Forum - View topicSarcasm in anime
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Trivial
 Posts: 58 Location: Ottawa, ON |
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Or, the lack there of it.
This has come up before in other discussions I've come across, but how come there is an utter lack of sarcasm in japanese animation. Sarcasm is a big thing for western, specifically american sit-com, comedy. It could add an extra element to comedic, or cold characters and possibly improve some of the comedy. What is the cultural explanation for why sarcasm isn't popular? Is it considered rude? |
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Mirrinus
 Posts: 230 Location: La Thiene Plateau |
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Well, Japanese culture is rather polite and formal relatively speaking compared to American culture. If you're looking for some sarcasm, I find Tomokazu Sugita's latest lead roles to have been pretty witty and sarcastic, such as Kyon in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or Yuuichi in Kanon 2006.
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selenta
 Subscriber Posts: 1774 Location: Seattle, WA |
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I don't think it's as rude as it is just not being something they get. Sarcasm just doesn't really seem to exist in Japanese language/culture from what I've seen, so when someone says something that is extremely obviously not true, all the genuine Japanese people I've talked to (i.e. raise in Japan and haven't lived here for too long) just seem really confused.
Part of it probably lies in that the Japanese language is rather tonal based. There's more than 4 ways I can think of to say "kite" all with meanings varying from "to wear" to "to cut" to "stamp" and they're all pronounced slightly differently. Honestly, I can't pronounce the difference at all in practical conversation, it's too nuanced for me right now. Japanese is certainly not one of those languages where everything is determined by tone though, the meaning is almost always determined by context... but the tone is important in how Japanese people speak. One of the primary ways Americans make it obvious they're being sarcastic and thus trying to be funny or make a point, is by changing the tone of their voice. If someone says something sarcastic in a normal voice, it is often hard to tell if the person is serious. So if you can't tell by the tone of their voice (as Japanese people just don't seem to do), it can be very confusing. Well... either all of that... or I'm just not very funny by Japanese standards and they weren't confused, they just thought I was retarded. 
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KyuuA4
 Posts: 1361 Location: America, where anime and manga can be made |
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Well, as speakers of the English language -- it's very very very easy for us to pick up English-spoken sarcasm because we're naturally exposed to it. Heck, even through the Innurnets we're capable of picking up sarcasm.
I'm no-where near Japanese fluency -- so I'll never know. However...
Same voice actor -- who pretty much poses as a great example of Japanese sarcasm (is there a term for this?). He is by the far the best voice actor when it comes to male sarcasm. |
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10円
Posts: 605 |
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I don't think of Japanese as being tonal, at least in regard to the accepted definition of the term. Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, and Vietnamese are examples of tonal languages and while they sound similar to each other in my ear, none of them sound anything like Japanese to me.
But isn't that when it's the most amusing? If you're being too obvious about it then it's not true sarcasm in my view.
I don't have much experience talking to Japanese nationals (how many are even in South Texas anyway?) but I do have a decent amount of experience with Indian nationals, and they are in a very similar situation where they can understand basic English but are rather clueless when it comes to anything subtle. |
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hentai4me
 Posts: 1313 Location: England. Robin is so Cute! |
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The lack of sarcasm makes most anime comedies less enjoyable than western ones. While AzuDai was very funny whole sequences where jokes are made based upon different meanings for the same word (punning and the like) are not funny. Where I am puns are considered a pathetic attempt at humour (have you ever laughed an an 'eggcellent' joke?)
Rather sarcasm (often deadpan), exaggeration(as in making a mildly annoying thing REALLY bad) and depreciation are funny. Dylan Moran and Jack Dee are among the best at this. Plain wierdness works as well though in both cultures...I'd challenge anyone not to laugh at Bill Bailey. |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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I agree, Japanese really isn't a tonal language at all, at least not to the extent that other languages are. Of course, I also don't know too much of the language at this point in time, but pronouncing it seems to be one of the easiest things to do, once you figure out how the pronounciation works. |
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abunai
Old Regular
 Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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I believe the confusion stems from selenta having used the wrong terminology. Doubtless, what was meant was not "tonality", but "pitch accent", which is a different matter entirely. And yes, there is pitch accent in Japanese, though only in a minority of words (Wikipedia says 20%, but that seems low to me). As for the original topic, I am rather surprised that people would even consider the possibility that there could be any human culture which didn't use sarcasm. It seems to me to be a fundamental facet of human nature and interaction, and therefore omnipresent (though naturally, to varying degree). Sugita Tomokazu ("Kyon" in SHnY) has already been menioned as an example of a seiyuu skilled in the expression of sarcasm. But apart from the expression of it, and just looking at the manuscripts themselves, there are plenty of examples of sarcasm in anime. Just as there is plenty of sarcasm in Japanese culture. It's sometimes a bit less in-your-face than Western-style sarcasm, but that doesn't make it any less real. - abunai |
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jetz
 Posts: 2148 Location: Manila, Philippines |
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I don't think the lack of sarcasm makes comedy in anime less entertaining. It's just a different type of comedy - and an entirely different audience. You also have to keep in mind that anime is mainly for the Japanese people, and then we "foreigners" pick it up from them. While we may think that comedy in anime is less funny compared to western comedies (I myself included), maybe them Japanese are laughing themselves off at Pierrot's (Yakitate!! Japan) puns. I don't think it's that bad though - maybe it's cause I'm asian too, but I'm pretty hard to please. |
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Drowning_Wolf
Posts: 193 |
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Sorry, but I think you're wrong. Good puns are funny. But sometimes you got to be very accustomed to the author's culture to appreciate it. Here in Québec, one of our favorite comedian is François Pérusse who uses a lot of puns in his sketches. And if you're not very fluent in French (sometime even French from Québec) and don't have a huge level of knowledge of our culture and custom, than it's impossible to enjoy. I guess it can be the same thing for Japanese. |
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hentai4me
Posts: 1313 Location: England. Robin is so Cute! |
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Indeed, I've never heard a pun good enough to laugh at and jokes based on the different pronunciation due to Hiragana or Katakana characters meaning different things (Osaka does this a lot in AzuDai for example) don't really work for me.
