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Narm / Anime

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Shirou once again shows off his armor-piercing logic.

Sometimes, a dramatic moment in an anime series can be ruined through the absurdity of the situation (or inappropriately-used English).

Often times, a piece of dialogue will be perfectly fine in its original Japanese form, but will unfortunately become Narm once it is translated into English, especially in anime dubbed into Western languages using the same pitch and intonation as the original Japanese lines. Japanese is a language made up of beautiful sounds, but the way it’s normally spoken can come across as a monotone to speakers of Western languages, which is particularly noticeable when people speak for long stretches. Many dubbing companies leave the monotone in, especially in dramatic anime, leading to the existence of many of the examples below.

Note: if it only appears in the manga, then list it in the section for manga.


A few series have had so many such moments that they've been given their own pages:

The Rest:

    open/close all folders 

    A 
  • Addicted to Curry has its fair share, thanks to making curry cooking Serious Business. The best would probably be the guy who killed himself because of Indian curry; his son now harbors a deep-seated hatred for it and actively seeks revenge against Indian-style curry.
  • The first episode of Angel Beats! has a scene where Yuri/Yurippe jokingly tells Otonashi to, as the official subtitles put it, "give a girl an enema," which is funny for entirely the wrong reasons: "Enema" refers to the Japanese schoolyard prank of poking your thumb up someone's (clothed) butt, not the extremely squicky medical procedure. The dub replaces this with "slap a girl on her ass," averting the narminess.
    • Also the ridiculously tragic backstories for many of the characters Crosses the Line Twice for some. It's not tragic enough that Yuri's siblings are killed. Instead, robbers break into their house while she's babysitting them and order her to bring them the most valuable object in the house or her siblings will be killed one by one. They start killing her siblings at ten-minute intervals while she's searching, and then finally she trips and breaks the valuable vase that robbers wanted so they kill her too. It's so stupidly melodramatic that it desensitizes the viewers.
      • Yuri had no clue what was considered valuable or where said valuables would be, so her going for the vase was actually a complete shot in the dark. Additionally, how she died wasn't actually confirmed in the anime but in the manga, she was hit by a car while waiting at a bus stop. Which, yeah, is very Deus Angst Machina, all this considered
  • In the Another anime, for some, Class Representative Yukari Sakuragi's death goes from horror to Black Comedy when you see her hand in the air and her foot leaning on the last stairstep, both twitching in an almost comical manner. That was a bit too much.
    • In episode 10, it's revealed that the calamity was stopped by killing the extra student. Teshigawara says, "great, now we just need to figure out who the extra is!" Then—he's interrupted by Kouichi and a needlessly loud background track.
    • The series definitely earns its stripes as Final Destination: the Anime with scenes like this one, which features an unnamed character escaping one deathtrap, only to be hilariously smacked down by another one (that comes almost completely out of left field) seconds later.
  • While Koro-sensei's inevitable assassination in Assassination Classroom is quite possibly the series' biggest Tear Jerker, when the camera cuts to Nagisa's blubbering and ugly crying it's a bit hard to not giggle.

