{"id":239,"date":"2001-03-07T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2001-03-07T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/2001\/03\/07\/ask-john-do-anime-sometimes-parody-each-other\/"},"modified":"2001-03-07T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2001-03-07T14:00:00","slug":"ask-john-do-anime-sometimes-parody-each-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/ask-john-do-anime-sometimes-parody-each-other\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask John: Do Anime Sometimes Parody Each Other?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question:<\/strong>
\nI’ll use the Tenchi Series as an example of my question since it’s easiest to recognize. Ryoko always seemed like a parody of Sayians from DBZ, complete with the tail. Also, Mihoshi looks like one of those girls from Ruin Explorers. Mihoshi even has the same vampire-ish top teeth that stick out.<\/p>\n

Answer:<\/strong>
\nParody, defined as imitation for the purpose of humorous effect or comedy, is a common literary device in anime. Especially comedy anime often parodies other anime, as well as Western movies and pop-culture references. I would say that the Tenchi Muyo parodies you’ve suggested are quite subjective, debatable ones, so allow me to present a few more obvious examples, along with some more obscure ones.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most famous and well-known anime parody is Mary from Project A-ko, the hulking female version of Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star.<\/p>\n

Another very well known parody is Cream Lemon episode 10: Star Trap, which features two special agents with long dark hair and a short red “wolf cut,” extremely reminiscent of the Dirty Pair, and a space ship that could have been taken directly out of the Star Trek cartoon.<\/p>\n

Slayers Try parodies the classic Japanese live-action sentai hero team by making the heroes all old and feeble senior citizens.<\/p>\n

The Bakuretsu Hunter first OAV contains an extended parody of the magical girl transformation.<\/p>\n

Anime parodies aren’t limited to references or comical imitations of other anime, though. Love Hina parodies several non-anime archetypes, including RPG video games, Godzilla, the Chinese Saiyuki legend and traditional black & white Japanese samurai movies. Miami Guns contains extended parodies of numerous American films including The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Die Hard with a Vengeance. Excel Saga parodies absolutely everything, including life-sim video games, American action & horror movies, Leiji Matsumoto anime, the Excel Saga manga and even the Excel Saga animation itself.<\/p>\n

The Fushigi Yuugi OAVs, The Supergal, and the Ten Little Gall Force OAV also parody themselves. The second Fushigi Yuugi OAV series contains out-take versions of scenes from the previous episode, altered for comic effect. The Supergal OAV includes “blooper” and “out-takes” similar to a Jackie Chan movie during its ending credits, and Ten Little Gall Force is a hilarious SD documentary on the making of the original Gall Force OAV trilogy.<\/p>\n

Some anime parodies are a bit more subtle, though. Nadesico includes a brief sequence of Megumi, whose profession in the series is anime voice actress, costuming herself as a nurse. In fact, Megumi Hayashibara, Japan’s best known anime voice actress, was a nurse before becoming a voice actress and pop star.<\/p>\n

There’s a very brief sight gag in Di-Gi-Charat that involves “Tetsu-Ashi Johnny” trading cards. These cards are actually a combination of Tetsujin 28 (Gigantor) and Ashita no Joe (Tomorrow’s Joe) (“Tetsu” and “Ashi”). Let’s Go Inachu Ping Pong Club also parodies Ashita no Joe.<\/p>\n

The list goes on and on. If you’d like to make mention of your favorite anime parodies, why not post them to the AnimeNation forum<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question: I’ll use the Tenchi Series as an example of my question since it’s easiest to recognize. Ryoko always seemed like a parody of Sayians from DBZ, complete with the tail. Also, Mihoshi looks like one of those girls from Ruin Explorers. Mihoshi even has the same vampire-ish top teeth that stick out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ask-john"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}