Bonus Podcast: 2022 April - What Makes a Good Comedy Series? (Patreon)

In honor of the month with both April Fool's and 4/20, Alex, Dee, and Vrai dedicated this month to discussing what draws them to--or repels them from!--a comedy series.

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DEE: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Patronizing AF, the AniFem podcast for patrons only. That’s right! I’m gonna just…

VRAI: [with dread] Oh, we’re going with that, huh?

DEE: I’m just gonna keep calling it that until everyone just agrees that that’s what it’s called. Or you can come up with a better name. [Chuckles] This is my challenge to you.

I am Dee, one of the managing editors at AniFem. You can find me on Twitter @joseinextdoor. And I am joined today by fellow AniFem staffers Alex and Vrai.

VRAI: Hey.

ALEX: Hello, everybody. Ooh, sorry, Vrai. Do you want to…? [Chuckles] Do you want to slide in first, or are we gonna go in alphabetical order?

VRAI: No, no. If they’re patrons, they don’t need the whole long spiel. We’re good. These are only 30 minutes.

ALEX: [Chuckles]

DEE: Yeah, that’s why I just slammed down my Twitter handle. I’m like, “Follow me! And we’re moving on.”

ALEX: Excellent.

VRAI: Cool.

DEE: Well, folks at home, this is our April episode, which means we’re wedging it around April Fool’s Day, and it will actually be dropping on 4/20. Nice, nice, nice! So, we figured everybody probably has a case of the giggles this month. I know I certainly do, because my basketball team is so good! Anyway, nobody out there probably cares. But I do.

ALEX: I care that you care. Congratulations on your sportsballs. I don’t understand it, but love that you love it.

DEE: [crosstalk] Thank you. Thank you. We won the big tournament. We won the big tournament! It was great!

VRAI: You won the big game!

DEE: So, yeah, lots of happies over here. And because of that, we’re going to do an episode talking about comedy and humor series. And we will roll some recommendations into this one. But we’re gonna do this one a little bit differently than our past bonus podcasts.

I posed the question to the folks on the call: what attracts you to a comedy anime or manga, and what repels you from them? So, what’s your top thing that draws you into it, and then what’s your big dealbreaker?

So, who wants to get the ball rolling?

ALEX: Well, I’ve been really thinking about this, this question of what makes a good comedy, because it’s something that… People try to apply a lot of science and logic and genre theory to it, but it’s something that’s so subjective. And I like to think that I have a sophisticated sense of humor, but also you can show me a video of a frog making an unusual noise, and that will crack me up. So, even within an individual human, it’s something that can be quite all over the place. So, yeah, what makes a good comedy? It’s an interesting question.

I think, for me, what tends to really draw me to comedy, especially within this medium, what tends to be effective, is the depiction of relatable happenings, but turned up to 11, exaggerated just enough that it displays sort of an emotional reality of how that kind of situation feels—which, obviously, you can get very well with your anime reaction faces and things. And maybe to start us off with a mini-recommendation, I think a really good example of a series that does that well is Nichijou.

DEE: I was thinking that. As soon as you said it, I was like, “Oh, like Nichijou.” Yeah.

ALEX: I mean, all loads of examples from this series, but especially there’s just one scene where the girls are studying and one of them flips her mechanical pencil around. She’s getting ready to study. She goes to jam her thumb down on the eraser to put more lead out, but it’s the wrong way around! She jams her thumb down and stabs herself in the hand with the pencil lead. And she just kinda yells, and there’s this just nuclear explosion that you can see from space after she does this.

And it’s like, “Oh. Yeah. That’s how that feels when you accidentally stab yourself in the finger with pencil lead.” That is a visualization of how that feels in that moment. It’s ridiculously funny, but it’s also like, “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I understand. We are making a connection at that point.”

DEE: Yeah, I feel like anime school comedies in particular can do a really nice job of highlighting the relatable absurdity of high school in particular. High school is a silly time full of… When you look back on it, or even in the moment, even when you’re in high school, there’s sometimes that moment of “This is ridiculous. Why does this feel like the end of the world? This is ridiculous!”

And I think a lot of high school anime do a really good job of capturing that feeling without necessarily belittling it, like “Oh, look at you foolish high schoolers.” It’s a big deal to the characters and the show takes it seriously, but not too seriously.

