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The Best (And Worst) Anime Comedies


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Angel M Cazares



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 5406
Location: Iscandar
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 10:18 am Reply with quote
Since comedy is supposed to be highly subjective, using the terms best and worst don't make much sense. I will instead mention my most and least favorite anime comedies.

To start, I am not much of a comedy fan, but I found Azumanga Daioh and The Devil is a Part-Timer! very enjoyable. My least favorite anime comedy has to be Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu because it does not even make me laugh.

And by the way, I never knew Oreimo was a comedy, I thought it was a creepy incest drama.
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Nonaka Machine Gun B



Joined: 03 Feb 2009
Posts: 819
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 10:30 am Reply with quote
Super Milk Chan is the best anime comedy, and if I ever get rich, I'm funding 100 more episodes of it and pitching it to Netflix. The show's aesthetic is quirky enough to be interesting, but not so detailed that it wouldn't be dirt-cheap to produce.

The general conceit of the show is brilliant, too. The president of the world(of course) asks a five-year-old to solve crises, and the five-year-old does exactly as well as a five-year-old could be expected to do.
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Takkun4343



Joined: 19 Jul 2007
Posts: 1493
Location: Englewood, Ohio
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 10:35 am Reply with quote
Best comedy is a hard pick, but singular episodes I enjoyed the most were Space Dandy episode 10, "There's Always Tomorrow, Baby" and Samurai Champloo episode 23, "Baseball Blues". Eureka seveN episode 7, "Absolute Defeat", ranks up there too in spite of being in the "mean-spirited" category, but the fact that it avoided going to that specific brand's logical extreme while still showing enough humanity in the characters to keep them likeable really made it one of my favorite episodes.

Worst comedy I've finished, hands down, would have to be Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!. Awkward, obscure, and just plain annoying pop culture references, combined with creepy lawlharem tropes and absurd levels of gullibility and unlikability in its characters, really made completing the first season such a chore.


Last edited by Takkun4343 on Sat Aug 05, 2017 7:20 am; edited 1 time in total
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chito895



Joined: 22 Jan 2015
Posts: 512
Location: Lima, Peru
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 10:35 am Reply with quote
Nichijou and K-ON might be my favorite/best comedies. Gags in Nichijou, most of them superbly animated, are almost always effective, thanks to timing, thanks to how likeable and funny the characters are, and thanks to the amazing voice acting, especially Yukko's VA.

K-ON is amazing in how it builds cute, fun moments from simple conversations and really well established, likeable personalities. I think I'll never forget Mugi's episode in K-ON!!, the one where she wants to make her friends angry.

And what makes both of them so damn perfect is the great amount of heart that lies underneath all the jokes.

And if I have to mention the ones I dislike, I would say Amagi Brilliant Park and Gabriel Dropout from Winter season. And even Blood Blockade Battlefront if I want to stretch things.
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invalidname
Contributor



Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2434
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 10:37 am Reply with quote
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FilthyCasual



Joined: 01 Jun 2015
Posts: 2165
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 10:55 am Reply with quote
Best would be Nozaki for having lovable and hilarious characters who frequently alternate between the goofiest and the slightly closer to being a straight man.

Worst would be Dagashi Kashi by far for being painfully boring and dull with horribly unimaginative and stretched out gags. Episode 3 quite literally put me to sleep, and I'm baffled anyone liked it enough for it to get a second season. I guess the doujins sold well.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23667
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 10:57 am Reply with quote
Interesting article. Out of all the choices for best comedy put forward, the one I most personally agree with is Nick Creamer's selection of Nichijou.

Currently, I have watched 654 anime TV shows to completion. Of those, I have rated six titles as masterpieces and three of them happen to be comedies: Azumanga Daioh, Welcome to the NHK and Barakamon.

Some other favourites include: The Devil is a Part-Timer!, The Eccentric Family, FMP: Fumoffu?, Ghost Stories (the dub version only), Hayate the Combat Butler, One Punch Man and KONOSUBA.

Heaven's Lost Property is probably my least favourite comedy that I watched to completion (the first season, at least). He is My Master wouldn't be far behind.
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jenthehen



Joined: 23 Dec 2008
Posts: 835
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:08 am Reply with quote
I can't remember laughing so hard throughout a show as (the dub version of) Yamada's First Time (B Gata H Kei). The disconnect in understanding between the two leads just cracked me up and I was totally a Yamada in high school (desperate for boys / any type of physical action, but completely clueless, in over my head, and forever frustrated that boys couldn't TAKE A HINT). My understanding of Yamada just made her inner monologue so funny to me.

Other favorites are Azumanga Daioh and K-On, but they are more than JUST comedy to me, because I feel like there were parts that were so poignant and choked me up!
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ultimatehaki



Joined: 27 Oct 2012
Posts: 1090
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:09 am Reply with quote
Gonna have to go Martin's route and call a tie for best which is Konosuba and Daily lives of high-school boys.

