How many Edisons does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
How many?
Who cares? He stole the idea and doesn't deserve his own joke.
[generic laugh track]
Comedy.
Easy, right? (APPARENTLY FUCKING SO.)
Comedy is a difficult thing to talk about, because it happens to be so subjective.
There is not one joke that every single person will laugh at and get
And something that many people might find downright freaking hilarious
may make you question if you're just a cynical cunt who's lost the ability to find any kind of humor in this world.
(Which you definitely fuckin are)
So I say cautiously that it's very rare that I actually find a comedy anime that I like,
with only a select handful ever making me audibly laugh out loud.
Looks are a vital part of being a delinquent.
Amateurs should try bleaching their hair blonde to look tough.
Be careful. If the chemicals are too strong, your hair will turn white
and you'll look like a pussy.
Damn it.
Perhaps this is because my sense of humor doesn't resonate with a lot of the over-the-top
and almost slapstick-style jokes I see in a lot of gag anime.
My main problem is that most jokes center on one specific punchline or gag.
Now, while they can truly hit, culminating in some of my favorite moments in anime,
most of the time, they just really miss, or get old really, really fast.
So when Konosuba started to rise in popularity, and I heard about the appeal of its comedy,
it still didn't look like something I would find funny.
And when I eventually sat down and watched it, for the most part... I was right.
It didn't make me laugh that much, and yet, I enjoyed the hell out of it.
I marathoned the entire first season is one sitting.
Konosuba isn't nearly the funniest anime I've seen, for me at least.
I never audibly laughed too hard, and I'm not really a big enough fan of the fantasy RPG setting to care about a lot of the parody aspects of it.
Yet, despite all this, it managed to remain as one my most consistently entertaining comedies to come out of anime.
I may not have laughed hard, but I enjoyed it a lot. Watching the episodes were like consuming popcorn for me,
and I personally can't think of many casts of characters that I'm as attached to as these ones.
The group are so endearing that I could spend hours just watching their antics on-screen. And I did.
The reason for this is that I actually see some of the same principles I've used when writing my own parodies in the past
Not that I'm claiming to be a professional comedian or skit writer at all,
but a lot of what makes Konosuba so appealing at its core, is the same thing I see that went into EvAbridged,
DBZ Abridged from TeamFourStar™, and a lot of sitcoms you watch,which I don't see very often in anime.
It's something that even YOU can take on and try yourself if you ever want to attempt something like this.
So instead of having some random bozo break down the appeal by researching through the science of comedy,
finding the little intricacies to telling the perfect dick joke,
I thought it would be interesting to analyze it from a perspective from someone who's attempted to write different styles of comedy myself.
You know... the same guy who's given you such masterpieces as
[melancholy piano]
NERVOUS ERECTION REACHES VAGINA
Now, from an outsider perspective, if may be hard to see the appeal of Konosuba's comedy from just the way the community treats it.
You have some kind of parody of the fantasy world setting, some chick who spawns a debate of Schrodinger's Cat with her fucking pants,
a main guy who seems like a cynical dick,
And a girl everyone seems to be fuckin obsessed with, thanks to something about her and some BIG. JUICY. EXPLOSION.(my waifu ;D)
MAGIC.
So what makes it so popular?
To its credit, there are a lot of things Konosuba does right, to make it funny.
I haven't mentioned quite a lot before. The actual execution of most jokes are pretty top-notch.
The comedic timing is great; it routinely subverts our expectations to parody the fantasy and RPG genre pretty well;
The animation perfectly accentuates any joke,
and you can tell how much fun the voice actors are having by the way they deliver the lines being absolutely spot-on.
But I'm not here to talk about any of that, as personally, I don't think anything that ruins a joke faster than explaining it, and breaking down its execution.
No. What I'm here to do is break down what makes the comedy in the show tick at its core.
It's a basic thing any of you can take into your own, when writing your own skits, or comedy.
And this all revolves around the cast of characters.
Yes, there core four members of the asshole, the bitch, the weirdo, and the meme
is what makes this show so endearing, and is the core for pretty much all the comedy in this series.
But why is that? Well, to me, what makes the show continually entertaining is just seeing the cast interact with each other as different things arise in the world they are in.
There's no one specific joke, but it's their dynamic and chemistry that carries the comedy.
And by understanding this dynamic, and how to get there, is a technique even YOU can use when you are trying to parody something.
A simple way to approach this is to take a well-known character trait, and completely flipping them on its head.
This is what I personally did with Gendo from EvAbridged,
turning one of the most sneaky, manipulative assholish characters in a super-serious show, and making him a downright idiot.
Or alternatively, you can take a well-known trait, and crank them up so far that it becomes ridiculous.
This is something quite clearly seen in TeamFourStar™'s Hellsing Abridged,
as they took the badass immortal Alucard, and cranked up his confidence so much
that he no longer gives a fuck about anything, or takes anything seriously.
Which works for his character, because why would an OP immortal vampire feel any threat?
But it also gives opportunity for some entertaining character interactions.
Sup, bitch? I need to talk to you about some important guests coming today.
Are they hookers?
No.
And like that, you've lost me.
It sounds very simple, but it is highly effective, and you can even see it in play with this lovable cast of idiots.
How do we parody the edgy, powerful paragon of justice protagonist of so many fantasy world shows?
You flip it on its head, and make Kazuma the cynical everyman with no powers whatsoever.
What about a typical tsundere, valiant knight, and cute mage?
