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5th Feb: Echo Chamber Season 1 blooper reel on Youtube here
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Definitely not a morning person.
"It's far too early in the morning for it to be early in the morning."
Some characters get up in the morning smiling, their hair perfectly in place, ready to face their Morning Routine with a song and the help of cute animal critters.
And then there are these characters. They don't want to get up in the morning at all if they can help it, and when they do they wobble around as if they're some sort of zombie, often sporting bags under their eyes and Messy Hair that would devour combs whole. It's best not to talk to them in the morning, because goodness knows they'll take everything you say as an insult. From the merely lethargic to the downright dangerous, these characters are just Not a Morning Person. No Instant Waking Skills for them.
In anime and manga, it seems to often be implied that characters are this way because they have low blood pressure. In the west, these characters are more prone to desperately need coffee in the mornings instead. Of course, coffee isn't exactly known to lower blood pressure, so both can go hand in hand.
If you Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World, you will most likely be like this. Crime-fighting always beats out sleep, for some reason. Sometimes these characters are also Heavy Sleepers in general, but not always. They may also have a tendency to kill roosters and smash alarm clocks. Then again some days you really don't want to wake up early.
Can be Truth in Television, as many a troper could probably tell you.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Ryoma from Prince of Tennis. A whole anime episode was dedicated to him sleeping in before the Saint Rudolph match and his friends trying to fill in before he gets to the courts.
- Kyouya Ootori from Ouran High School Host Club. He's sometimes referred to as the "Low Blood Pressure Overlord" because of it. Also, Cute Shotaro Boy Hani has been known to beat up a soldier for waking him up too early.
- More like annihilating an entire platoon, complete with bunny shaped mushroom cloud. Of course, it may not be accurate given that the narrator is not known for his reliability.
- According to an extra chapter in the manga, Mori becomes sociable and flirty when he's sleepy. Considering his character, it's hard to say whether or not this is being played straight.
- A bonus story in a volume of D.N.Angel shows Satoshi's morning routine. It says that he gets up early in the morning and spends "half an hour wandering around in a daze" before he fully wakes up and gets ready for school. Again, the cause is given as low blood pressure.
- Yuki from Fruits Basket, to the point that he often gets up and sleepwalks in the morning. His karate-trained reflexes are still in effect however, and he'll often swing punches at his rival in his sleep without being fully aware of it.
- Nayuki from Kanon is this, as well as a Heavy Sleeper. She says that she got her spot on the track team because she often has to run to school in the morning.
- In Azumanga Daioh, while the characters are on vacation at Chiyo-chan's summer home, Osaka wakes up and announces that she's going to wake Yukari up by banging on a frying pan. However, she's not yet fully awake herself, and the implement that she retrieves from the kitchen is a large knife, much to the shock of the other characters.
- Yukari herself is not a morning person, often needing her mother or Nyamo to wake her up for work.
- Ayaka Kisaragi from Phantom Quest Corp.
- Asuna in Mahou Sensei Negima!! is known for being bad at mornings (she gets up early on weekdays for her paper route, then sleeps in heavily on weekends).
- Nabiki Tendō of Ranma ½ is portrayed as such, especially in the anime. It tends to be played up in fanfiction.
- That might possibly be because she tends to get woken up at around the crack of dawn by the sounds of Ranma and Genma sparring. If my "alarm clock" was two guys audibly beating on each other, accompanied by insults and random battle cries, I wouldn't be particularly energetic either.
- Usagi in Sailor Moon.
- Naru from Ghost Hunt is not good when he wakes up. Then again, it's his fault for sleeping in a van (vol. 1) and being possessed by a spirit, to which Lin forces him to sleep with a series of spells and charms in vol. 8 to 9. Needless to say, he was not in a good mood when he woke up. Lin and Masako witnessed it first hand and they'll never be the same again...
- Roger from The Big O has this problem, credited both to his character and to his late-night "negotiating". Other characters have repeatedly complained about his tendency to wake up past noon. Thankfully, Dorothy's there to play a little "Run Down" on the piano...
- If Kyon's sister from Suzumiya Haruhi doesn't wake him up every morning with glomps, he'd most probably be late for school.