Since I never power through a comedy anime (or any anime for that matter) my Worst would have to be Azumanga Daioh, I could never get into this comedy which is weird since it's usually the brand of comedy I like.
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Ouran High School Dropout



Joined: 28 Jun 2015
Posts: 440
Location: Somewhere in Massachusetts, USA
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:12 am Reply with quote
Odd...never for a second did I take Nobunaga the Fool as a comedy. For me, it was a quirky, sometimes over-the-top historical (and legendary) mishmash best taken as a tongue-in-cheek drama, especially in its final minutes.

Last edited by Ouran High School Dropout on Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:13 am; edited 1 time in total
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18137
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:12 am Reply with quote
angelmcazares wrote:
To start, I am not much of a comedy fan, but I found Azumanga Daioh and The Devil is a Part-Timer! very enjoyable. My least favorite anime comedy has to be Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu because it does not even make me laugh.

Really? If Fumoffu isn't my #3 all-time for comedies then it's at least in my Top 5. Just goes to show how much tastes can differ on comedy, I guess.

Oh, and I'd also probably place Amagi Brilliant Park on that top 5 list, especially if you're actually factoring an ongoing story into the equation.

Quote:
And by the way, I never knew Oreimo was a comedy, I thought it was a creepy incest drama.

Our Encyclopedia does list it as such, and I'd agree with that classification. It's definitely not exclusively a comedy, though.
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Parsifal24





PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:15 am Reply with quote
"Best" for me would Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan while "worst" would be Sargent Frog. With Dokuro-Chan having the kind of black and cruel humor I enjoy I can understand why some don't like it but I've always found it hilarious. While Sargent Frog is not so much bad as repetitive and it gets boring.
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4070
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:26 am Reply with quote
It appears that not only is comedy subjective but comedies are also subjective; An action adventure story with some comedic bits is still an action adventure show. But pure comedies, ok, I have seen a few...

Best... unlicensed. Seitokai Yakuindomo. You start to think this is just a sex comedy, some verbal wit passes by. You're waiting for some wacky hijinks to resume, you get assaulted by some of the funniest performances in Japanese; Some growl, some squeak and then there's whatever Hata does. You will never, ever be prepared for what comes next.

Best licensed. I like Excel Saga, I love Nchijou, I have to give some respect to Devil is a Part Timer, Yamada's First Time... and so on and so on, I can't list all of them... but my heart belongs to My Bride Is a Mermaid. It doesn't matter the language, it doesn't matter the cast, Mermaid is an assault on the funny bone. There's some plot, there's some thought... there's a guy who looks like Arnuld who will always be back.

Worst comedy. As much as I'd like to list Papuwa, I still haven't forced my way through it so that's out. There's a bevy of mediocre "girl's doing things" comedies that commit comedies' ultimate sin of being unfunny and boring but they run into each other....

Ah, right. Watamote. Feel the cringe as Silver Link. adapts a funny manga about a delusional girl who tries to make her high school life like her otaku entertainment tells her it should be straight.
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WingKing



Joined: 27 Apr 2015
Posts: 617
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:32 am Reply with quote
I have trouble getting into pure comedy anime most of the time, just because the basic staples of most Japanese comedy (slapstick and manzai) aren't usually my cup of tea. My favorite "comedies" usually aren't pure comedies, but rather shows like Silver Spoon or Love Live that are mainly rooted in other genres but happen to be really funny, too. Of the anime that I'd consider primarily comedies over and above anything else, my favorites are probably K-On and Magical Witch Punie-chan.

Least favorite? Any comedy series directed by Shin Oonuma. I've tried Baka & Test, Anne-Happy, and Watamote, and ended up dropping all of them after just a few episodes. Oonuma's comedies (or the ones it seems like he always chooses for his own directing projects) specialize in a particular brand of comedic sociopathy that involves making life hell for his main characters, and we're supposed to laugh at their constant failures and inability to have anything go right for them. I've never enjoyed that kind of thing, even in western comedies (for instance, "Honeymoon in Vegas" is one of my least-favorite movies ever). It doesn't make me laugh, it just makes me uncomfortable.
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NonsenseUser



Joined: 22 Sep 2008
Posts: 51
PostPosted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:52 am Reply with quote
Nothing really comes to mind for Worst comedy. If something's not funny to me then I usually don't give it more than an episode or two and it just ends up disappearing from my head. That being said, Gintama is far away my top comedy pick and nothing really comes close. I'd say Amy's analysis is spot on (although toilet humor is very much my thing, so that plays right into my wheelhouse). I'll also give a shout out to Seitokai Yakuindomo and To Be Hero as a couple of my other favorites. And if it can keep it up for the whole season, Magic Circle Guru Guru has been killing me early on, so I could see that rising to the top of my comedy list as well.
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