Music, sound and humour in recent animation films and television series and anime in the US and Japan

Abstract

This thesis examines and classifies the diverse techniques and aspects of music and sound effects in popular Japanese comedy anime TV series, American comedy animated TV series and films of the last twenty years with a focus on humour. The analysis is based different humour theories (principally incongruity theory), which provide theoretical support to understand and examine the mechanisms of humour in this repertoire. This thesis fills a significant gap in the literature and aims to contribute to our comprehensive understanding of humorous techniques in the use of sounds and music and their relationships with plot, images and dialogue in animated films and TV. It combines film analysis, musical analysis and theories of humour. Many of the theories, classifications and models in this thesis are also appliable to audiovisual humour in other types of films and TV or other videos, which will be of interest to students and scholars of film, music, but also of psychology, philosophy and other subjects interested in the study of humour and its manifestations beyond the verbal sphere.
The first chapter reviews the relevant literature and introduces the reasons for the choice of this topic and brief background information about Japanese anime and US animation, which provides a foundation of knowledge for the following chapters. The second chapter focuses on humour theories, their application to films and TV and the classification of types of humorous events. The next two chapters contains the main body of the analysis and example-based research, exploring the various relationship between music (chapter three) and sounds (chapter four) and the visuals and their role in the underlining or creation of humour.

Date of Award	12 May 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Guido Heldt (Supervisor) & Kristian O Moen (Supervisor)