Anime humor itself isn’t annoying (often weird, but not annoying). It is the when and what that makes anime humor annoying. Anime has the bad habit of interjecting humor during serious scenes and having characters that are more annoying than funny.
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is especially prone to injecting humor during serious scenes. Several times throughout the series Ed or Al transform into a “humorous” character during series scenes. It was so common it become expected and ruined the scenes. Humor is important and has a place…at certain times. Otherwise it can be jarring and ruin a scene’s impact.
Anime humor is jarring as it is. Abruptly switching to a chibi character or another stylized form (sometimes they are not even characters, but chairs and other inanimate objects) can throw off someone not used to anime’s…idiosyncrasies. Anime humor is often frantic and perverted too. It definitely has little place in key scenes that are meant to be serious and push the storyline forward.
Humor arcs are also annoying when they are dropped into a serious storyline without warning. Yes, I am looking at you, Bleach.
Speaking of Bleach, Don Kanonji is freakin’ annoying. When he first appeared I chuckled, but then he started showing up during serious arcs…and at odd times. He also become even more annoying every time he showed up. Anime has a love for annoying characters that are meant to be funny. I don’t know if it is a culture difference in humor or not, but most of these comedy sidekicks need to be muzzled until the right time (such as AFTER a main story arc ends) and then only have a cameo appearance. Kon is also more annoying than funny but his annoyance level seems to be intentional. Of course, Ed in Brotherhood also annoyed me…not only because of his bad timing with “humorous reactions” but the fact he didn’t use his brain. But that is another post…
Anime also has the bad habit of running a gag into the ground. Yes, Ed, you are SHORT compared to everyone else. Get over it. Gags are like fan service. Small amounts here and there are ok. Too much hurts the feel of the anime. High School of the Dead hurt itself with its gratuitous fan service just as Brotherhood hurt itself with Ed’s short jokes.
I enjoy anime humor. I even find the odd things anime does charming, but humor has to be interjected at appropriate times. Jarring humor during serious scenes breaks the flow of the story. It is hard to take a story seriously when people are falling down, deforming, chibifying, and all the other humor tools when a key element of the plot is happening or a character dies. Anime storytelling has a lot of issues with timing.
Speaking of non-humorous gags and interruptions with odd timing… Let’s not forget One Piece’s Brook and his capacity of only knowing like two sentences, which he uses over and over again. I so hoped for some new learned vocabulary after the time skip.
I haven’t concluded if that type of humor is Japanese or just limited to anime because Japanese humor is actually pretty good. I mean, just look at Takeshi’s Castle and the zany game shows.
Yeah, I had a HUGE problem with the humor interrupting the introduction of Espada #8 in Bleach. Pesche and Dondochaka trying to be “humorous” completely ruined that intro because it took away the “tenseness” that was needed to show that the Espada was a real tough bad guy. Instead it made him seem as a pushover, and fluffy.
Bleach’s “funny” characters are rarely funny at all. Bleach is just the latest culprit with this timing problem. I noticed that most ongoing series have annoying characters and poor humor timing while generally more structured series have less issues. Eureka Seven, Cowboy Bebop, the original Fullmetal Alchemist, and Spice and Wolf didn’t have any problems at all with humor timing.