{"id":591,"date":"2008-09-07T19:35:15","date_gmt":"2008-09-08T01:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tancos.net\/wp\/2008\/09\/07\/a-good-idiot-is-hard-to-find\/"},"modified":"2008-09-07T19:35:15","modified_gmt":"2008-09-08T01:35:15","slug":"a-good-idiot-is-hard-to-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/a-good-idiot-is-hard-to-find\/","title":{"rendered":"A good idiot is hard to find"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My principal viewing the past few days has been the second season of <em>Rocky and Bullwinkle<\/em> and <strong><em>George of the Jungle<\/em><\/strong>. I wonder: has anime produced  any magnificent idiots who stand comparison with Bill Scott&#8217;s immortal trio: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.inews3.com\/topstory.php?id=42756c6c77696e6b6c657c546865204d6f6f7365 \">Bullwinkle<\/a>, George and Dudley Do-Right? We&#8217;ll probably never see the equal of the first, who is one of three great comic characters of the 20th century. ((The other two are Groucho Marx and Ignatius Reilly.)) But there have been some estimable nitwits in anime, which brings me to my next list.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Outstanding idiots<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1. Tamaki Suou (<strong><em>Ouran High School Host Club<\/em><\/strong>)<br \/>\n2. Excel Excel (<strong><em>Excel Saga<\/em><\/strong>)<br \/>\n3. Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent (<strong><em>Baccano!<\/em><\/strong>) (Yeah, that&#8217;s two characters, but I think of them as a single unit.)<br \/>\n4. Bantaro Sanbonmatsu (<strong><em>Jubei-chan: Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch<\/em><\/strong>)<br \/>\n5. Kankuro Nishiyama (<strong><em>Ramen Fighter Miki<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p>Notes:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 While I haven&#8217;t found a Japanese counterpart to Bill Scott, who was a writer and producer as well as a voice actor, ((Scott wrote all the &#8220;moose and squirrel&#8221; scripts, which episodes demonstrate that good writing can redeem crummy animation.)) Kotono Mitsuishi does have two major nitwits in her resum\u00e9, Excel and Usagi Tsukino.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 How many people watch <strong><em>Project A-ko<\/em><\/strong> for C-ko? How much Tomo Takino can you stand? It is not easy to create a stupid character who is nevertheless consistently entertaining, let alone sympathetic.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Osaka is not an idiot. She just thinks very different.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 An idiot can be a ditz, but the terms are not synonyms. Yurika Misumaru and the early versions of Mihoshi Kuramitsu are <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/GeniusDitz\">ditzes of the highest order<\/a> but not idiots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My principal viewing the past few days has been the second season of Rocky and Bullwinkle and George of the Jungle. I wonder: has anime produced any magnificent idiots who stand comparison with Bill Scott&#8217;s immortal trio: Bullwinkle, George and Dudley Do-Right? We&#8217;ll probably never see the equal of the first, who is one of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/a-good-idiot-is-hard-to-find\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A good idiot is hard to find&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[684],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever","tag-whatever"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-9x","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}