I think Nichijou is a really good example of that. I had a little bit of a harder time with the first half of Nichijou than the second, but there’s a moment in the first episode where I was like, “Oh, that’s what this show can be.” And it’s where… Oh, I’m blanking on the character’s name, but the main girl… They’re eating lunch and she saved her favorite piece for last, and it slips out of her chopsticks. And it’s this slow-motion dramatic scene of her trying to catch it before it falls to the floor. And it’s like, yeah, that’s what it feels like when your favorite bite of food falls off your fork or chopsticks or whatever and you’re like, “Noooo!”

ALEX: [Laughs]

DEE: I think Nichijou does that very well. Cute High Earth Defense Club is one that plays more in the fantasy realm and the parody realm, but also has these episodes of just this heightened absurdity of: Yeah, that is what it felt like in that moment, and it’s ridiculous and kind of encouraging you to laugh at yourself. That’s the point. It’s punching sideways. Does that make sense?

ALEX: [Chuckles] Yeah. You know what? Yeah.

DEE: It is encouraging you to be like, “Okay, you don’t have to take yourself too seriously. We get it. It felt important in the moment. But you can chuckle about it, too.” So, no, I agree with that, definitely.

ALEX: And even in shows that aren’t necessarily like you wouldn’t put them in the genre of comedy, the moments that are funniest out of those are often those kind of ones. I’m thinking of Laid-Back Camp. There’s a scene in the second season where they go to get eel, this beautiful, crispy local unagi delicacy. And Rin is like, “I don’t have the money for this!” She’s like, “Please, stop! Stop ordering this beautiful eel! I don’t have any money!” And Nadeshiko is like, “It’s all right.” And there’s this dramatic kind of whoosh over to her. She’s like, “It’s alright. I have (cha-ching!) Christmas money.”

DEE: [Laughs]

ALEX: And they’re like, “Oh my God!” And because of that they’re allowed to step into this glamorous adult world of being able to order eel at a restaurant, and it’s just like, yeah, that’s how that feels when you’re like 16 and you’re like, “Oh, my God, I have money!” [Chuckles] “Amazing!”

DEE: Yeah. My part-time job, first check, I’m gonna get us appetizers at the restaurant, gang! Appetizers!

[Laughter]

ALEX: So, yeah, that human element turned up to 11 is what I tend to really enjoy about comedy series. I will loop around to what kind of repels us in a minute, but I want to hear from Vrai first.

DEE: Yeah.

VRAI: Well, I too enjoy the series that you have listed, so I’m trying to think… Because when you mentioned comedy theory, that did get me thinking because—secret patron lore backstory—baby Vrai did consider becoming a stand-up as a child.

DEE: Oh, exciting.

VRAI: That is a thing that I wanted real bad. So I read a lot of comedy theory books, and then I got older and realized that I come from a family with addictive personalities and also am soft and multiple intersections of marginalized, and so I should probably not go into the world of stand-up comedy.

DEE: It’s a rough field. Yes. It is brutal out there.

VRAI: [Chuckles]

DEE: Just do humor writing instead. Buffer yourself with that layer from the audience.

VRAI: [Laughs] But comedy that I can appreciate… I am more likely, I guess, to like really weird, experimental comedy. I don’t know so much about anti-comedy, although I feel like that was a big thing during the 2000s, so maybe I’m just inured to it because it was unavoidable for a little while there.

I do have a big soft spot for the Always Sunny kind of comedy type, the horrible asshole comedy, where the butt of the joke is on them. And I think that’s the hardest type to do. I was thinking—

DEE: It’s so hard to do. Usually it ends up with the horrible asshole kind of being lauded or excused for being terrible. Yeah, it’s very difficult. But what were you thinking of as an example?

VRAI: The one that came immediately to mind is Asobi Asobase, which I think is hugely successful— There are a couple stinkers in there, like there are the two really transphobic skits and then there’s the horrible one with the boob-grabbing baby. But mostly for a short-form skit show—

DEE: That’s a sentence that just left your mouth! [Chuckles]

VRAI: Yeah, it is! Yeah, it is, because anime!

DEE: Yay, anime! [Laughs]

VRAI: I’m sorry. Do you not know where we are?

[Laughter]

DEE: Sorry. Okay, continue. Sorry, I just…

VRAI: No, no, I think literally that exact same horrible joke was in Yu-Gi-Oh! 20 years ago, so I know where I am. [Chuckles]

DEE: Yeah. Yeah…

VRAI: But I think that show is so good at doing something that anime often doesn’t get to, where these characters are horrible and horrible things are happening to each other, but [also] it has a visual style that’s willing to get really absurd and stretchy and grotesque.

