Forum - View topicThe Best (And Worst) Anime Comedies
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Triltaison
 Posts: 724 |
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I'm not sure what I'd pick as my favorite anime comedy since so many have been dear to my heart. I'll put shout-outs to Elf Princess Rane, Dragon Half, Tatami Galaxy, Hare+Guu, Shinesman, Teekyuu, and Excel Saga.
Worst anime comedy is easy for me. I have to give it to Papuwa. Does anyone else remember this show? Did anyone like it? It seemed a perfect fit with my love of Hare+Guu and Excel Saga, but Papuwa almost entirely fell flat for me. EDIT: For Huffdaddy and others who remember: "Thanks for the taxi and tea. This weed is cooked round and chewy, on a hungry lake sometimes. Okey dokey?" I should also mention Prefectural Earth Defense Force as being memorably great, but I haven't seen it in years due to its woefully out of print status so I'm not sure if I can include it in my faves anymore. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18189 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Oh, it's definitely up there on my list; I'd probably rank it somewhere between 3rd and 6th overall. The problem is that it's got some really stiff competition. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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Going to do this in reverse and do least favorites first.
On a personal note I find it interesting that for least favorite, or worst, comedy nobody has mentioned Eiken. Now personally I wouldn't consider it my least favorite or the worst ever. It is definitely an over the top sexual innuendo comedy. So if you don't like tons of T&A and potty humor it won't work for you. I have to give it points though for being honest about what it is and owning it. Plus the characters weren't overly obnoxious. However, over the years I've seen many a fan say it's the worst comedy ever. To each their own. For me my least favorite comedies are those where the MC, male or female though it tends to mostly be tsundere females, is just a giant ass. I agree with the notion that for comedy to work the character has to be likeable. At the very least the overly rude and hostile character has to be balanced by a good supporting cast. I think Cartman from South Park works for me because while he is an ass he has his good moments and the show makes as much fun of him as he does of others. So there's balance. It's not just the MC being an ass. So for me I would say two of my least favorite comedies would be Oreimo, and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Both for the same reason. Haruhi and Kirino were just overly tsundere to the point of not being likeable at all for me. What makes them worse to me than shows where the comedy simply fell flat is there was no balance to off set their personality in the shows. They're just overly mean for no real reason. I consider those sort of comedies worse than those like Green Green, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, & FLCL where the humor simply fell flat for me. As for most enjoyable or favorite comedies it's hard for me to say definitively. Different shows with different types of humor work for different moods for me. A raunchy comedy won't work as well if I just want some light slice of life comedy. Overall though I think the comedies I enjoyed most are Puny Puny Poemy, Cromartie High School, Hare'+Guu, and Detroit Metal City. Now I have to say the funniest outtakes I've heard on series are the outtakes for Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi and Mike McFarland's outtakes for Speed Grapher (which is not a comedy at all). |
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Merida
 Posts: 1945 |
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This is pretty hard. Gintama is in a league of its own to me since it isn't just a great comedy but one of my favourite series ever.
I agree with a lot of the other choices in the article, so i'll mention some I don't really have a worst since there's no fun in "hate-watching" comedy (as oppossed to watching bad drama as if it was good comedy), so i usually drop it really fast. |
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TravellinMatt77
Posts: 85 Location: Durham, NC |
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Favorite Comedy: Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt: I love the characters, the humor works for me more often than not, and it still felt fresh upon a re-watch. It's not always laugh-out-loud funny for me, but it's probably the most consistently amusing and entertaining comedy that I have seen.
Least Favorite Comedy: I'll second Full Metal Panic?: Fumoffu. It's severely lacking for me, especially when compared to its serious counterparts. Some of the Bonta-kun stuff was pretty amusing, but most of the rest of the humor felt flat. |
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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My favorite comedies fall into the realm of Sket Dance, Gintama, and Mitsudomoe. Comedies which have a tendancy to do occasional serious stories and have some kind of overarching plots. Below that would be 'otaku comedy' one might call it. Haganai, Oreimo. Usually has some drama and fanservice mixed in.
