Forum - View topicANNCast - Funny Ha Ha
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Cheesecracker
 Posts: 240 |
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Ditto. I watched the entire show and never felt like I was really missing out. So much of the humor is just obvious. The delivery of the voice actors really shines comedically IMO. As well as when they do drama, which I think they often do better than other shows(I think they do a lot of things better than other shows). It can be hard to see because they spend so much time just wallowing in silliness. There's always a sense of the wink at the camera. Kind of Bill Murray-ish? It can be kind of suspenseful, you never know when they'll shift. I really like when they talk over a static shot and break the '4th wall'. I also really like their willingness to go 'there'. |
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ss-hikaru
 Posts: 269 Location: Western Australia |
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Well it does run in Shonen Jump and occasionally has some (usually longer) Shonen Jump-esque arcs (Benizakura arc which got turned into a movie comes to mind first) which is more typical shonen than gag comedy (which I think is what Gintama is classified as?), which may have given you the impression that it isn't a comedy. And it seems that Gintama will be resuming in April as Gintama' (yes, that apostrophe is not a typo =P), so it'll be more than 201 episodes =D. If you're going to start Gintama it's probably best to warn you that it may take 20 episodes or so for you to get into it (that was the case for me) not so much because of the "it-gets-better-i-swear!" but because Gintama has such a large cast, and many characters do not appear that often, so it may take this long to remember who's who and what their particular quirks were. I remember I used to get Madao and Kondo mixed up (apparently they were originally one character, hence some of their similarities).
There have been so many episodes (the old man and his dog comes to mind first) where I spend the first half of the arc laughing my a$$ off, only to start bawling my eyes out in the second half. Personally, I think Gintama is better at hitting the waterworks switch than some of Key's stuff =P (well at least for me anyway).
The talking over the static shot is even funnier when you realise they're cutting costs =D. And Gintama breaks the 4th wall so well. My favourite arc is the ranking one, they really went all the way with that one: the floating ranks over each character in the ending song, the MS paint opening, the Fist of the North Star parody...so great 
As for 'going there', Gintama and DMC are the only anime where I actually like the crude humor. My mum sometimes watches Gintama, and during those particular episodes she'll always turn to my little brother and say 'you shouldn't be watching this!' Funny, when Gintama is in a magazine aimed at boys his age 
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Cheesecracker
Posts: 240 |
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I think waaay too much is made of it being full of inside jokes.
Happy Happy 
I read the promo chapter(s) in Shonen Jump and was 'meh'. Weird premise, weird characters, so-so art...I just wasn't feeling it. It may have also been, at the time, I was following enough manga that I felt apprehensive about starting a new line. Much later Shonen Jump showed another sample and it felt more complete and original. People are always complaining how things get rehashed. Once you've seen/read enough to the point where everything feels familiar, you are almost owe it to yourself to go deeper just to let a story distinguish itself. Of course that's hard too when you know that you it's not going to pay off just because you were patient. However, Gintama comes well regarded and has enough legacy to warrant it. Following that 2nd entry in Shonen Jump I went and watched the anime. I felt more than rewarded for giving it a chance. Of course, YMMV, but if the characters grow on you and it's your kind of humor you will be rewarded with plenty to watch.
Me too. I guess that would explain it. 
The 'shameless' factor(internally as well as externally) is one of the things I like about the show. It just wallows in it's bad behavior. Kinda Seinfeld-ish, but that's not all it is. It runs the board better than any other show I've seen. Perhaps more so because comedy is hard.
I think it the is one scene that I would choose to blow people's minds would be the 3-legged race(towards the end of this last season) with the love scene with the grub. Bbrrrrrr. (WTF OMG) DMC is a good comparison, although w/ DMCthe abuse is kind one sided. Although not even it's own show, one comparison that comes to mind is that bit that closes the Lucky Star (some?)episodes...I think it's called Lucky Channel? That girl who is all cute but eventually drops the facade. There's something about the tone it has. Unpretentious, maybe? |
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timeldred
Posts: 32 |
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An hour-long podcast and almost 50 posts, and NO ONE mentions Dr. Slump??? As far as I'm concerned, no anime series ever has, nor ever could, top this king of comedy. It's got something for everyone and is as funny now as when it was made.
