy thing well enough, but how much of their humor is a monumental accident? How many stupid Japanese TV programs have ended up on US TV as expositions on unintentional hilarity? AKA “LOOKIT THE DUMBASS SLANTEYES AND THEIR MXC TV SHOWS, HURR DURR!”.
For a country that’s so introspective, they sure can’t do a fucking joke right.
@fangzhao
Oh yeah, I don’t think it matters all that much either. I mean, I prefer “clever” over “random”, but that doesn’t exclude the latter from being funny when it’s executed well. Ultimately, IMO, “funny” is all a comedy needs to be to have done its job. How it gets there is up to it.
@jpmeyer
Certainly, from what I’ve see, the Japanese don’t have as strong a tradition of “irony” (and almost a non-existent grasp of sarcasm) as the West, but every now and then they come up with comedies, and occasionally even dramas, that are really ironic. So they can do it… it’s just not as prevalent as it is in Western comedy.
@Baka-Raptor
Yeah, but I value ground-breaking. Whether intentionally or not, I pretty much compared every slice-of-life moe comedy that came afterwards to Azumanga and each time I basically laughed less often in the series that inspired them than I did during Azumanga itself (and while thinking about the jokes afterwards). So I have immense respect for Azumanga, which paved the way for the slice-of-life moe comedy subgenre, which remains one of my personal favourite subgenres in anime because of titles like Sketchbook, Hidamari Sketch, Taishou Moe Baseball Girls, etc. It’s a pity that the reputation of the subgenre so heavily hinges on the superpopular titles like Lucky Star and K-On!, because neither of these are anywhere close to what the subgenre is capable of at its best.
@Shinmaru
Yeah, most comedies, Western or Japanese, tend to be at least somewhat formulaic and go stale over time. That’s one of the things British comedies do so well. They know that the best time to pull the plug on a show is when the audience still wants more, not when the audience has had its fill. Anime sometimes recognizes this, but there are so many series with premises that would have worked well for a 13 ep run being stretched across the full two cours.
@ghostlightning
Yeah, certainly, Schadenfreude is a staple of humour. I think one of the strengths of DMC is that it had a set target right from the beginning, so it could be really focused in its jokes. It’s clever, but it’s not really random, since it very much knows what it’s trying to do. And, as Baka-Raptor says, there are a handful of comedians who are really good at making low-brow stuff clever. South Park is also up there, IMO.
@gaguri
Yeah, Memories is awesome, and is really underloved. Stink Bomb is just legendary black humour (I wasn’t sure the Japanese were even capable of black humour before I saw it), and Magnetic Rose is a work of art. Ouran’s strength, IMO, is that it’s so self-aware. It’s not above parodying itself. I love Renge. Just the mention of the three words “High Power Motor” makes me chuckle.
@zzeroparticle
Dr. Strangelove is one of those comedies that I find something new to laugh at each time I see it. It’s subtle in a way that’s fairly rare for American comedies. It’s been a couple of years since I last saw it, so I think a rewatch is due.
@TIF
It’s interesting that MXC is a revision of Takeshi’s Castle, since I have huge admiration for Kitano Takeshi (aka “Beat” Takeshi) not for his comedy (then again, when he was doing manzai, he was trying to go for stuff much more edgy than was generally accepted for that style of comedy), but for his dramatic, minimalist crime sagas, which are such a massive departure from what he was doing when he was making his bones, it’s just astonishing. Oh yeah, and ultimately comedy is subjective, moreso than any other genre. It’s funny that what gets some people laughing can make others disinterested or even angry. But everyone finds something funny. It’s just a trick of finding what that “something” is.
I agree with TIF on almost all points. And I actually laughed at the quote =P I swear I don’t have a sadistic sense of humor.
Moving along… I almost never think anime is funny. I can only name maybe a handful of times I’ve actually lol-ed. I always thought it was because I never understood their references or could care less about their randomness and stupidity.
I also think it’s because anime might not be the best medium to deliver comedy? I find watching real actors trip and fall a lot more amusing than watching a 2D character. Perhaps it’s because I can relate more to actual people and the situations they’re under are more realistic. Like I used to love HIMYM =)
Some animations are done really well though… I find myself laughing a lot when I’m being forced to watch South Park XP The only difference I can really think of is how they deliver their jokes. South Park is pretty simplistic in terms of animation so I think their humor is more in their lines and how/when they’re said. Whereas I find that anime relies a lot on visuals and therefore their comedic moments aren’t really said but seen too. Anyways, that’s why I probably don’t laugh while watching anime (not that it’s a huge reason I watch it to begin with o_O). But then again, everyone has their own opinions of what’s comedy or not.