    B 
  • Baki the Grappler has one during Baki's fight with Hanayama: After Baki figures out how to counter Hanayama's punches, there's a close-up of Baki smiling and saying "I did it!"... Right before Hanayama punches him in the side of the head, contorting his face comically and sending him flying.
  • During the main climax of the Anime version of Black Butler, the angel essentially offers his body to Sebastian and asks him to rule over the new world with him. When that offer is taken into context, most of that arc can be summed up as the angel attempting to hit on Sebastian.
    • During Ash/Angela's Villainous Breakdown they scream "Filthy. Unclean. Barren! USELESS! IMPOTENT! STAGNANT! ILLEGAL! FILTH FILTH FILTH FILTH FILARGARBHARGARHGBARGHAAAHH—"
    • In episode 1 season 2 at one point when Claude is cleaning Alois's fingers from after he performed Eye Scream on Hannah there's a shot where his waist disappears.
      • Another Off-Model shot in episode 8 depicts Hannah looking and moving like a flat paper doll off screen when Alois tells her to bring Claude in to change his bandanges.
    • The fifth episode of the second season features a scene where Alois demands that Ciel becomes his or else he'll kill all of Ciel's loved ones. This would be quite the dramatic moment if not for the fact that Alois was wearing a frilly maid's dress (complete with fake boobs) when he was threatening Ciel.
    • In episode 7 season 2 the Oh, Crap! Alois makes when Ciel is about to kill him is Off-Model making it appear awkward.
      • In the same episode there's Claude practically having an orgasm when he tastes Ciel's blood. In general most of his screen time consists of Claude looking like he's lusting after Ciel and occasionally Alois.
      • The delivery of Alois's line "Claude, what are you looking at? I just got stabbed in the stomach!" is kind of funny since Claude doesn't seem to care and is too busy getting excited over Ciel.
      • Ciel getting slap happy with Sebastian when he's preventing him from trying to kill Alois.
      • The shot of Alois grabbing onto Ciel's legs after Ciel stabbed him while crying and begging for his life is made less dramatic when the animation makes it look like he's giving Ciel a blowjob.
    • Hannah pulling a huge gun out from under her dress and tearing open her shirt revealing her big boobs to get another set of guns out when fighting Sebastian.
    • Sebastian defeats the Trancy triplets by throwing a weapon through their foreheads and causes them to stick from a wall while dangling from the weapon. They later continue doing their normal tasks with the weapon stuck in their heads still.
      • There's something darkly humorous about how Sebastian ends them when he ties them up with string and breaks their bodies into pieces.
  • It is difficult not to laugh at the serious Gratuitous English in Black Lagoon, especially given the trigger-happy nature of most of the characters. The entire season 2 finale was ruined by characters — characters you used to respect — barking out line after line of English words that are pronounced like they're some sort of archaic spell. Even worse if you remember that English is supposed to be Revy's first language. Fortunately, the Gratuitous English is only a problem in the Japanese version (natch). And some feel it improves the work.
    • Just the Gratuitous English? Roberta's Gratuitous Spanish is also awfully hilarious.
    • The name of Episode 8: "Rasta Blasta".
    • Any time Revy goes into a philosophical rant, it potentially lapses into this. She's so wangsty and over-the-top that it comes off as slightly funny. Of course, this may be intentional, as it's showing how pathetic and broken she has become due to her very rough upbringing. Her words ring hollow in the viewer's ears because she is hollow and simply providing a flimsy justification for her lifestyle.
    • In one episode, while the crew are in a building, a car with two people pulls up to the building and with a rocket launcher. As one of them fires, the scene slows down dramatically. What makes it funny instead of dramatic is that as the scene is slowing down, Revy lets out a panicked yell of "ARRRRRR-PEEEEEE-GEEEEEEEEE", sounding like someone turned off a record player mid-song. Nothing says tense like "audio effect you might hear in a Youtube Poop".
  • In Blood-C, Saya's whole town being slaughtered by the Elder Bairn kind of loses its own bite, when the creatures doing it look like giant pink and cream rabbits with 'arms' as ears. Not to mention the bit where one stuffs a load of people into a giant bag, then another turns its hand into a blender-type thing. Would be horrific... if it didn't make a typical electric blender sound.
    • Nono and Nene's deaths become ridiculous when you recall all of the panty shots they have as they get gruesomely slaughtered. It may have been intended as Fan Disservice, but still...
    • The narm in this particular series is so over the top that it's referred as "THE BEST COMEDY OF THE YEAR.
  • In Bokurano, Kokopelli's backstory is one hell of a Wham Episode, but there's a moment where the seriousness is ruined: Koyemshi throws Kokopelli down to the ground, and he's wearing a skintight black jumpsuit, which means you can quite clearly see DAT ASS.
  • That scene in Boys over Flowers when Tsukushi found out she kissed Domyoji in the dark. Shocked faces, slo mo close ups, ominous music... he stole her first kiss, not murder anyone.
  • The scene in episode 9 of Brain Powerd, when Jonathan explains why he hates his mother and how he ended up joining the bad guys because of his terrible childhood.
    Jonathan: When I was 8, 9, 10... even when I was 12 and 13, I waited and waited!
    Captain McCormick: For what?
    Jonathan: A CHRISTMAS PRESENT!!

