CODE IN TOKYO

What If America Made a Slice-of-Life Anime? The Internet's Jokes Got Extremely Dark

I came across a mildly amusing topic on social media.

“Why are Japanese slice-of-life anime always set in Japan?”

Because the creators and the audience are Japanese, I would assume.

I thought that settled the matter, but internet users overseas saw it differently.

“Then what would happen if someone made a slice-of-life anime set in America?”

That was the beginning of an extraordinary contest among Americans to come up with the darkest possible answers.

The Plot of an American Slice-of-Life Anime

The storylines they imagined for an American slice-of-life anime were quite intense.

Wait, which part of this is slice of life?

The protagonist dies in the first episode. Whose story are we following from Episode 2 onward?

In a Japanese slice-of-life anime, the main characters might eat cake after school, prepare for the school festival, or laugh together over something silly.

In the American version, the question is whether they will survive long enough to reach the school festival.

At this point, it is less a slice-of-life anime than a survival anime.

It Is Funny, but Not Entirely

What makes this joke contest interesting is that Americans themselves are making fun of their country’s problems.

Gun crime, drugs, racism, robbery, and expensive medical care.

Every one of these is a real problem facing American society.

The ending in which an entire family goes bankrupt because of medical bills is particularly brutal.

In a Japanese anime, when the protagonist catches a cold, friends come to visit. It may even turn into a small romantic moment.

In the American version, apparently, the household finances collapse the moment anyone goes to the hospital.

Of course, real Americans are not caught in gunfights every day. Most people go to school, work, and live with their families like anyone else.

Even so, the fact that Americans themselves make jokes like these reveals something both fascinating and frightening about the country.

Perhaps Japanese Slice-of-Life Anime Depict a Remarkably Privileged World

As a rule, nothing dramatic happens in Japanese slice-of-life anime.

High school girls go to school, chat with their friends, and stop somewhere on the way home.

That alone is enough to sustain an episode.

To Japanese people, these scenes seem ordinary. But when you think about it, they reflect a remarkably fortunate environment.

Children travel to school alone by train. They spend time with friends after school and return home after dark. A mass shooting at school is not something they would normally even imagine.

This kind of safe society forms the background of slice-of-life anime.

Of course, Japan also has bullying, poverty, and family problems. Slice-of-life anime do not portray all of Japanese society. They present peaceful scenes selected from within it.

But the fact that Japanese audiences can accept those scenes without finding them particularly unrealistic probably says something distinctive about the country.

If America Does Not Work, Why Not Use Canada?

One comment even suggested that if someone wanted to make a slice-of-life anime in North America, they should set it in Canada rather than the United States.

That is rather cruel too.

They are both in North America, yet America gets gunfights while Canada gets afternoon tea.

Of course, Canada has social problems of its own, and the United States has plenty of peaceful small towns.

American family dramas and coming-of-age stories also sometimes portray quiet everyday life.

So this is not to say that a slice-of-life anime could never be made in America.

Still, it is funny to see Americans themselves joke that an anime about their daily lives would become something outrageous.

Just as Japanese people make self-deprecating jokes about their own country, Americans probably understand their society quite well too.

The material they use for those jokes is simply a little too dangerous.

Japan’s Almost Excessively Peaceful Anime

This joke contest reminded me once again how unusual Japanese slice-of-life anime are.

There is no need to save the world. There is no need to fight an evil organization. No one even needs to die.

You can be entertained for almost 30 minutes by nothing more than girls eating cake and saying, “This is delicious.”

When you think about it, that is an extraordinary genre.

It is also interesting that people overseas enjoy these works too.

Perhaps what they seek in Japanese slice-of-life anime is the peaceful everyday life that we take for granted.

Still, imagine that American slice-of-life anime.

The protagonist is shot dead in Episode 1, the best friend dies of a drug overdose in Episode 3, and the family goes bankrupt in the finale.

Any viewer who makes it safely through all 12 episodes should receive a certificate of survival.

Let us just hope the issuance fee is not high enough to bankrupt them.