The tsundere goes so far off the deep end she becomes a self-centered bitch,
the valiant knight becomes so devoted to protecting others it reaches a point of masochism
And the mage is so obsessed with getting Play of the Game she only waits for that one perfect Ult the entire match, and does nothing else.
EXPLOSION!
The important thing is, you need a core cast of characters that work well with each other, and have genuine chemistry,
with traits that bring to light the elements of whatever traits you are trying to parody in the first place.
But you don't do this by thinking of your characters as just a vessel to tell jokes,
but as actual characters.
So for any outsider looking in to the series, it may seem like the explosions and the masochism are just gimmicky memes used for the butt of jokes,
but there is so much more to the cast than that.
There is a balance to the four of them. You almost feel like these weirdos were made for each other
and that's the dynamic you should strive for when you're plotting the basic outline to your core characters.
They feel like a group of friends that have this love-hate relationship with each other,
giving off the same kind of banter that you only see with a tight-knit group,
and it's these little interactions that make it so damn entertaining.
So you see? Once you have this baseline set up, the rest is easy,
because you already have the recipe for humorous scenarios by simply having these characters be together.
You don't write jokes. You write characters.
And in doing so, the punchlines and jokes will come naturally out of their basic interactions.(my favorite scene)
The real trick is to put them in interesting scenarios where their dynamic will be highlighted for the greatest comedic effect.
And while you can introduce more characters to change up this dynamic every so often,
it will always go back to these core four.
What happens if you don't approach it like this is that you get characters that are basically punchline machines.
They exist for no purpose than to throw in a punchline or joke.
And while this can work for a time, you've run the risk of it getting old incredibly fast.
Which is why I feel the weakest part of the show by far
is when they tried to make the punchline Darkness's overly masochistic behavior.
It's predictable, it cheapens her character, and it forces the viewer to watch a girl
essentially just get off on screen.
I'm sorry, was I talking about negatives? Let me-- let me delete that last line.
Aside from this, though, Konosuba is one of the best examples I can think of in anime of a character-driven comedy,
and it's for this reason that someone like me doesn't even have to find the jokes that funny to be continually entertained.
As watching them always gives you the same feel-good emotions as hanging out with some close friends,
which is why you get so attached to them.
The more we watch, the more inclusive we feel to their relationship.
It's like we are the fifth person in their group.
Laughing along with their antics, rolling our eyes when someone does something stupid,
and caring in those brief moments when they break out of their molds.
It's why they are so lovable as a group, why we get so attached to them, and that's, I feel, is the real strength of the show.
Because a lot of people will label this as a simple parody/satire anime, when I think it actually has more in common with a sitcom.
See, the basic structure on sitcoms is following a group of characters as they go about their lives,
dealing with different situations as they arrive, aka, a SITuation COMedy.
And while there can be progression in character and plot, it is normally at a minimal or a very slow pace,
drags over many seasons, as the main selling point in each episode
is watching these characters tackle different situations.
Konosuba has these elements, with the only difference being that the situations they are in
happen to be revolving around a fantasy world with RPG traits.
It isn't so much that the show is trying to make jokes parodying these elements.
It's more that we happen to be watching a very entertaining group of individuals
as they encounter and tackle these elements.
But by approaching it like this, you actually show that you have a deeper understanding of the things you are trying to parody,
rather than just merely referencing it.
This is why a show like the Big Bang Theory can be as hated as it is by so many, especially in nerd culture.
It attempts to parody and poke fun at nerds by playing to their grossly inaccurate stereotypes,
and thinks that throwing in the odd references shows any kind of understanding of the culture.
I mean, can you imagine if Konosuba tried this approach with a fantasy world setting?
Alright, then it's settled.
We'll save the Sword Art Online world with the Re:Zero inspired No Game No Life Death Tournament on the Log Horizon!
[another generic laugh track]
Well, that will be easy. Since Darkness spent all of her stats leveling up her breast size.
[more laugh track]
Bazinga!
[even more laugh track]
I'm sorry. Why are you all talking like this?
I mean... Look at me! I'm Kirito Jesus-kun God-sama!
[laugh track]
Having settled this, keep in mind that this is by no means the only way to write comedy.
What I presented here was just one way to approach it out of many,
and there is no one right way to make something funny.
From my research, this kind of approach is good for a long-running, serialized show,
as we get attached to the characters over time.
And while I appreciate well-thought-out character-driven comedies, I can also find very trash degenerate toilet humor hilarious too.
You know. If done right.
There is no exact science to this, but for what it's worth, whether it be for what I talked about,
or for something I didn't cover, I can definitely se why Konosuba is getting the attention that it is.
The characters are lovable, and it gives off this unique charm only a few comedy anime have ever been able to achieve.
That even if you didn't find this gut-bustingly funny, there may still be something for you here.
And hopefully, you learned something basic about comedy writing in this video, but remember:
If all else fails, you can give up on clever writing and fall back to the one thing you can always rely on.
JoJo memes.
Hey guys! Hope you enjoyed the video! Thank you very much to:
Patrick Madsen
Thrones Melt
Lee Watts
Andy Sugiyama
Yuen Fang,
and everyone else on Patreon for helping to support me for this month,
and making this video possible.
If you want to see more of my stuff, then you can click on my videos here, and here, and you can also find me on Twitter, Facebook, and Twitch in the links below.
Anyway, that's it from me. No updates this time. And I will see you all next time.