Anime and Improv: A General Genre Analysis

[Spaztique]

Note: For source examples, I will be citing the writer's best friend, TVTropes, which has quite an extensive page on anime.

For the longest time, I've always seen somebody throw out the suggestion "anime" at an improv show, and nobody ever gets it right. Just the other week at the Tuesday Night Jam, I got the anime suggestion during Genre Replay. I attempted to play the classic young hotheaded everyman mech pilot, one of my female partners was playing just a giggling schoolgirl, and Eric Heiburg simply played what looked like a samurai. Being an anime geek myself, I threw all of the following into my scene: the sweatdrop, mechs, skin-tight space suits, aliens/tentacles, had one facefault, and I told Eric, "I can't tell if you're a man or a woman because of your long shiny white hair!"

As far as I know, that scene was the single-closest I have seen anybody get the anime suggestion right outside of seeing real anime voice actors doing improv. Yes, anime voice actors have backgrounds in improv, and they did a show at the last anime convention in town.

Being the resident anime geek of the collective (unless anybody else would like to battle me for my position), I thought I'd give a quick genre analysis like the ones we used to make a couple years back, as seen here and here.

What is anime?:

Laconically, anime is animated drama/comedy, mostly animated in Japan, with all aspects of life amplified up to eleven.

For the long version, Anime is no more a genre than a subgenre, but the one thing that ties it all together is that everything is over the top. For example, in a typical live-action romance comedy, you may have the main everydude in a love triangle, but in anime, they're in a love dodecahedron, which also has it's subgenre known as a Harem Anime. In a live action series, people fight with regular ol' guns. In an anime series, they use hoards of missiles, giant frickin' lazer beams, and killer robots!

While we're at it, let's talk about the subgenres of anime. They are divided into two categories: guy's stuff (shonen anime) and girl's stuff (shoujo anime). Depending on the type will feature more male or female-oriented topics, outlooks, or content, but since a majority of what audience think of as anime is usually in the shonen category, we'll stick to that.

Shonen anime contains most of the following:
-Loads and loads of potential love interests
-Stuff to titillate the male (and sometimes female) audience, known as Fanservice
-Combat involving Mecha, shooting beams out of your hands, monsters, or just their fists.
-Themes revolving around The Power of Friendship, cohesion, or love.
-Possibly getting turned into a girl or a boy at some point.

Shoujo anime contains most of the same, only either watered down or made for a female audience.

Common Anime Genres include:
-Fighting Series Anime, which is normally what the genre has been pigeonholed into. Basically, people fighting for one reason or another.
-Harem Anime, where one guy is stuck in a situation (usually romantic, but is not always the case) with loads and loads of girls (or vice versa). Possibly a more accurate reflection of anime than Fighting Series Anime because 70% of the Japanese PC gaming market is made up of Visual Novels (choose your own adventure type games), and a lot of them are Dating Sims, interactive romance stories where you vie for the affection of one of the many girls (or guys) in the game.
-Magical Girlfriend Anime. Inspired by "Bewitched" and "I Dream Of Jeanie", where a normal joe gets a girlfriend with magic powers. Mostly oriented for guys.
-Magical Girl Anime, where you have an entire squad of magic girls fighting evil. Mostly oriented for girls.
-Gaming Anime, which revolves around either a real or fake sport/gaming type event.
-Mind Screw Anime, where weird stuff happens... Period...
-Slice of Life Anime, where nothing really happens except something funny or bittersweet without all the mechs, aliens, or whatnot.


Now that we talked about the genres, let's get to the characters.

Character Types in Anime:

Laconically, I think I'll sum this up with a recursive example.

"In this situation, moe (pronounced mo-eh) is an important concept to keep in mind... It's a rule that in stories with strange things going on, you need to have one moe character: someone with glasses or in a maid costume; anything fetishy! It's essential!"
-Haruhi Suzimiya, from "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya", a deconstruction/pastiche of anime.

Like most mediums, anime has its share of stock characters, and they're strong ones. As discussed in the above quote, a lot of anime series have at least one character for every audience demographic, and even ones that can win over different audience members, discussed in what can only be "moe theory", which usually boils down to the likability of the character and how much the audience sympathizes with her or him (though, the moe stereotypes are generally female in guy-oriented series).

In other words, if your character has one quirk, just keep piling on more. Character diversity, both in cast and individual personality tics, is paramount to successfully emulating anime.

Generally, everyone but the main character in an anime series will be extremely quirky, and the main character will either be an unappreciated butt monkey, who also serves as a straight man, or the dependable but stupid idiot hero.