First, I will kindly ask you to never mention (thanks for the mention! =D) me in the same article as 5camp. I can no longer respect a man who hates Excel Saga, Gunbuster (original), AND K-ON! His lack of taste shows in his enthusiasm for Gurren Lagg-Shit, which was/is the most overrated mecha anime to date.
Having said that, it is with my utmost pride and sincerity that I present this recording as a living testiment and recollection of history in the making during our generation.
(uh~! uh~!) Allow me tah re-inah-DEUCE-MAHSELF!
Mah name is Jay-(ZUUUUUUUUUUS), ONE to da FIVE NINE
I used to post for a Super Forshizzle FELINE
I guess even back then you can say I
was not black, just a WANNABE-CAT! (ho!)
Fresh out Dorito-Mix and gobble those Cheez-Its
I be da Silliest most Billiest Fat Guy named JESUS!
Flyah den da terrahs who be flyin’ dem PLANES
I got da Pun-est chick in da game, Kabitzins his NAME! (dats right!)
Jay-ZUUUUUUUUUUS. Not EL-OH-EL but similar to the MEANING,
No one is this DECEIVING!
I use twittah like a Jew-Inspector!
My hommie strict told me DUDE stop referencing Inspector Gadget!
*cricket cricket*
OKAAAAAAAAY!!! Now that that’s out of my system, I can finally give you my input on this article!… but having read the other comments, I cannot add much. What I can do is mention that I’ve seen Excel Saga dubbed, and it was the best thing since sliced-bread (in my young-anime-days), and that’s where I’m going with this.
A lot of anime that we’ve enjoyed as a child/in-our-teens don’t age well. I know adult-swim-generation-anime-fans who would swear by Fooly Cooly like it were The Bible, but now recent anime fans think it’s too dull, which is fine. Anime that seem revolutionary in its time are outshined(shown?) by more recent offerings, and that’s fine too! I think this is where 5camp comes in. He saw Excel Saga and Gunbuster VEEEEEEERY recently, so they were not as revolutionary to him as they were to me.
Times change, and while I’ve yet to rewatch Excel Saga, it still holds a certain place within me. I remember opening it for Christmas (it came out for the US when I was in Middle School. I think…) and marathoning it with my friends (when I had RL friends). As a matter of fact, that can also change your perception of comedy (aka: Contagious-Laughter).
Sooooooooooooo what I’m trying to say is Excel Saga was my introduction to the wackiness of Japanese Animation, and that is why I put it on such a high pedestal.
Btw, I find it very ironic to see my ridiculous 159-name in a serious post… about comedy! I thought I’d never see the day!
I wonder if those that can get sarcasm/irony to some degree have had more western/non-Japanese artistic influences? Part of my problem here is that I don’t really know too much about the current crop of anime directors/manga artists/light novel authors and their influences. I do know from reading interviews with Miyazaki, Oshii, and even Nobuhiro Watsuki (to give a more mainstream-y, less highbrow example) could rattle off tons of Western stuff that influenced them.
I quote W.C. Fields:
“Anyone who hates children and K-On can’t be all bad.”
I swear this is a real quote. Yes I know the man died 63 years before that anime aired, but he was a visionary I tells ya.
I actually have no preference for humor since I really get nothing out of them than the immediate laugh. To me, shows like FMP Fumoffu? that gets strong, consistent laughs are the best comedies. This is because unlike dramas, there is actually very little I get out of references and critiques from most comedies as they offer very little in ways of a solution other than “use common sense” (sometimes the best medicine but often ignores the very real, very logical reasons why things became the way they are).
Also.
The Japanese can do black humor?
Give me a sec as I dust off Memories from my collection of anime I have but have no will to watch.
@Buttercup
Anime can be very funny at times. I guess it kinda ties into the the important of expressions which I talked about in an earlier article. It might not have a huge tradition in irony like the West, but it has other ways to compensate. I am, ultimately, a fan of anime comedies… I just wouldn’t say many of them are “clever”.
@Jesus159159159
But yeah, your attitude to Excel Saga sounds a lot like mine towards Azumanga. People watching these series more recently just don’t find them as funny as those of us who saw them soon after them first aired, because nowadays all the series which were released subsequently and were, to a fair extent, inspired by those series, render a lot of what made the older series fresh and innovative feel ho-hum and done-to-death. It’s pretty much the Seinfeld Is Unfunny effect.
Oh damn, why was I under the impression you were anti-K-On!. And here I was thinking you were one of us.