    C 
  • In Ceres, Celestial Legend, we have the scene where Tooya is subjected to Cold-Blooded Torture by Mikage-in-Aki's-body, who repeteadly guns him down... only for Tooya (being the Mana in human form) to regenerate and attempt to talk back to his torturer, and for Mikage/Shiso to kill him dead again. At first, it's a horrifying scene full of tension, squick and tears, even when we don't see a lot of it. Then the process is repeated, and it's a little... um. Then it's repeated again... and again... and again, with minimal changes each time. By the time the scene is almost over, all the drama is gone, and one is left half-laughing due to how ridiculous the deal is, half-mentally begging "JUST KILL HIM ALREADY, MIKAGE!".
  • In Chocotto Sister, a sweet moment of Choco comforting her distressed brother gets ruined by a blatant shot up her summer dress—which gets even worse if you consider Choco's age.
  • The fourth episode of Chrono Crusade has villainous old man Ricardo deliver a long monologue about his own undead condition. Halfway through the speech, his lungs fly out through a hole in his chest. It was out of place, illogical, not to mention ridiculous.
  • In Claymore, when Ophelia Awakens, she swears revenge on Elena by screaming "FUUUCCCKKK YOOOOUUUU!!!" over and over again.
  • The ending of the Cowboy Bebop episode "Pierrot le Fou". Let's just say that the sight of a grown man squirming on the ground crying out for his mommy just before being stepped on by a big goofy dog thing doesn't exactly help his previously established image as a stone-cold assassin who is Immune to Bullets and kills for the love of killing.
  • The balloon monster from Corpse Princess. Sure, its bizarre marker-drawn face and creepy voice does slightly help it. What doesn't help is its theme. Then again, having a head made of a collection of balloons tends to have that effect. It makes it feel more like a goofy Power Rangers Monster of the Week instead of something you'd see in a horror anime.

