10 anime jokes that made me smile

I haven’t ready any anime jokes funny enough to make me LOL before, but I’ve run into a few that made my lips twitch into a smile. That’s probably the most one could hope for from jokes about anime, as opposed to jokes within anime. See how many of these anime jokes you can get:

1. Q: Where does Kagome clean her clothes? 
 A: Inu-washa 🙂 

2. Q: Why is Light like a lift? 
A: Because he’s an L evader. 

3. Q: What is the difference between Love and Naruto?

A: Naruto lasts forever.

4. Your momma is so Fat even Naruto doesn’t believe it !

5. You’re so stupid someone handed you the Death Note and you thought they wanted your autograph!

6. Yo mama’s so fat that when she stepped on the scale, her weight was OVER 9000!!!

7. Yo Mama’s so fat, she walked in front of the TV and I missed three seasons of Inuyasha!

8. Q: Why is Christmas Kira’s favorite holiday?
A: No L.

9. Q: How many Kiras does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: None. Light’s already there.

10. Q: How many DBZ characters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 
A- One, but it takes him 10 episodes!

Honorable mention: 

Q: What’s the difference between naruto and a dead squirrel?

A: The squirrel’s dead. [note: it doesn’t make any sense, but I smiled precisely because it’s so nonsensical. Onto the list it goes]

 

My thoughts on: Rurouni Kenshin

Rurouni Kenshin wasn’t the first manga I ever read, but it was the first one I ever read online. That was back when Viz had only just gotten started and hadn’t gotten round to licensing most of the juggernauts it later got. I caught a few episodes of the Samurai X anime on TV one day, got hooked, went hunting and got hooked like nothing else before.

What I liked about it: The cast. Most of it, anyway. The music – I loved the ending themes so much I became a fan of The Yellow Monkey and T.M. Revolution almost instantly. As a matter of fact I physically own almost all the albums The Yellow Monkey ever released, and I have the pics to prove it. I think I liked the story, but I don’t remember what it was about any more. The tragedy early on where the minister was assassinated and Aoshi’s troops were massacred really moved me at the time, being used as I was to happy-go-lucky series like Ranma 1/2 (more on that one day). At the same time it wasn’t a series about killing for killing’s sake, and I was just as satisfied when the series became less and less bloody with the passing of time.

downloadWhat I wasn’t so crazy about: Kaoru. There’s a part later in the manga where she supposedly dies, only not really. I’m probably the only RK fan in existence who cheered out loud when that happened, but I really, really didn’t like Kaoru. And not in a fangirl “gyaaa, get offa my man!” kind of way because I wasn’t that crazy about Kenshin either. He’s a cool guy, but I was more a fan of the supporting cast like Saito and Sano. The final Enishi arc wasn’t anywhere near as good at the Kyoto arc, but it wasn’t terrible either. The series would have been too short if it was just Kyoto so for lack of a better ending arc the Enishi arc had to do.

Series quality in general: The action was slightly hard to follow at first, but it got better pretty quickly. I bought the Vizbig editions later and thought the translations were a little too heavy on the Japanese terms. The story wasn’t too memorable in the long term but the cast definitely was. The manga is a little better than the anime, IMO, but both are okay. Is it worth reading? Well it’s one of the bestselling mangas of all time, so I think they’re on to something there. In other words, hell yeah! Especially if you like action manga. If you’ve somehow managed to get by without watching it so far, get on it now!

The 20 best-selling manga of all time (May 2014)

I just read the list of the current bestselling manga on AnimeNewsNetwork and was surprised to note I’d read almost all of them so far. The ones I haven’t read I’ve watched the anime of, which is almost the same thing. It’s given me 20 days worth of posts too, where I will jot down quick notes and opinions I have of each one. The ones I haven’t seen, well, maybe I’ll put them on my rapidly-growing To Read/Watch list.

Actually, studying the actual numbers shows it’s not really bestselling, it’s manga with the most copies printed. It’s like the difference between copies shipped and copies sold in the videogame market, so there might be quite a discrepancy in actual sold numbers. But probably not enough to knock any of these out of the top 20, so here goes.