I wonder though would Jack Dee's depreciation of...well everything...work in Japan Jack Dee |
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Iritscen
 Subscriber Posts: 797 |
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I agree, the puns just don't work for me in English, but that's probably just because I have to read the footnotes to get them.
I did laugh at Ruri playing a Tetris game with homonymic kanji (she lines up three different "ai"s, remember?). It was funny in the original Japanese, and I knew just enough to get it without an explanation. The English dub resorts to just saying, "Ai, ai, ai; the ayes have it." Not very funny, but what are you gonna do? And the misreading of Hagiwara's name in Cromartie as Hagigen made me laugh even though I needed the explanation about the alternate reading. But these are exceptions to the rule. It does seem (and I think I read a Japanese person saying this recently) that a number of Japanese jokes rely on punch lines where you basically state the joke outright. E.g.: in AzuDai, the cute girl genius (sorry, forgot her name) is cooking food, which clearly looks unlike any food we've ever seen. Then she says, "Oh, what we're doing isn't cooking at all!" It's that really obvious declaration of the joke that can sometimes fall flat, at least to a Western ear. There's a lot more examples that I could list, but I think you all know what I mean. It seems that many jokes are not complete until a closing comment is made, like Beauty in Bo^7 constantly mugging at every weird joke, whereas a Western show would just leave the weirdness as is for the viewer to puzzle over or laugh at. |
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Hisdon
 Posts: 411 Location: Poquoson, VA |
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I noticed this as well but didn't really think much of it until you pointed it out, they really do seem to make their bizzar jokes have to be explained by a character while in western comedy its left for us to pick up. |
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Mephistophilus
 Posts: 200 Location: Fresno, CA, United States |
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I don't know, I can actually pick up on bits of sarcasm ever so often, so it definitely isn't absent... I suppose it's just a bit harder to find. I agree with the assertion that humor in anime tends to be either downplayed (in the case of sarcasm) or thrown right in front of you. Yakitate!! Japan is a good example of the latter case, and it still manages to be funny at least to me. I find myself puzzling for a little while until I finally see the explanation, and then it becomes hilarious (especially with the addition of sight gags like the "Super Sayian" thing), at least to me. I like puns though, so I suppose I may be a bit different.
Also, humor is very subjective in the first place, as movies/sketches like Borat and SNL sketches can attest. Some people just love both of them, and some hate both or only like one for various reasons. If you don't like a certain type of humor at all, bet it puns or "stupid humor," you will not enjoy certain shows. It does take a bit of adaptation to some shows in order to understand or enjoy their humor, but in my case that makes it all the more enjoyable. Some people don't like to do this, and that's understandable. English-language humor, at least, is a bit more obvious in the first place, as it doesn't need the explanation to be understandable. I suppose that comes from the language itself, as we don't really have to mess with our pronunciation for it to be funny. Sure, it can be an aid to the funny, but it's not totally necessary. However, most humor does require a good bit of cultural knowledge, be it Japanese, American, or British. In the Jack Dee bit posted above (NWS language by the way, for those who didn't catch it), I understood most of it but some sections fell rather flat due to my lack of knowledge of British culture and my slight difficulty in understanding more accented bits. Likewise, Japanese humor may be somewhat funny to a lot of us, but it does need some explanation in order to be funnier, and that turns some people off to it due to the nature of their home country's humor. |
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hentai4me
Posts: 1313 Location: England. Robin is so Cute! |
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Sorry OT but
'Press Enter,' '...No.' Cracks me up. |
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