WHY ANIMATED WORKPLACE COMEDIES DON’T WORK

TONY T. - Writer, 3rd Year, Economics and Data Science

Watch The Office. It’s good.

One of my favorite types of American television is the workplace situational comedy. While formulaic and perhaps done to death, I find that this particular subgenre is uniquely excellent at pulling out interesting plot points or humorous anecdotes from rather mundane situations. The likes of The Office, particularly the version broadcast in the United States, springs to mind. While the show gets rather goofy at certain points, with the last few seasons increasingly twisting the setting and characters to be more cartoonish, the majority of that show features characters that fit into believable archetypes which one could conceivably find in their average Northeastern American mid-sized paper company.

Of course, the main protagonist Michael Scott is portrayed as a strange bizarre man who, although well intentioned, has very immature ways of expressing himself. That’s kind of the reason why the show is still rather popular amongst a certain segment of the populace, particularly younger Generation Z viewers. In spite of the character’s somewhat eclectic quirks, I would argue that the comedy derived from Michael Scott’s actions still generally follow the formula of his actions defying expected norms. As the authoritative boss, at least a good chunk of the humor is still rooted in the fact that Michael is supposed to act in a certain way by social and professional convention. Therefore, I believe that the core of The Office’s humor, or at least the part that appeals the most to me, is its zany take on the American workplace, not the particular characters. The characters serve to accentuate the bizarreness of the setting, and not the other way around. One could perhaps apply the same line of thinking present in my Aria article towards the office of Dunder Mifflin Scranton. Therefore, while I appreciate The Office primarily as a slice of life series, a distinction rooted in the characters, when I consider what makes it funny, that primarily lies in the setting.

Now what does this have to do with Japanese animation? Not much, to be honest. But I find that this explanation of what I consider as The Office’s merits as a workplace situational comedy to be rather helpful in demonstrating what I find lacking in the same sort of media within Japanese animation. The most obvious distinctions one could immediately make between the type of media The Office is and an anime office sitcom like, say, New Game! is probably that New Game! is Japanese and animated. Regarding the cultural barrier, I will acknowledge the fact that as a non-Japanese person, I may possibly lack some basic Japanese cultural context for grasping the appeal of New Game!. Still, I personally enjoy many series that feature Japanese styled comedy, such as Gintama, which heavily uses the manzai dynamic to great success.

There’s also the fact that Japanese work culture far more regimented and structured than American offices, and perhaps that leads to less possibilities as far as comedic writing goes.

However, that second point, the fact that animated office sitcoms are, indeed, animated, points towards the hurdle that I find is most difficult to reconcile within these types of shows. The settings aren’t real, and don’t feel real. Of course, there are certain anime like the previously mentioned Aria or K-On! that are animated and have real-feeling settings, but those don’t really portray traditional office sitcom dynamics in the way that a show like New Game! attempts to. Capturing a believable setting is also far more difficult in animation, and therein lies the issue. In contrast to a show like The Office, which manages to be humorous through its subversion of what one could reasonably expect of its setting, animated office situational comedies have a far harder time establishing their settings and therefore I find they aren’t as easy to make funny. There is the fact that a live action show has an easier time rearranging the set and capturing small details that make a viewer more immersed in the world. After all, that was a fundamental part of my article which better explained the core appeal of The Office. Minor things, like the presence of another office room, or seating arrangements, immediately signal what time period an episode takes place in, which does a lot in making me believe in Dunder Mifflin Scranton as a real place.

Perhaps that’s why the likes of New Game!, Working!!, or Servant x Service seem to opt for finding comedy in characters more so than the setting. Those shows feature far less focus on the actual world around the characters and how that world is strange, instead focusing on how the characters subvert one’s expectations in their personalities or actions. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as The Office, my favorite workplace comedy series, still does that to a degree. But the aspect separating an office situational comedy from being another situational comedy, the setting, is lost somewhere along the way. Those series lack focus on highlighting the comedy of the workplace that the characters exist within. Frankly, I can’t fault those aforementioned shows for taking the more character-focused approach, as it makes more sense for the medium that they exist within. However, they wander away from what I thought was their advertised appeal, as workplace comedies, because that type of media is perhaps harder due to cultural differences as well as limitations of the animated medium.