I like anime that is just cute and laid back. Hello, Laid-Back Camp. I love you. You’re my friend. But I like when a comedy is allowed to be a little bit looser like that. I think that’s why people have such affection for “Pink Jacket” Lupin: is because that anime is a fever dream at certain points with the bounce and the stretch.

But Asobi Asobase is really good at balancing both “These characters are horrible people; they are the ones who end up looking foolish at the end,” but also, there is a line that it won’t cross, where they care about each other to a certain point, where when they violate boundaries they have with each other, then it shifts to a more gentle tone and there might be a genuine apology and that need to breathe, so that we know that it’s not that these characters hate each other; it’s that they have a higher tolerance.

I think this phenomenon is really familiar to kids who grew up in the ‘90s with the first couple of seasons of Pokémon, where they are… That’s why everyone likes Team Rocket: is because that balance was out of whack between how sympathetic these characters are and the extent of their crimes versus how much punishment got heaped on them. I feel like that is an entire phenomenon.

DEE: Yeah, we should dedicate an entire episode to beautiful villains. [Chuckles] Maybe that’s a future podcast: the villains we love.

ALEX: Yeah, just a Team Rocket power hour just talking about how much we love them for [obscured by crosstalk] of time.

VRAI: They’re an unofficial mascot.

DEE: I mean, you really shouldn’t tempt me, ‘cause I’d do it.

VRAI: I know. I know you would.

DEE: I’d do it. Nobody should dangle that carrot in front of me because I’ll take it. I’ll take a bite out of it, no questions.

VRAI: And I think that element of sympathy is particularly hard to gauge sometimes, even for good shows. I had a really hard time with certain episodes of Hinamatsuri, for example.

It’s mostly a really good, weird, absurd show with these small psychic girls getting into scrapes and shenanigans. But then sometimes the… Oh, gosh, what’s her name? The blonde girl. Some of the episodes about her trials and travails where she’s kind of a haughty rival when we first meet her, but then she’s unhoused and she loses that multiple times and she gets blackmailed and she’s working exploitative child labor jobs… It’s a lot.

DEE: Yeah, and it’s definitely not things that she had coming. She becomes a kind of a comedy punching bag character, but we’re not enjoying watching her get punched. I do agree with you there.

Yeah, so, threading that needle between “Oh, you totally had that coming in and you’re the butt of this joke and I’m laughing at you” versus “Okay, well, but it’s a kid and now I feel bad about it!” So, now you’re just being mean to this poor person.

VRAI: Yeah. And if somebody is going to do “Aha, these are horrible people” jokes, I like a found family. I like a horrible found family and I would want that to underpin the series as a whole. And that’s because I’m a Lupin fan.

ALEX: [Laughs]

DEE: Hey, as the resident Team Rocket stan, I get it. They’re much sweeter now than they used to be, but they used to be just gremlins 99% of the time, just trash humans who I would go to bat for any day of the week.

No, I think that all tracks. I agree with you guys. Definitely, like you were talking, the punching-sideways humor, I think anime does that very well. I think you see that often, and animation helps because you can heighten those reactions and really make it look the way it feels because you have all the abilities of animation that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to do with a live action comedy.

It’s interesting to me—I feel like one the big first rules of comedy is “Don’t punch down,” but I don’t feel like there’s a ton of anime that are necessarily comedies—that are necessarily punching-up comedies. I was trying to think of that beforehand, like if I could think of some examples of really biting satire-type stuff, and not a ton come to mind that were effective. I don’t know if anything pops into y’all’s head about that.

ALEX: Yeah, that’s a really good point, because the closest I can think of to a satirical anime would be things like genre parodies, or even making fun of genre conventions, either the one that they are in or even the joke in My Dress-Up Darling where she’s like, “Here is this ridiculously long light novel title.” [Chuckles] "We’re having a giggle at the medium that we’re in and showing how ridiculous it is."

DEE: Yeah. But that’s a loving parody. And I love a loving parody, but it’s that same "encouraging you to laugh at yourself," right? It’s not necessarily going after the assholes in charge.

VRAI: Well, I think it might also be to an extent the temporality of satirical humor might not necessarily be making it to streaming services.

