Forum - View topicIs anime humor an acquired taste?
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theloudnes
Posts: 8 |
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Being an American, I am so used to the comedy styles used here. Mainly political satire, social satire, all the different kinds of satire out there. That cynicism style of humor gets me every time. Different topics touched on and made fun of. I personally think it's great.
I don't know if it's just my own preference, but no matter how open-minded I am and how much I try to enjoy comedy anime, I simply cannot do it. The same comedic elements are constantly reused and rehashed. From "accidentally" walking into a girl changing clothes, to a tsundere punching someone in the face, the physical violence is very cliche in anime. I can understand if the Japanese public likes it. The anime companies will cater to their audience. But I'm neither Japanese nor from Japan, so I tend to be more critical about it, especially when many of my friends are big fans of Japanese comedy. I think the physical/slapstick style of comedy here in America, using the Three Stooges as an example, was very creative. Different situations and stories that revolved around the Three Stooges led to their style of humor feeling very original each time it was done. Although in truth, their comedy was very cliche. The eye poke, for example, was something used almost always. But it was the way in how it was delivered through the story in the episode that made it unique. I notice that anime comedy does not do this. It will always just be a tsundere punching a guy because she wants to, or some guy walking into a bathroom and seeing a chick naked and she punches him in the face. I like to use Girls Bravo as an example. In the very first episode, the main character walks into a girl showering in his bathroom. (Code word "His". This is his house, his bathroom. He is kind enough to even let her shower in his house.) He didn't know she was in there, so it was a completely understandable mistake on his part. But as soon as she notices him in the bathroom, instead of acting like a normal person and rationally addressing the situation through critical thinking, she immediately kicks him in the face and calls him a pervert, and that's when he goes to the other world and the story kicks off and all that... but of course, through typical tsundere nonsense, she starts to feel sorry and sad and wonder where he is, only to do something like this again in the near future and physically abuse him some more. This style of comedy is so forced in anime that nothing seems to flow naturally. Nothing seems naturally funny. It's a forced cliche upon the viewer that they either have to accept or don't watch anime comedy. And I find that logic very dumb. Give the viewers variety. People enjoy variety. I don't feel any sense of uniqueness or originality with anime comedy. It's very bland, boring, and cliche. I am curious on people's takes regarding this, and how they go into anime comedy and how they view it. Does it become a slowly acquired taste after being exposed to American comedy for so long, or are they too different to the point that, once you are familiar with one style, the other becomes boring to you? |
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13227 |
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Well, the examples you use are indeed just examples of slap stick. Of course other than being humorous they have the intent of giving the viewer a look at the goods. It also puts the girls' tsuntsun aspects on display. The worse those are, the more rewarding it'll be when they become deredere.
The true culturally Japanese anime humor is the whole Tsukkomi/boku routine. Some one does something stupid, the other person points out the obvious. I've seen plenty of people complain about this, what with the constant yelling and blatant explaining of the joke. "Here's an octopus wearing a hat." "THAT'S AN OCTOPUS WEARING A HAT!!!" All humor is an acquired taste, really. Personally I find tsukkomi heavy shows like D-Frag and Seitokai Yakuindomo to be hilarious. But at the same time I don't find toilet humor very amusing, despite a ton of Westerners loving it. If it makes you laugh, great. If it doesn't, just move along. |
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Spotlesseden
Posts: 3514 Location: earth |
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i'm Asian. I don;t like American comedy. I like Asia comedy better, so alot of anime are very funny to me.
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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It seems to me that you keep watching the same sort of show over and over which is the fanservice comedy. There are plenty of comedies that do not feature fanservice or tsundere girls hitting bland male protagonists. Take a look at Cromartie High School for instance. It's a completely random yet satirical look at the 80s delinquent/yankee media era. Tons of laughs based on the situations, the tsukkomi/boke reactions, dramatic irony, the oddity, etc.