Rank – Bestselling manga title – Copies printed – My thoughts, if any

1. One Piece – 300 million
2. Golgo 13  – 200 million –  Haven’t read it. It’s always seemed ultra-violent to me.
3. Black Jack  –  176 million –  Haven’t read it. I tend to shy away from medical series, but I’ll try it.
4. Dragon Ball  –  157 million
5. Kochikame  – 155.3 million – Haven’t read it.
6. Detective Conan  – 140 million – Seen episodes of the anime. Good, but a bit formulaic, no?
7. Naruto  – 135 million
8. Oishinbo  – 130 million – Haven’t read it. I never knew Oishinbo was so popular.
9. Slam Dunk  – 119 million
10. Doraemon  – 100 million – Seen an episode. It’s cute.
10. Astro Boy  – 100 million –  Saw the recent movie, does that count?
10. Touch  – 100 million
10. Fist of the North Star  – 100 million
14. Kindaichi Case Files  – 90 million – Haven’t read it.
15. Sazae-san  – 86 million – Seen an episode. I like the characters.
16. Captain Tsubasa  – 80 million
17. Hajime no Ippo  – 75.5 million
18. Bleach  – 74.6 million
19. Sangokushi  – 70 million – Haven’t read it. I tend to find Romance of the Three Kingdom series too hard to follow, but I might try.
19. Rurouni Kenshin  – 70 million

[from AnimeNewsNetwork]

IIRC this only counts manga printed in Japan, not copies overseas. Maybe the numbers will be a little different once you add in all those printed in China, US, UK, France, Spain, etc. Then again apparently 5,000 copies sold counts as bestselling manga in the US, so it’s probably negligible. I’ll try to find worldwide numbers next time.

Chicken Surprise (silly joke)

Rhoda and Harry go for a meal at a Chinese restaurant and order the Chicken Surprise.’ The waiter brings the meal, served in a lidded cast iron pot. Just as Rhoda is about to serve herself, the lid of the pot rises slightly and she briefly sees two beady little eyes looking around before the lid slams back down.

‘Good grief, did you see that?’ she asks her husband, Harry. He hadn’t, so she asks him to look in the pot. Harry reaches for it and again the lid rises, and he sees two little eyes looking around before it slams down. Rather perturbed, he calls the waiter over, explains what is happening, and demands an explanation.

‘Please sir,’ stammers the waiter, ‘what you order?’
Harry replies, ‘Chicken Surprise.’
‘Ah! So sorry, is mistake,’ says the waiter, ‘I bring you Peeking Duck!’

Hayao Miyazaki and the Marnie Poster – does the old man have a point?

The news made the rounds last week that Hayao Miyazaki had issues, to put it mildly, with the promotional poster for Studio Ghibli’s latest offering: When Marnie Was There.

I’m still trying to wrap my head about what exactly his problem is with this particular movie poster. According to reports, Miyazaki says using pictures of a girl to get attention is “just plain outdated and cheesy.” Uhh, what? Just in case I was reading him wrong, I went back and looked at older Ghibli posters: Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Ponyo, Nausicaa, Arrietty. They all feature the main girl quite prominently on their covers. Perhaps not in as enticing a pose as Marnie, but prominently nevertheless.

So what exactly is Miyazaki protesting against? The very-slightly suggestive pose Marnie is striking? It’s a typical “cute girl being friendly” anime pose, but hardly as ‘come hither’ as some anime can get. Perhaps he wanted to see her standing straight up and stock still like girls in his other covers, but that doesn’t means a 15-degree tilt in posture is enough to ruin the whole idea.

Or is the problem her hair and eyes? Blonde and blue-haired foreigners in anime are often – not always, but often enough – portrayed as wild, lascivious, uncontrolled sexpots. Thus by virtue of her nationality, Marnie is already in the over-sexualized category, at least in Miyazaki’s eyes, meaning that any slight friendliness on her part can be mistaken as an overt come on. This is especially so because one of the earlier posters had “I love you” written on it. This isn’t his official opinion, by the way. I’m just trying to get into Miyazaki’s head on this issue.

Really, though, I think the truth behind the issue: money. Controversy sells. This is the first Ghibli movie to be released since Miyazaki retired (again), and maybe the studio felt they needed a little extra oomph behind their marketing. What better way to ride on the maestro’s coattails while ostensibly breaking with the past than by releasing critical – but not too critical – comments from the guru himself? I won’t go so far as to say they made up the comments for publicity’s sake, but they certainly promoted them enthusiastically enough.

When Marnie Was Here comes out in Japan in July 2014 and in the rest of the world not too long afterwards. I’m quite looking forward to it, though I still have to watch Arrietty and The Wind Rises first.