Some of you might recall that my enjoyment of Yotsuba&!
The problem, I think, comes from a structure that just doesn’t seem to translate well. Despite the fact that it seems to read a lot better as one continuous story, Azuma sets most of the books up as a series of individually titled four-panel comic strips, and the snag here, as I’ve mentioned before, is that he often neglects to include what we in the humor “biz” refer to as “a punchline.”
Well, thanks to a surplus of fourth-panel gags from someone who mastered the format, I think I’ve managed to solve that problem pretty handily:
Ah. Much better.
The source of tonight’s frivolity can be found in the economical and, believe it or not, highly enjoyable Azumanga Daioh Omnibus
If I was drinking milk while I read that, it’ve come out my nose. But I wasn’t, so something else came out :S
Yes, now it works. Schulz is the cure for oblique manga humor. Early Garfield might treat the symptoms, but this is a true cross-cultural vaccine.
I loved it, too, although it occurs to me that Schulz should’ve either used a thought balloon with that face, or should’ve used a much more emotive face with that word balloon. Or maybe I’ve just got whiplash from going to those tiny, tiny eyes.
I’ve never read Azumanga Daioh, but to be fair, Japanese humor is REALLY different than American and translates for crap most of the time (just like American jokes translated into Japanese just get blank stares most of the time). Most stand-up routines go for the big funny in the middle and the “punchline” is a throwaway line (often a bad pun) that just kinda ties the whole story together.
That said, I think you made an improvement there.
Sorry, I have to disagree. I think Azumanga Daioh is hilarious and frequently re-read all four books.
…But then again, I studied Japanese language and culture for four years and lived in Japan for a year, so some things that don’t make sense to the casual reader are easier for me to understand.
The Japanese language is hard for English speakers because context is often left out of the situation. ie. If I said; ‘Hello, my name is Kate and I’m from England’ it’d be ‘Hello, Kate am. England came from’. There are lots of words for ‘I’ and ‘You’ in Japanese, but they’re barely used at all.
Moving back to humour, you’re missing that the funny side to both the strips you’ve given as examples of ‘no punchline’ relies entirely on you remembering the context from strips before them or on reading into the strip more than is written.
In the case of Osaka asking the name of Tomo’s pets…. Osaka’s real name is not Osaka. She’s called Kasuga Ayumu. Tomo has just renamed her ‘Osaka’ for no reason other than she’s come from the city of Osaka. She then reveals that her pets have all had really, really uninspired names (I suspect in the Japanese, the dog was called ‘Pochi’ a REALLY common Japanese dog’s name). If you wanted to make this American humour, you’d have Osaka say something obvious about Tomo’s complete lack of imagination or how little thought she put into things or how she doesn’t really bother enough about other people or animals to give them decent, original names. But it’s Japanese, so don’t get that obvious answer. You instead have to look at Osaka’s face and her ‘I should have known…’ and empathise with that feeling without needing to have it spoon-fed to you.
The strip you gave above is difficult too, because you’re meant to read into the characters’ brains again. Osaka just discovered a new exciting thing about herself! She has to tell everybody! She has hayfever! Of course, nobody else can really understand WHY she’s so excited about that, so while empathising with Osaka’s childlike enthusiasm (she’s often a bit like an older Yotsuba in this sense) you have Chiyo as the ‘straight man’ and empathise with her feelings of ‘er…what?’
That probably didn’t clarify things that well. Japanese is hard to explain sometimes, and some of the strips in Azumanga rely so heavily on Japanese language puns (look for one called ‘Read Between the Lines’ where it’s just people saying Yomi’s name. That is ONLY a joke if you know Japanese) or cultural ideas that they just don’t translate well. It’s not helped that the first two books have pretty crap translation (the second two are considerably better).
Umm…yeah, so the trick is to look for the ‘hidden punchline’…I guess.
I hope that made more sense than I think it did.
Any joke you have to explain–especially through the time-honored five-paragraph essay format–is hardly a joke at all.
Also:
The Japanese language is hard for English speakers because context is often left out of the situation. ie. If I said; ‘Hello, my name is Kate and I’m from England’ it’d be ‘Hello, Kate am. England came from’.
Wait… Japanese people… are the Hulk?!
Also, Chris, you know that Japanese game show where the guys get hit in the nuts? If you wanted to make that into American humor, it’d be a guy standing in front of a microphone saying “What’s the deal with airline food?” or “Black people be all like this: Boom-bip! Ba-boom-boom-bip! But white people be all like: Doo doo doo! La la laa!” They don’t spoon-feed you the laughs in Japanese humor. All of the ball-trauma flows from character and situation, which you might not grasp. Even though I do.
They don’t use spoons in Japan, you guys. They have chopsticks.
I’m gonna go ahead and say you don’t have to be a Japanese student to appreciate the humor in Azumanga Daioh. I’ll grant that it’s hit-or-miss, though.
Does Yotsuba& somehow improve tremendously after volume 1? I got that because of how much I loved Azumanga and didn’t enjoy it much.
Its probably worth noting that Schultz often “neglected” the punchline as well. Luckily, his puns and cultural jokes are much easier for us to follow so its ok. Azumanga Diaoh really is the Peanuts of Japan though. Tomo is Lucy, Sakaki is Charlie Brown, the biting cat is the little red head girl, Osaka is Snoopy, Kagura is Peppermint Patty, Chiyo is either Woodstock or Linus depending on which character she’s with, etc. Just replace the teachers’ “wah wah wah wah” with alcoholism and traffic violations.