DEE: That’s possible, but I’ve been watching anime for a long time, so you’d think some of them would have crossed my path at some point. There’s a few moments in Kaguya-sama that I do think do some pretty clever stuff, like the one episode where they have the joke about how terrible the sex ed system is, to the point where Kaguya has no concept of even what kissing is, really, she’s so out of the loop.

VRAI: Sex Ed 120% has some good jokes like that, too.

DEE: [crosstalk] I’ve heard that, yeah.

VRAI: I wonder, also, if some of it is more contained to manga because of that general rule we see with a lot of things, like with representation as well, where riskier stuff tends to live in manga.

DEE: Yeah. Yeah, I think you are more likely to see those more biting comedies in manga than in anime. I think Zetsubou-sensei kind of is on that in terms of darker comedies, but I haven’t seen enough of it to really speak to it.

Have either of you ever seen Humanity Has Declined? It’s kind of a lowkey favorite of mine in the comedy sphere.

ALEX: I have not, no.

VRAI: [crosstalk] I never did. I remember it happening. But no.

DEE: Okay. It’s a 12-episode show about… As the title suggests, humanity is on the decline, and there’s these tiny… they call them fairies—they’re like these little sprites—that have showed up with weird magic and they appear to be like the next… like, as humans are on the out, the fairies are coming in, but we’re in this in-between time period where the humans are trying to interact with these fairies.

And so it follows… the main character’s an ambassador between the two people. And there are episodes in it that punch deliciously well. There’s a two-parter about making manga. I think the closest example to it would be something like Nozaki-kun, which also will punch up at the editorial department and the way the industry works.

And then there’s another episode where they get stranded on a desert island and make a civilization, and it’s like a whole rise and fall of an entire civilization with these fairies over the course of like a week. And it is very much a satire of just human existence and goes at governmental organizations and politicking and stuff in a way that you don’t see very often in anime. And I think because it’s couched in these layers of fantasy, they can kind of get away with it.

But that’s a show… I haven’t watched it in forever. Probably there’s somebody at home going, “It’s super problematic and here’s why!” And I’m sorry if that’s true, but it’s one that dropped, God, like a decade ago, and I’ve always had a soft spot—

VRAI: Yeah, it’s like 2014, 2015, I think.

DEE: Yeah, I’ve had a soft spot for it ever since. And maybe one day we’ll do a retrospective podcast on it, because I think there’s definitely enough for an hour, if not two, in that one.

Also has a two-parter that is just a setup for a really bad pun. Guys, it’s two solid episodes, and the setup is a terrible pun. It’s genius! [Blows a kiss] Chef’s kiss all around.

ALEX: I love the dedication of that. I cannot help but respect that. [Chuckles]

DEE: Yeah. No, it’s terrific, yeah.

And then the other thing that I love that anime comedies do that I’m not sure if I’ve seen anywhere else: is understated silliness, like where there’s something just ridiculous going on but nobody really comments on how ridiculous it is.

Tanaka-kun is so good at this. Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless is my favorite example of this, as just this deadpan goofiness of the characters being really chill about whatever ridiculous thing is going on around them. This season’s… we’re only an episode in as we record this, but this season’s Aharen-san has that same vibe to it, and I’m very excited to continue to watch that and see how it goes.

So those are the things, especially within the anime/manga sphere, that I enjoy seeing. So, what shows are y’all—

VRAI: You know what? Shoutout to Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san, too, because that’s more relatable anxiety comedy, but I think it does dip its toe a little bit into satires about corporate work culture.

DEE: It does. Yeah, that’s a good one to bring up.

Yeah, folks at home, let us know your picks, too, because I’m sure there’s stuff I’m just not thinking of either.

ALEX: I watched that show with someone who had worked in a bookstore and in the retail industry for years, and they were just cackling and cringing the entire time. I was like, “Oh, okay, this is getting something correct!” [Chuckles]

VRAI: [crosstalk] It’s the most relatable thing.

DEE: Yeah, I used to work in a bookstore, too, and watching that, there were many moments where I was like, “Oh, yeah! This is taking me back.”

ALEX: Though that kind of segues us through into our second question, which is “What repels you?” which I guess leads us again to another interesting question of: where do you thread the needle between relatable anxiety humor and the excruciating pain of secondhand embarrassment? Because one of those things [I can] do and one of them I cannot, but it’s kind of difficult to put my finger on exactly where the distinction is. So what do you guys think?