If you want to see something completely different than Girls Bravo and want to see Japanese satirical comedy, then definitely check out Cromartie High School. If you want scathing social criticism then your best bet is Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei. Anyway, stay away from fanservice shows if that's not how you like your comedy. There's plenty of other types of comedies to see. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I don't know if it's an acquired taste. It's definitely a very culturally specific thing though in a lot of ways that doesn't translate. Right off the bat, you loose a huge chunk of it to translation and I mean that in the most literal sense. Puns and plays on words are a huge part of comedy in any language and that stuff simply does not translate. I guess you can explain it via footnotes, but as soon as you have to explain a joke it immediately ceases to be funny. Plus, there's plenty of stuff on top of that which simply makes cultural references that will be lost on a non-Japanese audience. Mind you, I guess you could say that by learning about Japanese culture you can sort of "acquire" a taste for such stuff. Although I still don't think it will ever really click with an outsider the way it does with an actual Japanese person who experiences the culture first hand.
Personally though, I also just don't much like it either. There's not a lot of actual satire, very little dark humor and virtually none of the kind of dry humor I tend to enjoy. It is, more often that not, way too desperately zany. I mean, it seems like there's this idea pervading most Japanese comedy that the louder something is and/or the more frantic something is, the funnier that makes it. I find too that Japanese humor overwhelmingly doesn't really know how to do an effective straight man. It's virtually always just the character freaking out and completely overreacting. It's totally overplayed. There's absolutely no subtlety. Actually, those last two sentences apply quite well to Japanese comedy in general, hence my issue with it. I mean look, maybe that's just a cultural thing. Maybe to Japanese people that is hilarious. But not to me. Not at all. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Shows like Girls Bravo are designed for adolescents and as such have a lot of adolescent humor. Unfortunately most shows for older viewers that have a bit more sophistication in their humor are not often licensed for distribution outside Japan.
I think you would find the humor in shows like Hataraki Man and Oh! Edo Rocket more to your liking. The first is an office comedy about a 28-yo woman dealing with patriarchy in the Japanese workplace. The second is a satire on political repression set in 1843 Edo. I also enjoyed the humor in episode three of Otona Joshi no Anime Time about a 40-yo women reflecting over the top-ten events in her life. Shows like Nodame Cantabile and Saiunkoku Monogatari offer a mixture of comedy and drama. While Nodame has its share of slapstick, it also has many other types of comedy, and a good share of drama toward the end. I also enjoy other shows for female audiences like Kamisama Hajimemashita. Family-oriented shows like Chi's Sweet Home, about a lost kitty adopted by a young Japanese family, have a more heartwarming style of humor. Another show about an adopted pet, Higepiyo, concerns a chick (of the poultry variety) who has a beard, drinks sake, and aspires to follow the way of the samurai. (The well-known voice actress Paku Romi gives an amazing performance in the title role.) I recommend browsing the list of shows that have aired in the noitaminA slot. Along with Hataraki Man and Nodame Cantabile I'll suggest Moyashimon and the currently-airing Samurai Flamenco as examples of very different comedic styles. What I don't see much in anime is the type of political satire commonly found in the West. Japanese political culture has a component of deference to authority which militates against the more cynical and rebellious forms of comedy. The one exception I can think of here is the work of Nakashima Kazuki, the author of Oh! Edo Rocket and the currently-airing Kill la Kill. Underneath the humorous exteriors are some rather biting commentaries on the authoritarian features of Japanese politics. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Japanese also like their straight man comedy (Manzai) which involves a straight man (tsukomi) and funny man (boke). Funny man says something ridiculous, and the straight man calls them out on it. You can see especially strong examples in shows like Seitokai Yakuindomo and D-Frag, where the method is almost meta on its use.