- Misato Katsuragi from Neon Genesis Evangelion has this problem, even if she has not been drinking the evening before. Well, that and the fact she's incredibly lazy when it comes to household chores.
- Funnily enough, the thing that gets her fully alert is...more beer.
- Naruto: in the words of Deceptive Disciple Kabuto, Sasuke "Can be a bit cranky when he wakes up." Sasuke then proceeds to blow up half the base. Yeah, thanks Captain Obvious.
Comics
Literature
Live Action TV
- It's been established that Columbo isn't coherent until he's had his coffee.
- Rachel in Friends is one of these.
- Charlie in Two and a Half Men rarely wakes up before early afternoon.
- Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5 has problems waking up when it's still dark outside — and she works on a space station.
- The short-lived sitcom Pearl gave us this gem between Rhea Perlman and Malcolm McDowell:
Professor: Questions about ethics can be answered with one simple thing: a mirror. [...] After the fact, can you wake up the next morning, look into the mirror, and like what you see?
Pearl: At what time in the morning? [...] 'Cos I've never seen anything in the mirror before 8 o'clock that didn't belong in a horror movie...
- Father Ted generally will not start his working day until at least 11 am and frequently later. Consequently, being woken at 5am with an airhorn during Lent comes as something of a shock.
- In Red Dwarf the reason that Lister gave for not finishing college was that there were lectures at two o'clock in the afternoon 'Come on, who's awake then? You can still taste the toothpaste'
- Penny in The Big Bang Theory. She has a "Don’t knock on my door before eleven o’clock or I punch you in the throat" rule.
Tabletop Games
- GURPS offers the Slow Riser disadvantage, in which, for an hour after waking up, your character suffers -2 to self-control rolls and -1 to IQ rolls and IQ-based skill rolls. So, in other words, they're irritable and can't think properly. They also get an extra penalty for missed sleep.
Video Games
- Link in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
- And The Wind Waker. And Ocarina of time. And The Minish Cap. Possibly also A Link to the past — OK, let's just say, Link's Not a Morning Person in general...
- And since it's always at the beginning of the game, it overlaps with Good Morning, Crono.
- Though apart from the games' openings Link tends to qualify as The Sleepless.
- Rin Tohsaka from Fate/stay night. She's not quite as bad as the other examples but tends to be decidedly grumpy in the mornings... Actually, it clashes with her perfect schoolgirl image so badly that even after knowing her for awhile, people are outright shocked to see her dragging about in the morning, completely at a loss for words and unsure if what they've just seen was real.
- A Running Gag in Rockman EXE / Mega Man Battle Network is that it's nearly impossible to wake up Netto/Lan Hikari on time. On one occasion in the anime he woke up, assumed he overslept, then got all the way to school before realizing it was Sunday.
- In Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, the Wizard is not a fan of mornings. Until a certain quest event, you can only meet him around or past 2 AM. He also loves coffee.
- Grumpty-type villagers in the original Animal Crossing sleep in until around 10 in the morning, most days. In all games, they'll also gripe about it being early in the morning until around noon.
Web Comics
- Since Dechs "Shadehawk" Rashart — a.k.a. Antihero for Hire — habitually "works nights", he takes this to extremes. Forget mornings — waking him up before sundown has this kind of effect.
- There's a Casey and Andy strip where Andy has made coffee — despite not drinking coffee himself. The question of "why" is answered when Satan enters — in the form of a seven-feet tall, winged, clawed, fanged, bright-red and particularly grumpy-looking demon. One gulp of coffee later, she reverts to her familiar form, brightly remarking "Morning, all!". "Yeah," comments Andy, "It's best if she gets her coffee right away."
- It's Walky!: "Morning people suck ass."
- K from Blip. "I am Monday's bitch."
- Eric Remington, as seen in this strip of Loserz.
- Arthur in Arthur, King of Time and Space, as seen (amongst other places) here. Also Morguase, in order to contrast with her son Gawaine, who rather famously is.
- Sarah of El Goonish Shive, as seen here and on the next page.
Web Original
Western Animation
Real Life
- People who routinely stay awake during the night and sleep in the morning are usually stereotypically considered terminally lazy, but science now tells us they might just have delayed sleep phase syndrome.
Who the heck let the morning people run things?
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