Back in the day one of the aspects I loved about anime was how even comedy shows would have a hint of drama in them, which helped the audience member get that much closer to the characters. I knew I would never see someone like Homer Simpson crying on American television, and it was nice to see that in the world of anime this was a possibility. But remember, be careful what you wish for, because I made a big mistake wishing for this extra drama.
Many episodes later, with many of them belonging to comedy anime, did I realize that adding drama into comedy was in fact a very, very bad thing. Much like Archer before me, I now feel the need to kick the crap out of the me in the past. So after the jump read the progression as my happiness turned into sadness, and then turned into rage.
This all started when I would switch from watching a serious anime to a comedy anime, as a kind of pallet cleaner for the mind. For the most part this practice worked; however, every once in a while it didn’t. Every now and then a comedy anime would produce an episode that was not funny at all. Not that any of the jokes inside the episode were particularly funny, but there were no jokes at all. Let me repeat that, a comedy anime TRYING NOT TO BE FUNNY!
I was pissed, but chalked it up to that particular show. This was the last time I thought I would hear of it, but I was so very wrong. In fact, 95% of all comedy anime will give their audience members comedic blue balls. Some where only an episode long and left it at that, while others carved two to three episodes away from the series at a time; unforgivable.
For example, Hare + Guu (the English titles is a lot easier to type out) is a wacky gag anime that features a girl, Guu, who can eat anything, has a Mario-like world in her stomach, read minds, transform into a kaiju monster—so on and so forth. Most of the time this show is side-splittingly funny, because of the above mentioned items; however there are episodes where the audience is subjugated to stories regarding mothers not loving daughters, marriage, and other things that do not evolve Guu eating people. The only thing that saved this from being a complete disaster is that they did throw a few jokes in there to keep things funny.
However, Macademi Wasshoi! doesn’t even give us that luxury in the later episodes. It seriously goes from being a show where a Hard Gay angel rapes everything he sees, to a show about a girl falling in love with a space ship. Yes that might sound funny, but the only thing that makes it funny is that they took that episode so seriously that it was just ridiculous. In all the other funny episodes they made lots of references to other anime, video games, and otaku culture; though in this one there were none.
These episodes usually show up near the end of any comedy series. Their worst appearances are usually in anime that is of a gag nature. Though sometimes a drama episode in a slice of life anime isn’t so bad, but it all depends on what type of anime it was trying to be from the get go.
Drama isn’t a bad thing, it adds spice and a lot of life to the characters. It makes funny things even funnier and sad things even sadder. However, when an episode is all drama, with no comedy elements mixed in, it really just puts the audience to sleep. All of us have preconceived notions of what an anime is going to be like when we watch it; and this is especially so when an anime is in midseason. So why does anime studios, writers, producers like it when they break us from this shell for an episode or two. Do they think this will make us appreciate the characters more? Because all it does is make me angry.
Please Japan, when I watch comedy anime, all I want to do is laugh; no more, no less.
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