DEE: Yeah, like where does it become cringe humor? A while ago we were talking about WataMote in the AniFem chat, and Lauren was like, “Yeah, some parts of that are like ‘Ha-ha, same!’ and other parts are like ‘Too same! I need to back away from this right now!’”

VRAI: That is a series I have always held off watching on, even though I have heard it’s quite good and I’m sure that I would at the very least respect it, because I am worried that it would give me too much anxiety as opposed to enjoyment.

DEE: There are parts of it that are very funny and parts of it that are absolutely brutal. [Chuckles] So, definitely proceed with caution with WataMote, I would say.

VRAI: To put on my pretentious comedy nerd hat… You know, you hear the very, very basic thing about how comedy and horror are both about tension and release, and I think that that is a key to it, is that secondhand embarrassment comedy, A, is subjective depending on how sensitive you are to that stuff, but also is often tension, tension, tension and then the release never comes for the character.

DEE: Yeah.

ALEX: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

DEE: I think that makes sense. Because yeah, you just cringe the whole way through. There’s never that moment of “Oh, and now I relax and get a laugh in.” Yeah, it’s all wince. That makes sense. Yeah, that’s a tough one.

What else? Vrai, what will repel you from a comedy?

VRAI: I’m not… Actually, it does depend, but I am not a super huge fan of shouty comedy.

DEE: [crosstalk] I was thinking of that, too.

VRAI: Which I feel like is its own subgenre of anime.

DEE: Yeah. To me, that’s the opposite of the deadpan silliness I was talking about, the stuff that will absolutely send me into fits of giggles when there’s something ridiculous going on and everyone around is like, “Uh-huh. Yep. That’s happening,” as opposed to what you’re talking about, which is like crazy things are happening and everybody is screaming about how wild it is! Yeah, that puts me off, too, because I’m like, “Yeah, that’s the joke. You just told me the joke! Thank you.”

VRAI: I will say that I have a higher tolerance for it in anime than some other mediums because I think the visuals have that elasticity to sometimes… Truly, the weirdness of what you are seeing will make up for the fact that everybody’s just pointing it at it and saying, “Look at the weird thing,” because now it’s not necessarily a joke I’m laughing at, but I am appreciating what the animators are doing.

ALEX: [Chuckles] That’s true, yeah.

DEE: No, that’s true. And there’s a fine line between that kind of tsukkomi–boke humor, which is, you know, you have the straight man and then the funny man, which is such a longstanding humor format in Japan that it kind of just automatically gets slid into their humorous stuff. I mean, we have that in the States too, right? Straight man, funny man. That’s been around forever, too.

There’s that very thin line between having the straight man guiding the comedy and being the audience surrogate, to “Now you’re just screaming. Now you’re just pointing at the thing and screaming!” So, it is a fine line for sure, because something like Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle, I think, does a good job of having the characters around Syalis react to her in a way that you’re like, “Yes, that is the way you should be reacting to Syalis!” in a way that is very funny. But again, if you push too hard on it, then you’re…

ALEX: You’re just explaining a joke to me.

DEE: Yeah. You’re just explaining a joke and I don’t need that.

ALEX: Yeah, trust me to pick up on it. Have a little faith in your audience.

VRAI: I do like the wrinkle in it that I feel like has been cropping up more in the past ten years, where it seems like you have a straight man and then the straight man is just weird in a different way.

DEE: Yes!

ALEX: [Laughs]

DEE: I do really enjoy that. That’s one of the things I love about Nozaki-kun: is they all take turns being the clown. Because at first you think Nozaki-kun’s the straight man, but no, he’s also eccentric! He’s just more deadpan eccentric.

ALEX: I was gonna say, that kind of leads me into another thing that tends to put me off: is if you have a designated character who is the funny one, the butt of the joke. To use English-language media for a sec, the one part that really annoyed me about things like Parks and Recreation is that you had that character of Jerry or whatever his name was. He was always having a bad time and people were always making fun of him, being like “Goddammit, Jerry, you’re the worst,” just over and over and over again.

I’m like, can we have that character do something different? Can we have other characters fill that role for a change? Switch it out?

DEE: The sad sack, yeah.