Anime is also very strong with comedy connected to ecchi manga/anime. I have often hear the explanation about something to do with repressed sexuality, which probably is connected to fascination of tsundere. Also putting in my 2 cents. In my opinion lots of American humour is around dicks, farts and other crass things. For some reason they feel the need to repeat their jokes twice just to make sure we got it, despite being so obvious. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18188 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Without question Japanese humor (or at least what we see in anime, anyway) is way less prone to being cynical or satirical than what humor in the West is, and probably for the deference/respect reasons another poster mentioned. And on the rare occasions that you do see intentional satirical humor, it tends to be very black, such as some of what you see in Welcome to the NHK. You probably don't see much dry humor in anime because dry humor is typically the purview of older audiences than anime is normally aimed at. However, there is a good example of it this season in Hozuki no Reitetsu. I totally disagree that Japanese humor doesn't know how to use straight men, though; in fact, the straight man is the foundation of a classic style of Japanese humor, and innumerable examples of it in proper use can be seen in anime. And anime humor definitely isn't any more prone to depending on zany behavior than what American humor aimed at a similar age range is; apparently you haven't watch old Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck/Elmer Fudd/Tom and Jerry/etc. cartoons in a long time. Also, alluding to the OP's comments about "walking in on someone dressing," I'm not convinced that such scenes are even usually intended as jokes anymore. They're just pure fan service situations. That being said, there are some aspects of humor used in anime (and Japanese entertainment in general) that are culturally specific. "Shocked reaction" humor is a mainstay of anime comedy but is rarely-used in the West; the old form of it used to be characters around the speaker (or occasionally a stray animal outside) suddenly falling to the ground when something innocently stupid is said, but in more recent years that's been replaced by the drawn-out "eeeeeeh?" as the screen flashes to an outside shot. (I have even seen the latter in live-action Japanese shows, and it's even more annoying there.) Objects falling on a character's head when they are unintentionally subjected to criticism that strikes home is another common anime visual gimmick that you rarely or never see in the West. There are a few others that I've noticed over time, too, but this post would get way too long if I went into all of them. Frankly, I have never found anime to be any more hit-or-miss on its humor than Western entertainment is. It can range from outrageously funny to ineffective just like humor anywhere else can, and some of it does require specific cultural knowledge, there are humorous titles that I have shown to people who know little or nothing about anime and they have still laughed at it. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4082 |
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Yeah, those cartoons were made for the adult movie going audience so what "similar age range" do you mean? Anyways, comedy: Very many styles, very many different answers as even in just 7 posts, we get the idea that American comedy is zany, satirical, sophomoric, straight, referential and funny while Japanese humor is ... Ditto. Who saw that one coming? For any style of humor, I can give you an anime example and maybe you would even find it funny. The one area I draw a blank on is Japanese puns; Even in its delivery and usage, half of it is telling how the "joke" is not funny or how the person using them is unfunny. In American comedy, puns are the lowest form of high art, usually using breadth and number to overwhelm the audience: See any extended Marx Brothers scene, MST3k or any ZAZ film. Just from the conflicting posts here, I'd say humor itself is an acquired taste, it's not just limited to anime.
... What was my point again? |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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And Kiyone and Mihoshi from the Tenchi series are so directly influenced out of the Japanese idea of the Osakan comedy duo (the odd funny one and the angry straight one who overreacts funny), there's been jokes about them actually having to perform as a comedy duo on occasion. (In the Tokyo series, for ex.) Basically, if you want it in a nutshell, compare it to British humor: British society emphasizes a proper image, so there's more surprise when you do improper, or downright silly or inappropriate things...Insert favorite Monty Python sketch or Lewis Carroll Alice scene here. In Japanese society, there's a deathly fear of public embarrassment, and a under-running core of goofy obsessiveness, and most of the humor is about how the people who try to be the most formal usually embarrass themselves the most. (Usually through their not-so-carefully buried quirks and obsessions, like Keroro on Sgt. Frog.) Or, in a society that emphasizes responsible behavior, the character who's hopelessly unpredictable and irresponsible, like Tomo and Ms. Yukari on Azumanga Daioh or Konata on Lucky Star. In America, we don't have as much of a social release, and there's nothing to "shock" us with, except the jackass comics who get on their high horse about shock humor. (Or sitcom comics who believe that comedy is about being able to act high-school immature into middle age, because, y'know, people don't want you to do that.) We don't have as much of a place to let absurdity and plain-speaking run rampant, except for political satire when it's done right. The fact that the current SNL doesn't know how to be funny when there isn't a presidential campaign, and then there's rich material to choose from every time a Republican opens his mouth, is one illustration of this idea. (British critics once compared their jokes to American jokes, and complained that US humor is more about getting the upper hand, delivering a wisecrack, and/or having the last laugh, than about simple absurdity in the wrong place. That's one of the drawbacks of not having a deeply-rooted culture.)
And one manga mainstay, the "Big head" when a straight man suddenly overreacts with the most obvious frustration-complaint, ("So why didn't you tell me that in the FIRST place????"), or characters suddenly petrifying to stone in awkward moments of public embarrassment. Admit it, that's what we sort of visually picture, when we overreact or get caught out. 