I’m sorry, but “time-honored five-paragraph essay format” is the funniest thing I’ve seen on the ISB in several days. Wow.
I was sort of hoping the cat from Azumanga Daioh that bit could be the equivalent of the cat from Peanuts that scratched. But joffe, I’ll take your word for it that the cat is the little red-haired girl. Crazy Japanese, turning all our unattainable dream girls into kitties.
Its probably worth noting that Schultz often “neglected†the punchline as well. Luckily, his puns and cultural jokes are much easier for us to follow so its ok. Azumanga Diaoh really is the Peanuts of Japan though. Tomo is Lucy, Sakaki is Charlie Brown, the biting cat is the little red head girl, Osaka is Snoopy, Kagura is Peppermint Patty, Chiyo is either Woodstock or Linus depending on which character she’s with, etc. Just replace the teachers’ “wah wah wah wah†with alcoholism and traffic violations.
Oopsie doopsie ex foopsia?!
Its probably worth noting that Schultz often “neglected†the punchline as well.
Well, yes, every now and then Peanuts was not funny at all.
That was when it wasn’t supposed to be funny, but rather poignant. Either way, Schulz did exactly what he set out to do.
I haven’t read the AzDaioh manga, but that’s ’cause I was introduced to the anime first and NOTHING (in my mind, anyhow) can beat the anime.
The themesong? Crack. It is crack, I tell you.
Although I appreciate Kate’s attempt to explain the difficulty of translating humor in either direction, no one has mentioned what is to me the most obvious possibility: the translator sucks. Virtually all translators of manga these days suck, because publishers think the quality of translation is unimportant and would rather pay an unqualified, still-in-college otaku peanuts than pay a decent wage to someone who really knows what s/he’s doing. Humor is incredibly hard to translate. Harder even than poetry or song lyrics, in which you have to be sensitive to meter, alliteration, the nuances of words, etc. But it’s not impossible to translate, and just saying, “Well, humor is impossible to translate” is lazy dodge. I think Gerard Jones and I did a pretty good job conveying the humor in manga such as Ranma 1/2, because I would give Gerard all the boring details about why a line or situation was funny in Japanese, and he would use his prodigious skills to turn it into something that was funny in English, even if that sometimes meant taking some liberties. I’m afraid to read most of my favorite manga (including Yotsuba) in English, because I know I’ll give myself (and anyone in the same room with me) an ulcer if I do. (Just reading ten pages of Nodame Cantabile sent me into a three-day frenzy that probably shortened my life by at least a week.)
Sometimes you (by which I mean the reader of translated manga) can tell if you like a manga or not by the overall content, but if it just seems *off* somehow, it’s almost certainly the fault of an incompetent translator (or, to be fair, a cheapskate publisher).
By the way, I think some of Schulz’s funniest strips were the ones that went against the ironclad tradition of putting the punchline in the last panel. Like a lot of the best four-panel manga humorists, Schulz had a magnificent sense of timing, and made use of silent/actionless panels in a way that is still imitated today (even in Japan).
If you enjoy the manga, the Azumanga Daioh Anime is well worth watching. They keep the characters really faithful to the manga, and do a great job of translating over the humor to the new format.
In addition, there’s tons of hilarious anime music videos that people have remixed and edited to the series.
Matt, you translated Ranma? Awesome. That was my gateway comic into manga way back in the day. You guys really did nail the humor in that one.
I heard that Azumanga Daioh had two translators, and in my opinion the first translator really sucked. Thats why everyone’s opinion of the omnibus gets better about a third of the way through.
Monty Python made it a point to *avoid* punchlines, and it didn’t hurt their humor at all.
I find Azumanga very funny and have minimal knowledge of Japanese culture and no knowledge of the language. I agree with Kate’s note about knowing the context of the jokes, but that shouldn’t be a problem if you start reading them from vol 1. And it is very different to American humour, which as others have said, tends to be of the spoon fed variety.
I think this may come down people just finding different things funny. I think the Optimash Prime Mr Potato Head is the absolute pinnacle of comedy. Others may (will?) disagree.
“Wait… Japanese people… are the Hulk?!”
Wasn’t that a bad “What If?”
Okay, okay, one of the many bad “What Ifs?”…
DEAR MANGA NERDS:
We get it! You’ve got a more developed sense of humor! You have evolved beyond the “spoon-fed” western humor of Charles Schulz! Now please fuck off to your own planet and leave us alone so you can live without our annoying idiocy.
Lighten up, Francis.
Chris it only takes a 5 paragraph essay to explain the joke to you, not to someone who gets it. Nonetheless your Peanuts ending was hilarious.
Shamus: Saying something like “the jokes generally depend on context and language puns” didn’t take me five paragraphs, and I haven’t even read the fucking thing.
“We get it! You’ve got a more developed sense of humor! You have evolved beyond the “spoon-fed†western humor of Charles Schulz!”
Remember: Japanese people don’t use spoons: they can pick up soup with chopsticks and use starfish for money.
re #6: Chris, you are my hero. :)