@jpmeyer
Directors these days don’t seem to often discuss their influences. Or maybe they do, but that stuff just doesn’t filter through to us in the West. It’d be interesting to hear what inspires today’s anime directors. I kinda have a suspicion that Shinbo takes things from Western post-modernism. Can’t really put my finger on something tangible to back up that thought… just a suspicion I have.
@TIF
A wise man.
@Shadowmage
Yeah, I wasn’t sure they could until I saw it myself. Nonetheless, watch Memories. The third episode is a little weak, but overall, it’s an impressive work.
There’s a fundamental difference between Japanese and American comedy. I was discussing with a Japanese friend of mine the other day, when he told me that he “didn’t get irony.” Japanese people are almost never sarcastic. That’s just their nature.
I find anime humor to be somewhat similar to that of Family Guy‘s. Especially in the case of Lucky Star: Konata says something, cut to humorous situation, cut back to discussion. The subject matter being discussed is different, naturally, but the style of humor is the same.
Japanese humor is steeped deeply in wordplay and schadenfreude. That’s why every Japanese game show is “HURRR LET’S SEE WHAT THEY DO WHEN WE STICK STEAKS ON THEIR HEAD AND UNLEASH A KOMODO DRAGON ON THEM!”
Because of that, Japanese humor isn’t “clever” in the Western sense. It appeals to a different part of our intellect; namely, the part that wants to see someone fall down a manhole and die, as TIF/Brooks put it.
I think the post speaks of a twofold problem.
The first is about the quality of random comedy. Sometimes you just need a quick laugh. Case in point is, as Shadowmage points out, something like FMP Fumoffu. That kind of visceral humor is a rather enduring form. However, I think the problem is 1. that jokes have been recycled over and over in endless variations and 2. that some jokes simply aren’t funny. The first is exemplified by how most series nowadays that are strictly comedy based are all derivatives of AzuDai’s quirky humor or Lucky Star’s otaku parodying, and as as such we’re all tired of them. The second is self explanatory, although it sometimes makes me wonder if it’s just a shotgun strategy. The craft has gotten to the point of trial and error, with each scenario tweaked ever so slightly across numerous jokes and numerous series. What’s really needed is a new formula that ignores the original form, which Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei did before falling back in line with everything else. But all of you already said that.
The second part of the problem is the lack of subtle comedy that everyon is addressing. I’d argue that the west is just as steeped in slapstick comedy, just that the smarter people in western culture have been exposed to irony for far longer. I could say it’s built into western culture, but it’s hard to pinpoint why it arises in this culture and doesn’t exist in the other. I don’t quite know how Dr. Strangelove can show this difference, but as food for thought, I’d say that Dr. Strangelove’s brilliant black comedy works where SZS’s doesn’t in the way you have to make your own decision that it’s absurd compared to SZS slamming the absurdity in your face. It’s a show vs. tell thing where one sets up an elaborate interwoven situation and the other just brings up a topic to mock.
In short: slapstick can be clever, but only if we haven’t seen it a million times. Irony is lacking from Japanese culture, but we have no idea why.
Cromartie isn’t purely random; like some of the other examples of comedy done well, Cromartie employs quite a bit of irony and self-awareness to punch up its laughs. It doesn’t rely on references, punchlines build on each other from joke to joke, and what characters say and do are often misinterpreted to humorous effect. The last episode is especially riotous because it repeats the first episode line-for-line expect… well that’s something to see for yourself!
There’s the perceptible crafting of good humor that everyone appreciates. The buildup is what separates a great joke from a cheap gag; an axiom that holds true no matter what culture you hail from.
Hehe Hi! Well, I really liked this article because it made me think about how you have to differenciate about “things that make you laugh” and “good, consistent comedy”.
Particularly, and in my case I have Excel Saga occupying a really nice place inside my initial anime viewings. But its problem according to mw is that it couldn´t pass the test of time and the TOTALLY random things that pop out every episode make me cringe now.
About Seto… I liked it. Yeah, I liked the characters and the sense of control they put in the show, and the way they didn´t exceed with the references or repetitive jokes. It was good, never betraying blatantly the original premise and making some really good jokes. To me, its a good random comedy, but not exactly a great comedy.
And I agree about how Baka to Test totally trashed its premise to put blatant references, easy gay jokes and make the characters less than cliche using them as vehicles to every single random joke. No control, no quality, no plot. Just trying everything to make you laugh.
In my case, I think I laugh more with shows that aren´t “full comedy”. Thats just what I recently realized.
BTW, have you guys watched Yamanade? I think it was a really good comedy despite having a lot of random jokes(but NO references)
And excuse me for my writing. English isn´t my original language. I wish there were more people writing thoughtful articles like yours about the industry.
Greetings
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