ALEX: Yes, designated sad sack of the series. So [I] really don’t enjoy when casts have that. I much prefer, yeah, having more of a variety of… yeah, like you say, having each of the characters have a turn at being the clown, because it gives the characters more layers, it gives them more flexibility. It adds nuance, honestly, showing that no one is perfect and everyone can be funny and stupid. So, yeah, having a designated punching bag is something that tends to really put me off.

DEE: Yeah. Especially because a lot of the time in shows, it’ll be the straightlaced female character who’s not having any fun while everyone else is clowning around. And I love that with anime there’s a lot more flexibility in that you do see a lot of goofball girls in anime, which [obscured by crosstalk] thought of, but…

VRAI: [crosstalk] See, I was gonna say that there’s this frustrating pattern that I tend to see, usually in reviewing shows that I don’t end up following for more than a couple of episodes because they are not to my taste, where you have the straightlaced Potato-kun, who is our relatable everyman, reacting to these wacky girls (who are all attracted to him, of course), but they’re just doing weird, unfathomable stuff, and I just… I get tired.

DEE: Yeah, the one straight man surrounded by fools is very difficult to pull off, and especially in that wacky harem setup, I think there’s a lot of other elements at play that make it just exhausting. Because, again, a lot of the time it turns into a punching bag situation where you’re like, well, now I just feel bad for this one person who’s surrounded by oddballs. So you gotta balance the sympathy out.

ALEX: And speaking of harems as well, I’m sure that a trick we all possibly have… a disaffection for shows where the humor is “Oh, a breast! Would you look at that?” And that’s like the whole joke, you know? I can do bawdy humor, for sure. There are some really clever, genuinely funny sex jokes that have appeared in anime and other media. But if a joke is just “Look! Sex exists…”

DEE: If that is the joke, I’m just like, “Okay.” If it is embarrassment-based, that is the quickest way to get me to stop watching anime—comedy or otherwise. You know what I mean?

Keijo is one that I know has a soft spot in a lot of people’s hearts in terms of being a bawdy comedy—“BAH-dee” in both B-A-W-D-Y and B-O-D-Y, because it’s a bunch of boob and butt jokes. And the sport itself is like—the “sport,” quote-unquote—everybody’s having a good time, right? So that makes it fun. The reason I couldn’t finish Keijo is because when they’re not having their matches, there’s behind-the-scenes stuff that’s like comedy assault or embarrassment-based comedy, and that just killed the show for me. I was like, “I’m having a really good time with the matches. These are hysterical. But then you’re going backstage and people are getting groped and I’m supposed to find that funny, and it’s not funny because it’s assault.” So that is the number one killer for me with anime.

VRAI: And that’s how I ended up with my giant, planet-sized fondness for Kandagawa Jet Girls, a show that is full of titties at all times, but no assault humor, oddly enough.

DEE: Terrific, wonderful. I love it.

ALEX: We love it. Bar is on the ground. We can go a little [bit] over it.

DEE: It shouldn’t be that hard. Just let everybody have a fun time.

ALEX: So, we [like] to see characters having fun, is kind of our solution here, I think.

DEE: Yeah. And at least taking turns, right? If somebody’s not having a good time because everybody else is being, again, goofballs, then you need to have another moment later where that character is having a good time or is the one being the goofball. So, the bouncing around really helps out a lot, too, I think.

VRAI: And also, a final moment of silence for comedies that are good and perfect and then have That One Character.

[Laughter]

VRAI: Because I could not leave this podcast without talking about Azumanga Daioh, which I think is truly one of the greatest anime comedies in the last 20 years. But, you know, the pedo teacher. And everybody’s grossed out by him and that’s the joke, but he’s still there, ruining my good time.

DEE: He’s still there and he never gets fired and he sours the show. Yeah, mm, he’s bad. [Chuckles] Yeah, a moment of silence for… because, God, that happens so often where it’s like that and then that one asshole, often a comedy pedophile… which, also, hey, guys, stop doing that one, too. Hey anime, stop doing that one.

VRAI: Yeah. You know, at least it’s not like Higurashi, where I was eventually expected to sympathize with the comedy pedophile. Oh, Higurashi, I like you in many ways, but…

DEE: True, true.

ALEX: Oh! [Chuckles]

DEE: You know what? Let’s not end this on comedy pedophile. Let’s end this on a brighter note. What is your favorite anime comedy?

ALEX: Oh, that is a good question. Nichijou, which I mentioned earlier, is certainly up there just because it is so beautifully absurd and iconic and memey.