It's true that Creeping Fanservice has made humor not what it was in the glorious mainstream 90's of Rumiko Takahashi (Ranma 1/2, UY), but look up the old days and you can see all the principles in play, falls to the ground included. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18188 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Er, Urusei Yatsura is an '80s title - and early'80s at that. But if you want to see probably the most influential title on how anime comedy has developed over the last three decades then that's the one you want to check out.
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13227 |
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I recommend taking a look at Straight Title Robot Anime. It's about a bunch of robots examining human comedy to try and understand the concept of laughter. If you don't 'get' anime comedy, perhaps it will give you a better idea.
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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It looks to me like you are implying that Ranma 1/2 and Urusei Yatsura did not have fanservice. If that is true then I wonder what definition of "fanservice" you are using? If that is not true then I misunderstood what you were saying. As for the question of anime humor, for me it was an acquired taste. Others in this thread have done a good job of describing the humor that is specific to anime, or rather to Japan, so I do not need to go into that. Most of the culturally influenced jokes did not seem funny to me at first because I just did not understand what was supposed to be funny. Quite often I did not even recognize it as a joke. But as I learned more about Japanese people and society those things started to become funny, and when I looked back at the earlier thing that I did not get I was able to see the humor, at least sometimes. I did not start to think that it was funny just because I knew that it was supposed to be funny. Rather it was because I was better able to understand the characters and the situations that they were in. I knew when somebody did something that was not expected, and why other characters were surprised or shocked by it. I guess that I could simplify that by just saying that I learned to identify with the characters and see things from their perspective. Of course I still do not get all of the humor, especially the puns. Except for the few that do translate well I will probably never get the puns. But much of the anime humor that I can appreciate definitely required some education. |
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danilo07
 Posts: 1580 |
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Really?Because most of the comedies that come out today bear little resemblance to UT. Yes,there is a lot of slapstick comedy present in Urusei Yatsura but the context is completely different.Which really changes the entire joke(the point of the joke isn't "hahahah he touched her tits so gets slapped for that" it's actually "hahahah main character is an asshole so he gets slapped)Plus,I don't think that any modern anime comedies have the level of insanity behind them as much as UT had,the comedy in the show really knows no boundaries(intergalactic wars happen,kaiju appears,Ataru gets sent to another dimension). The closest thing to what you are describing is probably Kimagure Orange Road. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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The first UY season had Rumiko Takahashi from the manga androphobically spitting on her own horny-teen/mythological-babe fanservice, and it stank. Unfortunately, most first-timers never make it out of the first season, and into Mamoru Oshii's funky genre-reshaping reboot that, like Key says, almost literally re-invented anime comedy. (Ie., pretty much ignore everything until Lum transfers to the school.) After the series makers found their groove, they learned to throw out the manga and use it as just a jumping-off point for its mix of absurd chaos and cool pop-ref that the writers and animators later took to the genre/title parodies of the first Project A-ko movie. And if that's too hard to find, the crazy anime pop-refs and lovably incompetent characters of Sgt. Frog display their loving UY homage/influence throughout the first two seasons. (And as for Ranma 1/2, some like the snail-paced first-season that concentrates on Ranma and Akane's relationship, but even so, you can see the pace pick up immediately in the second-season Golden Pair arc, where silly absurdity starts popping up in the battles more often.) Pop-ref is becoming one aspect of Japanese humor, in a country where everyone grew up watching Doraemon or Gundam or GE999, you're just not allowed to admit it. Which gets the same surprise you get over here when you hear someone quote a Chuck Jones line, even though you know everyone else probably already saw What's Opera, Doc and Ali Baba Bunny. And here we ARE allowed to admit it. (For ex., when I joked in another thread that the "A-ni-plex" logo sounded like it was being sung by Marvin the Martian--"The best in anime quality, isn't that lovely, hmm?"--that would be an American equivalent of cult pop-ref humor.  )
I've found that studying world humor is the REAL best way to understand a world culture, since they don't usually import their humor. (Except for UK and France.) You're getting to see a culture with its pants down, and turns out they're not quite so formal or exotic as they'd like the rest of the world to believe. For ex., I remember having to read Aristophanes in college, and that'll shatter a few myths about Ancient Greece  , and remember when we thought Australia only made highbrow art films?
In anime's case, we knew almost nothing about Japanese society in the 70's and 80's, they were still a postwar/Godzilla cultural stereotype, and the idea of the loony-obsessive Akihabara geek barely even existed until we saw the Japanese make fun of their own social black-sheep. |
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