My least favorite might be cheating, but they get brought up often enough in topics; basically any kind of gag dub that turns a show into Adult Swim fodder. Incredibly lazy, not to mention disrespectful. -Stuart Smith |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Elf Princess Rane and Excel Saga were "revolutionary" in their day, but they don't age well--The Shinesman dub is still funny, although maybe not 100% as funny as when we were first surprised that a comedy anime dub could be good. Rane is still funny even if it's still too spastic and scattershot, but Excel is a little too smugly "mean" and removed from its own humor on second viewing. Not sure if I'd put Excel as "worst", but it's sure got a bad taste on repeat viewing. And I'll put in the usual Holy Trinity defenses of Sgt. Frog (the SUBTITLED version, that liked its characters, and didn't need to reduce every neurological bit of sensory input to a Millennial hit-movie or 80's-TV reference), Azumanga Daioh, and yes...the old 80's-90's anime fan on the watchtower's praise of Urusei Yatsura. For our VHS-club generation that had barely even seen the Dirty Pair yet, UY was, no pun intended, some new alien invention of comedy, like when Monty Python first hit America: Like trying to describe why the Marx Brothers are funny, it was hard to say what exactly it WAS about UY that crossed Pacific boundaries for humor so quickly--It was too intentionally surreal to be a slapstick Ranma 1/2, it was too sentimental to be a spastic never-a-dull-moment Excel Saga, the crazy ensemble characters were too canny and insane beyond their school-comedy tropes to be an horny-otaku wish-fulfillment To-Love-Ru, Lum & Ataru were such irresponsible evil-geniuses at their own pursuits to be an "I married an alien" I Dream of Jeannie, and like the first Project A-ko, the citywide chaos and "epic" scene-specific parodies of geek lore took their dedication to places where even Sgt. Frog would fear to tread. 
Rumiko Takahashi and Mamoru Oshii were both throwing everything at the wall that stuck in their early big breaks, and you can't make an Everything like that happen deliberately. (Even if, yes, the first season did stink...Just stick with it, the true radioactive comedy is buried deeper underneath.) |
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ParaChomp
 Posts: 1018 |
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I don't know if Monster Musume would count as a comedy but it contained everything I despised about North American cartoons, misogyny, and bland characters. Last edited by ParaChomp on Fri Aug 04, 2017 2:40 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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TasteyCookie
 Posts: 421 |
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Since the crowd here seems to generally dislike raunchy humor, I got to put Prison School up at the top. It probably made me laugh out loud more than any other anime. Monmusu is also a favorite if you like sex humor.
On the more innocent side, Nichijou, Gintama, and Konosuba are all great. Picking a least favorite is way harder for me as I generally will like most comedies. So my least favorites are comedy that are in more serious shows. Rewrite isn't a comedy I know but it contains a lot of "jokes" that were just entirely unfunny. Same with Trickster. As far as pure comedy shows that I didn't like, probably gotta go with Watamote. It made me laugh occasionally but it's way to cringey to ever rewatch. |
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garn13
 Posts: 2 Location: NB, Canada |
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While I echo some of the aforementioned such as Barakamon and Devil is a Part-Timer, I have to bring up a couple of my favorites that no one has mentioned: D-Frag! and the very similar to it, Haganai. And another that is not strictly comedy but has some very funny parts in it, Chobits. Underpants, underpants, underpants.
Don't really have a worst because if I don't find it funny I either don't watch it or I don't classify it as comedy. I guess FLCL will do as I didn't find it funny and I guess it was supposed to be. |
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redcar
 Posts: 172 Location: Texas |
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Even after all these years, I have never laughed more at an anime comedy than the English dub of Golden Boy. I'm not always a fan of raunchy jokes, but Doug Smith's over-the-top performance as Kintaro makes it...well, golden. The runner-up is Hare+Guu for being so unrepentantly absurdist at all times.
As for the worst, I'm going to have to go with Mamotte Shugogetten. The opening is a timeless classic, but the show itself literally put me to sleep. Also, it's not technically comedy, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention the legendary English dub of Garzey's Wing. My group of friends used to watch it on occasion in anime club for laughs, and it never failed to deliver. |
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njprogfan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 1161 Location: A River Named Toms |
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Tough choice for fav comedy, but I'd have to go with the first season of Mitsudomoe. I just remember Simpsons-like belly laughs at least once during every episode, anime comic gold!
Least fav series that I regrettably watched all the way through was Doki Doki School Hours, just dreadful! |
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scowler
 Posts: 92 |
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I'm torn between Good Luck Girl and Ouran Host Club. Hmm...
Oh, and I'll never forget the famous Cowbell episode in Revolutionary Girl Utena. |
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Woody__alien
Posts: 19 |
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Among my favorites there are several already mentioned here, such as Excel Saga,Cromartie High School, Tentai Senshi Sunred, and WataMote, and Moyashimon too (if it can count as comedy)... but nobody mentioned Dr. Slump! What, too old-school for ya? To me, Japanese zany humour never reached again such highs... or lows
A bad one, hmm... Dagashi Kashi was one boring snoozefest, and I dislike stuff with creepy fetishistic undertones such as Cosplay Complex and Arcade Gamer Fubuki. |
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meruru
Posts: 471 |
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I'm surprised no one's mentioned Ouran High School Host Club, which I see quite frequently listed on recommended viewing lists and favorites lists, and it's a genre parody similar to Nozaki kun. I don't watch that many that are pure comedy, but I've also really been into Magic Circle Guruguru this season.
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