    D 
  • The earth-friendly anime special Daikyouryu no Jidai, localized as Age of the Great Dinosaurs in English, received an incredibly Narmy moment in the dub. The protagonist has a seizure early on while thinking about life, and it's accompanied by this endless loop:
    "The sweet mystery of life!... The sweet mystery of life!... The sweet mystery of life!... All things are one!... All things are one!... All things are one!..."
  • In episode 4 of Darker than Black, a teenager (moratorium) with the power of fire uses it to defend herself from her attackers at a construction site. Later, in a semi-catatonic state, she regains her senses when she hits her head walking straight into a pole.
  • Dear Brother is set in a World of Ham where everything is very exaggerated, so it often straddles the line between genuine drama/tragedy and this:
    • Aya Misaki's horrible puffy hair may have been in vogue in The '70s when the series itself was written, but now... There are also the ridiculously exaggerated faces she makes in the anime after Mariko snaps on her and slashes her with a boxcutter.
    • In the third episode, when Aya and her Girl Posse bully Nanako in English class and almost everyone joins in until Kaoru intervenes, the absolute incompetence of the teacher makes the whole drama bomb almost comical. One can understand being put off by a bunch of schoolgirls whining in the middle of a lecture, but letting a kid half his age put order? What kind of teacher is this?!
    • Mariko's hot bath of angst is rather sad... until she starts floating down on her belly, with her bare ass sticking up, almost as if she was a dead fish. How the HELL didn't the people in charge of that scene notice how stupid it looked?!
    • The anime scene where Kaoru strips completely naked to show Takehiko her mastectomy scars loses almost all its dramatic weight when the viewer sees that she did it out in the open, in the middle of a (thankfully empty) road. Having it take place in a private space or an hospital room wouldn't have been so bad, but more than one viewer almost expected Kaoru being caught by the police and arrested for indecent exposure, or something. Thank God she apparently thought about it later and solely opened her shirt to show the scars to Nanako in a secluded spot of the school...
  • Muraki in Descendants of Darkness had a moment in the final episode when he is trapped inside the flames of Touda and he is going on about how he will kill Saki. He starts laughing while he is supposedly dying, so his scream sounds really off.
    • The English dub has...a lot of this. For instance, the filled silence that's introduced in the ending to the Devil's Trill arc—Hijiri (one of two Woobies of the Week), is about to be crushed by a falling pillar. In the Japanese version, he stares up at said pillar in silent shock. In the English version, he screams for a fairly long time and with an expression that absolutely does not make him look like he's screaming. Then, when his pet loli Kazusa (the other Woobie of the Week) comes in to pull a Heroic Sacrifice for him, he calls out her name. In the Japanese version, he simply calls out "Kazusa!". In the English version, he wails "KAZUUUSAAAAAAAAA-" and keeps doing so even when he's supposed to be losing consciousness!
  • In Destiny of the Shrine Maiden, the moment where Chikane kills off the followers of Orochi gets hilarious when the viewers see Nekoko the Cat Girl with an arrow in the ass. It's even more awkward when one sees that Corona has an arrow in her boob... when few minutes before Nekoko had compared her chest disfavorably with Chikane's.
  • Near the end of one of the Devilman OVAs, there is a scene in which the main character, Akira, punches the villain, Amon, in the face over 140 times. Then he falls, naked, from the sky, and lands in the center of a gigantic Amon-shaped hole in the ground. It's very hard not to laugh.
    • Let us not forget the amazing scene here Devilman stops a female demon in her tracks, tears her breasts off and starts to eat them.
  • At first, Dragonaut: The Resonance seemed to be trying to tell a serious story about a boy who tragically lost his family in a freak shuttle accident... but the stupid characters and organizations and the general lack of empathy in the story made it the feel-good comedy of the year. To give all the reasons would clutter this page or require a new one, but the best example would be everything surrounding the character Kazuki. Of those, the best example is in episode seven, where his anger over continual rejection drives him to cut his hair... into a form that makes it look like he was attacked by a rabid lawnmower. Oh, and about that rejection? He's rejected by a big burly loner because Kazuki thinks he owns him, and by his childhood friend, who Kazuki doesn't seem to understand why he is sad despite the whole dead family thing.
    • There's also Kazuki's thong-eyepatch ("scar-patch") later in the series. Wearing a mask? Okay. Wearing an eyepatch? Okay. Wearing an eyepatch as a mask? No.
    • All you need is a quote from the fansub of the first episode:
    • Even some of the fansubbers took potshots at the anime at the commercial break eyecatches.
    • In the first five minutes, a shuttle containing the main character, his family, and a whole bunch of other people is destroyed. The main character is then shown flying out of the thing like a missile, which makes the whole shuttle disaster laughable.
  • Durarara!! can be abbreviated to DRRR. In fanart and even in-series, this is used. A lot. There are three problems... It sounds like DDR, it's reminiscent of the narmy ending of The Enigma of Amigara Fault, and, most importantly, it sounds like DERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. AKA the stereotypical stupidity sfx.
    • This Exchange:
      Person: A girl was being attacked. She was wearing a Raira Academy uniform.
      Masaomi/Mikado: Uh-huh...
      Person: And she had glasses.
      Masaomi/Mikado: Uh-huh...
      Person: And huge breasts.
      Masaomi/Mikado: OMG it's Anri!
    • Happens twice in one episode (once with Masaomi, once with Mikado). I'm sure she's happy that that's what makes people know it's her.
    • See also, in the final episode of the series, when Masaomi has a rather sweet conversation with Mikado and Anri. Please note, it's in the middle of the final battle between the dollars and yellow scarves and he is bleeding profusely. All of this is done while sappy violin music plays in the background.

