When anime and manga creators go to make a new character, they have a lot of basic personality types to to work from. They could make a new female character a mukuchi-chara or “silent girl” who almost never talks, or a dojikko who’s clumsy in a way that makes her charming, or perhaps a twin-tail childhood friend in a wheelchair who works as a blind robot maid and who’s secretly the ghost of a fox-spirit. Two other classic anime character types are boke 惚け and tsukkomi 突っ込み, literally meaning “dull-witted” and “thrusting in with a witty comment” and often referred to in English as “straight man and wise guy.” There are many examples of these characters in anime, but my favorite would have to be Mai and Yuko from Nichijou. Mai always seems out of it, yet no matter how often Yuko tries to get the best of her, Mai always wins in the end. Unfortunately for me, I am quite a boke chara in my own family, and my son is all too happy to verbally smite me with witty comebacks, Kagami-style. So, what kind of chara are you, in anime terms?
Yuko and Mai are my favorite boke and tsukkomi characters.
