Differenece in Western and Eastern Humor

[Guernsey]

I notice in most anime and manga whenever someone doing something weird and strange, they react and say "Look this guy is doing something strange!" In the West, they usually see something strange, comment on it using "This guy is doing something strange, *insert witty po cultrue comment here*" I also notice that Westerners tend to be more brutally honest with the situation and the person they are mocking while the people of the East are subtle but to get to the point. I am only making egeneral assumptions here so it may not be true for everyone but does anyone else notice this?

[Genten]

Oh, yeah, it's very noticeable. Especially in slice of life anime, when a character does something wacky the other, more sensible one will shout something along the lines of, "stop, someone will see!" In the West, in general there is a belief that you shouldn't care what other people think when you do something strange (unless it's illegal, in which case, beware) but these characters always make such a big deal out of it.

As you've probably assumed already, the difference between a situation like you've described in the Japan and a similar one in the US (I'm just going to assume country name's here) can be attributed to cultural differences. While I'm not claiming that all of Japan's peoples are like this, being polite and not standing out it very important in Japan. The 'part of a group', 'for the team, not the individual' mentality is very popular and so one is expected to be polite and reserved to others while excersizing personal business in the comfort of one's own home. So when someone does something strange it warrants unwanted attention. In the US there is more emphasis placed on an individual so doing something strange isn't taken as seriously (and is often ignored).

Again, I'm not saying that this is true everywhere in Japan or the US. I'm just using this as a generalization.

[ChainLegacy]

^Genten has a nice summary of my thoughts on the subject. The specific example you mentioned can definitely be attributed to the fact that western nations tend to be highly individual in culture and eastern ones, especially Japan, emphasize hierarchy and group unity more. I first picked up on the pretty big difference in western vs. Japanese humor back when I first watched School Rumble, the reasons for the differences took me a bit of pondering/studying of history and culture to understand more fully.

[TurkeyPotPie]

One of the reasons may be due to the concept of face and causing someone to lose face by pointing something out and making a big deal out of it.

[IronHeart762]

it goes along with japanese culture. they are a very high context society and their communication norms differ greatly from ours a large part of their communication is unspoken and even if a message says one thing the implied meaning can be completely different. american society is very low context hence the brutal honesty. it is frustrating communication with people from high context societies because they never say things in a straight forward manner. needless to say it makes business meeting super complicated. simply stating the truth can be seen as very insulting... a real pain in my but lol :P

like genten said they value the group over the individual and harmony over independence.

check this out: http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/reso...-profiles.html pretty much everything you need to know to get more out of your anime watching/ japanese culture experiences

[Triple_R]

Truth be told, I tend to prefer the more subtle and eccentric humor of anime over what I like to call the "zingerfest" humor of the west.

By "eccentric humor", I mean humor that's based upon the anime version of the straight man getting visibly freaked out or exasperated by a very eccentric or quirky character that plays off of him or her. A lot of the humor in the more drama-based romantic animes I've seen (Clannad, Kanon 2006, True Tears, etc...) is like that.

By "Zingerfest", I mean North American/European shows where seemingly every other line is somebody making a crack about somebody else. I tend to dislike the "Zingerfest" approach since...

1) The vast majority of people I know in real life simply don't talk that way (at least not 24/7), so too much "Zingerfest" comedy dialogue takes me out of the show by making it all seem a bit too surreal to me.

2) In extreme cases, it can come across as a bit mean-spirited to me. This is especially true when the butt of the zingers tends to be the same character/target all the time.


I personally find that the more subtle Eastern-style humor of anime is able to poke fun at situations and individuals, without being totally degrading of a particular character or person.

[SeijiSensei]

I dislike the reliance on "slapstick" that appears in many comedies. Sometimes it seems to be there just to fit genre expectations. The first couple of episodes of Nodame Cantabile have a bunch of scenes where "paper-fan" violence takes place. The first episode of the live-action is worse; at one point when Nodame runs toward Chiaki, he redirects her trajectory into a boulder. After a couple of episodes we don't much of this stuff any more, raising the question of why it was there in the first place.

There also a surfeit of over-acting and mugging in the few live-action comedies I've watched. I couldn't get past the first episode of the live version of Moyashimon though I enjoyed the anime version immensely. I've also tired of Ueno Juri's performance as Nodame for similar reasons.