Nozaki-kun, I also have a big soft spot for. It kinda relies on that genre knowledge, but if you’re not totally hooked into the shoujo scene, you still get it and you can still enjoy the character interactions. And [it] just has so many iconic scenes, like them playing the visual novel and falling in love with the best friend and making a manga about him.

DEE: [crosstalk] Tomoda!

ALEX: Tomoda! [Laughs] So those are some highlights for me, for sure.

DEE: Yeah, I think for me it’s Nozaki-kun and Tanaka-kun. I love the “kuns.”

VRAI: [Chuckles]

ALEX: You love those boys.

DEE: In very different ways, I really appreciate what they both do, and at their heart they’re both warmhearted comedies about good kids who like each other. And it keeps me coming back to them when I’m having a bad day.

Ooh, and Ouran High! God, I frickin’ love Ouran High. I can’t believe Ouran hasn’t come up yet in this conversation. In some ways, it has aged poorly; in a lot of ways, it has aged great. And I still have an extreme soft spot for Ouran High School Host Club, absolutely.

What about you, Vrai?

VRAI: I don’t know. You’ve put me on the spot here, and I’ve been thinking really hard because—

DEE: [triumphantly] Ha-ha!

VRAI: Everything that keeps leaping immediately to mind is shows that aren’t comedies, have comedy elements, and sometimes are funny just because they decide to be really weird. Because I love Samurai Flamenco, y’all. [Chuckles] But comedies that are intentional comedies… uh… I don’t know. [Trills lips] Hm… Mm…

DEE: I assumed it was Azumanga Daioh, just because I know—

VRAI: I mean, I do love Azumanga Daioh a lot. That’s such a great example of a show taking a four-panel manga—and I love anime that are skit-based—I think there are a lot of great ones—but Azumanga Daioh really does go above and beyond in taking this four-panel manga and turning it into a sensible 20-minute experience where, even though you’re experiencing one-off gags that are often really absurd, you’re also sort of watching these characters grow over three years and feeling like they genuinely have friendships with each other, and you get a little choked up when they graduate at the end, and I really love that show!

ALEX: Heck, yeah.

DEE: Yeah, I’m glad. One day I’m gonna get you to watch Nozaki-kun, speaking of four-panels that are stitched together really well.

VRAI: It is so on my watch list. I’m just waiting to watch it with D because she loved Sleepy Princess, so I feel like they’ll also really enjoy Nozaki-kun. And also—

DEE: Not me Dee. Not me Dee. Right? Your partner D. Is that right?

VRAI: Oh yes! No, sorry. My partner.

DEE: [crosstalk] I was like, it’s weird that you’re talking about me like I’m not here, but maybe that’s for the audience…?

[Laughter]

DEE: Okay, right. Right.

VRAI: Oh no, the war of Dees. It really doesn’t work in audio. It’s a different spelling!

DEE: [crosstalk] No, we’re gonna have to duke it out.

VRAI: [Chuckles] But yeah, no, we’re still in the self-imposed danmei sabbatical, so someday.

DEE: Someday you’ll get to Nozaki-kun.

VRAI: Uh-huh.

DEE: As should everyone listening to this, because it’s great.

I think that’s probably a good place to stop. Thank you, guys, for joining us for this comedy episode. We hope you’ve had some fun, thought some thoughts, and maybe gotten some good recommendations along the way.

And… I don’t know, do we have a catchy sign-off for our Patreon… for our Patronizing AF episodes?

VRAI: Just a general thank-you. We couldn’t do this without you.

DEE: Yeah, thank you for your money. And we’ll talk to you later.

[Laughter]

ALEX: Yes. Thank you, guys. If we’re doing comedies, should we do a comedy sign-off like “Hey, we’ll be here all week. Try the fish…”? I don’t know. [Laughs]

DEE: [Laughs] We’ll just have Peter insert a cymbal crash.

[Sound of a cymbal crash]

DEE: It’ll be great.

ALEX: The sound of us being hooked off the stage.

[Sound effect of a banana peel slip]

VRAI: What’s the sound of a hook?

DEE: Oh! No! Obviously, we just have to have the little vaudeville play-off. Dah-dah dah dah-dah-dah.

[The first six notes of the “Seven Note Vaudeville Fanfare”]

DEE: Dah!

ALEX: Waump. [Chuckles]

DEE: Okay. There we go. [Through chuckles] That’s the end of the episode.