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YotaruVegeta
 Posts: 1061 Location: New York |
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I STILL have not read that.
::SHAME:: |
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timeldred
Posts: 32 |
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The manga is one thing; the anime is the manga HYPERCHARGED.
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Cheesecracker
Posts: 240 |
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I read the manga long before I ever saw any anime and thought the Arale voice they chose didn't feel right. Maybe it was just that one I saw. I think it was a movie or OVA actually. The manga is classic. Does the anime qualify?(Not to sound confrontational) I've never heard anyone really talk about the anime. |
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Sweet_Mercury
 Posts: 19 |
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That's a good distinction. I think most of what we see over here is the fanservice comedies. I think the biggest joke about the fanservice "comedies" as that they even bother to call them comedies any more. Am I the only person who feels like these shows are just vehicles for the fanservice, and they slap some generic jokes and the label "comedy" on there just so they don't have to outright say "Here we drew some boobs/panties/guys face accidentally in cameltoe. Again. Go do what you have to do"? Maybe they are just trying and failing to be funny, but it doesn't even seem like they are trying half the time. |
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tuxedocat
 Posts: 2183 |
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It's kind of the nature of what otaku shows have become: Checklist characters. Checklist jokes. I guess it saves on budget, not having to hire an actual writer and all, but the repetition makes the industry look like a parody of itself. I spent the weekend trying to figure out what is so great about Azumanga Daioh, only to notice that it has all the checklist characters (though not the fanservice). Oh, and it was boring. I think the funny-factor is amplified for guys who think the girls are cute. I'll just keep on watching Level E, which continues to makes me laugh with its trolling humor. Episode 5 is a great send-up of Super-Sentai shows and sexy villainesses. Last edited by tuxedocat on Tue Feb 08, 2011 1:11 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4755 |
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Maaan, I'm months behind on ANNCast, and my slight OCD streak won't let me start listening to the new episodes until I've made a dent in my backlog.
 This one sounds like a fun conversation, so hopefully I can find time to get to it soon. At least I can throw out a few random comments on what other people have talked about.
I honestly don't go out of my way to seek pure comedy material all that often in any entertainment medium. I mean, I enjoy laughing as much as the next person, but I think I have a somewhat more serious personality by nature, so action/drama in that vein is more up my alley. Like many other people, I think I enjoy comedy the most when it's pulled off well in otherwise non-comedic series. Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo are especially good at this, both dedicating one or two particularly-memorable episodes (Mushroom Samba, Baseball Blues) to some crazy off-the-wall fun. And for my money, One Piece hits its comedic notes better than just about any full-on comedy I've ever seen; it's very clear that Oda is a devout follower of the old-school Warner Brothers style of cartoon humor. I think keeping humor In terms of the relatively-few comedy anime I've seen, FLCL far and away tops the list; I still laugh hysterically every time I watch it. I also feel like it's a very genre-defying sort of series; there isn't much else out there that's like it. The first time through, I was laughing because I had no freakin' clue what was going on, but now that I legitimately understand everything, it's even funnier. Dead Leaves was in a similar vein, although I don't know that there's anything there to understand in the first place.  I've never seen Gintama, but I have had a friend link me to a few of its more spectacular parody clips, and it looks like an immense amount of fun. I also saw quite a bit of the literal Super Milk-chan dub when it aired on [as], and lord help me, I actually greatly enjoyed it for how completely surreal and incomprehensible it was. (BELGIAN WAFFLES!)