Common Characters Types Include (aside from the ones commonly seen in improv):
-Those Two Guys, who act as sort of a Greek chorus, usually composed of two somewhat flat satellite characters.
-The Bokukko, which is like a tomboy with half the boyishness.
-The Accidental Pervert, who always manages to catch/run into people at the worst possible times.
-Tsundere, in bold because it's a personal favorite of mine (and most otaku, while we're at it), a character is generally a jerk to his/her potential love interest (and sometimes just about everyone around them), but also has a very soft side as the story progresses. Basically, bipolar disorder made awesome. Or, more basically, me.
-The Ordinary High School Student, the perfect candidate for adventure!
-The Dojikko, the cute, clumsy girl who is cute because of her clumsiness.
-The Cloudcuckoolander, who lives in their own little world.
-The Genki Girl/Keet, who are so full of energy, their very presence is like shouting.
-The Emotionless Girl, which gets an interesting reaction out of most audiences (again, see moe theory).


Special Effects:

Although we got the situations and characters down, they usually thrive on a number of animated effects, no matter what genre it is. Though, not many improvisers use them (the only ones I've seen use them aside from myself, Get Up, Asaf, and a few others), I might as well through them out.

Common Anime Special Effects:
-The Sweatdrop, used to convey embarrassment or stress.
-The facefault, when a normal reaction just isn't enough.
-Bishie Sparkles or Love Bubbles, for when a character is falling in love.
-The Luminescent Blush, because normal blushing is too subtle.


Further Suggested Reading

Most people recommend watching/reading Ranma 1/2, but I simply think these people only recommend it because it makes most normal anime look normal by it's weirdness standards. How wierd? Well, it's about a guy and his dad who get turned into a girl and a panda respectively whenever they come into contact with cold water (it's a long story), and they all get caught in a massive, MASSIVE love triangle. It's got kung fu, fanservice, comedy, and pretty much sums up the anime experience in a nutshell.

However, for educational purposes, I'd recommend the following:
-The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, a deconstruction of anime as a whole, and perfect for anyone who wants to take a look at anime through a magnifying glass. Very accessible, has an excellent unedited dub for the ones who don't feel like using subtitles, and short at only thirteen episodes. You can watch it on Youtube in either chronological order (the default) or the original broadcast order. For educational purposes, I'd recommend the chronological order, but I'd also recommend putting episode 13 (an intentional deconstruction of Slice of Life anime, which is so Slice of Life that it becomes intentionally boring) before episode 6 for maximum dramatic effect (especially by making episode 12 the final episode, the most epic of them all).
-Neon Genesis Evangelion, the essential mecha/mind screw anime. It started out as a deconstruction of the mecha subgenre by playing everything so realistically that it became disturbing/funny/interesting, and eventually became the standard for mecha anime. You can also find it on Youtube, but it's harder to come by. Fun fact: Tom Booker was in the movie, End of Evangelion!
-Yu Gi Oh: The Abridged Series, another deconstruction (but far more acidic than The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) of Gaming Anime and heavily censored/edited 4Kids Dubs. Can be viewed on Youtube or the Yu Gi Oh Abridged Series Homepage.

More updates coming soon as I see fit.

[shando]

outside of seeing real anime voice actors doing improv. Yes, anime voice actors have backgrounds in improv,

Yes, they do:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0566608/

I would say, though, that for most anime voice actors actors, it's a gig, and the ones I worked with didn't have any special affinity for the genre (or really, collection of genres).

That said, there are some anime things that I really dig, and this is a really good summation, David. Have you given any thought to posting some detailed analysis of what you think works and doesn't work onstage during improv?

[Spaztique]

Yes, they do:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0566608/

Don't forget Lee Eddy, too.

I would say, though, that for most anime voice actors actors, it's a gig, and the ones I worked with didn't have any special affinity for the genre (or really, collection of genres).

The ones I've met at the previous convention and most of the really good ones I've seen were really into it, going as far as arriving in-costume/in-character.

That said, there are some anime things that I really dig, and this is a really good summation, David. Have you given any thought to posting some detailed analysis of what you think works and doesn't work onstage during improv?

Do you mean that literally or sarcastically?

Either way, I've been in the mood for writing guides lately. And, of course, I'd call myself out for that last sentence because I am rewriting "Why YOU suck at improv" into something more friendly: "Spaz's Intentionally Friendly Guide for the Unintentionally Unfriendly Improviser".

[TexasImprovMassacre]

My anime scenes are also always perfect.