12 Days of Anime: #6: Just Whose Line IS It, Anyway?

The other day I was watching reruns of the British/American game show Whose Line Is It Anyway.  Now, before you run me out of here, I want to justify why I brought this up.  There are many games on the show that I really like, and Film, TV, and Theatre Styles is one of them.  One day, while I was watching, this game was played, and anime was one of the styles selected.




Film, TV, and Theatre Styles is fun because the host take suggestions from the audience.  This sometimes gets absolutely hilarious when styles like kabuki and porno are suggested.  Well, one time, anime was called out, and the host wrote it down.  The results were absolutely hilarious, and the performers' actions were exaggerated, much like characters in anime.

To be honest, I was a bit surprised by the performers' familiarity with anime.  They knew all the tropes to a T, and did a rather good job.  The scene was great to watch, and the dialogue was pretty cheesy, much like a lot of English anime dialogue in the late 90s.  I also liked that there were people in the audience who even knew what anime was.  After all, the industry in the US was really still fairly small, though bigger than it was, say, 10 years prior.

It's the unpredictable things that are sometimes the funniest, and anime is certainly unpredictable.  And when American culture is mixed in, there's really no telling what the results will be like.  It could be downright awful, or it could be absolutely hilarious.  There's just no way to tell unless you try it.