(Also, Dokuro-chan is <3.) As far as "Americanized" dubs of comedy series go, I'm pretty much all for them. A great deal of comedy is fairly culturally-specific, and if you don't understand the pop culture or historical references being made, it's not going to do much for you. (Someone brought up kanji puns earlier, and I agree that they're pretty much incomprehensible; seeing them explained in footnote form just utterly kills the humor.) For my money, FUNi's work on Shin-chan was utterly hilarious, and I think it's a darn shame that [as] chose not to order up any more episodes from them. I've also recently started watching the Ghost Stories dub here on ANN, and it's a complete riot. I'll never understand that minority of purists out there who were upset over said dub, because dear lord, the original series is just atrociously banal. At least Shin-chan was a fundamentally good show in its original version, but ADV's gag dub was the only thing that makes the latter watchable. It's funny that both Trigun and Fullmetal Alchemist have come up in here, as I have distinct opinions about how both handle comedy. I honestly have no problem with Vash's often-goofy behavior in Trigun as a whole, as I find him to be a refreshingly unique sort of character. I did, however, find those first few episodes to be a bit of a chore the first time through; I'd heard all this stuff about Vash as some legendary badass of a character, and it wasn't until episode 5's climactic moment when I started to understand what people saw in the show. Now, though, I can go back and enjoy the start of the series without any problems, since I know how they fit in. My thoughts on FMA are a bit more complex, as I think it has a tendency to go way overboard on some of its "gag" moments, and also use them in somewhat inappropriate moments. I find this to be particularly true in Brotherhood over the first series, as the latter usually managed to keep itself in check. In contrast, an episode of Brotherhood which aired on [as] a few weeks ago, spoiler[when the Elric brothers and Scar first encounter Father], had me wincing at a few ill-timed gags. Here you have what should be a very dramatic moment, something that will influence the entire course of the series, and you're throwing in yet another short joke? Really, show? Try maintaining some freakin' gravitas or something, because that isn't the place for that sort of stuff. Outside of anime, I don't go out of my way to watch comedic movies (other than Mel Brooks and Monty Python, anyway), and I tend to intently dislike the entire sitcom archetype. One of the very few exceptions to that is Seinfeld, which I feel like I don't have to explain.
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Sweet_Mercury
Posts: 19 |
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I haven't watched Azumanga Daioh in a while, but I remember thinking it was funny. There is a possible nostalgia filter there, since that was the first anime I saw that wasn't sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, or something like that. I don't know if the jokes were stale then, but they didn't seem so to me. It could also be a case of "the original isn't funny anymore". Whereas someone who came into anime watching the current crop of imitators might look back on AD, and it would seem stale because they've already seen the jokes, situations, and characters a million times by now. (If you have a few hours to kill: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny) I'm going to have to catch Level E since everyone seems to think that show is funny. I'm still catching up on last season but I might skip some of the questionables in the queue to watch that. Just for the topic, a few anime I can think of at random that I thought were funny: Azumanga Daioh School Rumble Those Who Hunt Elves (1 and 2) Colorful Arakawa (haven't started the second season) TRAPEZE Dokuru Chan Shin Chan (only watched the dub) Super Milk Chan Kaichou wa Maid Sama Midori Days Ninja Nonsense Butt Attack Punisher Girl Guataman Gosenzosama Bonbonzai! Ikki Tousen (only saw the first series, this is definitely a fanservice show but also the first I saw like it. Nostalgia filter. Although if I recall, the jokes didn't really center on "here are boobs" as much as the MC's idiocy) And I found humor in a lot of shows that weren't exclusively comedy, many mentioned here already. |
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Jrittmayer
 Posts: 304 Location: New Jersey |
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Please no, he is a self absorbed prick. Then again, it might be interesting to hear what he has to say... 
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mdo7
 Posts: 6361 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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May I ask how is Brain Ashcraft is a self-absorbed prick?? Because I talked to him and he doesn't seem like it to me, and he does talk about stuff in Japan (alongside Danny Choo), that not a lot of people can't do. |
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YotaruVegeta
Posts: 1061 Location: New York |
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Well, he does post stuff about his family. I guess that self-absorbed, maybe. Never thought of him as a prick at all.
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mdo7
Posts: 6361 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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well, I don't see anything wrong with that, but I will agree he's not a prick. He's too much of a good guy and a person who have more insight about Japan then most of us do. Actually, without him I wouldn't know about Japan censoring some of our video game if it hasn't been for him. Back on topic, about the rewriting joke for anime. If the joke can't be understood by US audience, I don't mind rewriting it to make it more suitable for US. The same thing can be applied for US comedy show going to Japan, I can imagine how South Park went through when they have to translate into Japanese (that include all jokes and American references that Japanese audiences may not understand). I'm glad Family Guy didn't get dub and boradcast (or to some point, heavily edited to fit Japanese audience) on Japanese TV. I do recall they did release it on home video and in subtitle format, but however watch Family Guy in Japan might have to know maybe 90% of America's pop culture to understand the show. |
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