    E 
  • In the case of ef - a fairy tale of the two., the scene in episode 11 where Renji and Chihiro finish their date by kissing and then having sex in the rooftop of their school loses quite a part of its emotion when you see Chihiro's clothes neatly and primorously folded on the floor, as if they were just ready for morning use. Waaaaay to distract the viewer from all of the dramatic tension there.
  • Another example straddling the line between Narm and horror would be from Elfen Lied, in which some bullies are beating a dog to death with a vase. Then, quite literally, everyone explodes.
    • On a related note, any scene where Mayu and Nana are talking sounds odd in the dub because of how ridiculously similar they sound.
    • It's utterly hilarious when the minor male villain gives Lucy a We Can Rule Together speech... and then his head falls off, courtesy of her vectors.
      • It becomes a bit of belated Fridge Brilliance when she faces the Big Bad, father of that same minor villain, late in the manga and decaps him as well, explaining that the whole basis of their ruling together with her is wrong; they are not Dicloni - she would have sensed them as such. They were just humans with a horn-like mutation. Lucy's simple rejection takes on new dimensions.
    • The opening scene falls between this and horror in the opening 10 minutes of the anime. The insane blood pressure can make it absolutely destroy any hope of seriousness dependant on how funny you think Bloody Hilarious is... but the same actions can also be just utterly horrifying.
    • Lucy's backstory could be looked at as Narm due to how cardboard and unreasonably monstrous the bullies of Lucy's childhood are. And they behave this way because they're prejudiced against Lucy for being a diclonius. That's right; the kids are unfathomably evil and cruel to the poor girl to the point of literally killing a puppy to show how evil they are and push Lucy over the edge out of prejudice. Sure, Tomoo could be written off as The Sociopath but the entire orphanage? What sort of kids act like this?
  • As great and touching as the finale to Eureka Seven was, the part where the Nirvash starts firing rainbow-colored, heart-shaped laser beams into the moon is a bit much. Even if it is in character.
    • Anything involving the Seven Swell, controlled or otherwise, goes straight into this bin. As amazing as the typeZERO, or any LFO, can look while sweeping, whirling, and zipping through the sky, the style gets cramped by the amazing tricks leaving behind deadly rainbow mist. This is probably why the Seven Swell is rarely done despite being Nirvash's Ultimate Attack.
    • Renton, upon seeing what's happened to Eureka's body, beats himself with a rock, attempting to make his arm swell up and match hers. Because normal welts totally look like glowing green crystals overtaking your body, right? Maurice even tries to imitate the destructive behavior. Then Renton gets a serious fever and agonizing pains, and is unconscious for about 24 hours - probably because he wounded himself with a filthy rock covered in bacteria he's probably never been exposed to. It was supposed to seem touching and self-sacrificing, but it came across as... well, a 14-year-old boy attempting to be dramatic.
    • Years before Renton's story began, the first use of the Amita Drive with the Nirvash created a wave of chaos that plunged the world in death and civil wars all over the world, killing millions of people. This terrible event's name? The Summer of Love.
  • The Eyeshield 21 anime. For whatever reason, the anime played out scenes that were meant to be humorous with the utmost seriousness, making them hilarious in a completely different way. Not to mention the ATROCIOUS animation ruined any and all Moment of Awesome in the series, with the off model art taking away from the emotional impact. For example, Sena's infamous speed is portrayed with Shaggy-like running.
    • Not to mention the biggest "villain" of the series is basically narm incarnate. Sure, he's a borderline sociopath, but it's a bit hard to look threatening with purple dreadlocks and a gold chain. He tends to skirt the line between being a legitimately horrible person and just being hilariously douchey.
  • Ergo Proxy:
    • In the English dub, the white-haired Re-l/ Monad is given an extremely annoying, whiny voice. This almost kills the drama in any scene she appears in. There's also Vincent's outfit, which some viewers have described as a big red condom.
    • In both versions of the story, the drama of the scene in the second episode where Vincent is attacked by a Proxy in a public mall is heavily undermined by the fact that the rest of the mall's occupants simply stand still with blank expressions on their faces as a monster literally tears through them.

    F 
  • Fairy Tail
    • The Animax dub has this effect on virtually the entire series. The actors sound like they're reading a script almost as often as they read their lines oddly. Some characters even end up getting over-the-top goofy voices or Unexplained Accents—Makarov ends up sounding like a gnome, and Juvia is French for some reason (without even uttering a single French phrase). Others, such as Laxus and Jellal, put little to no effort into their roles and end up sounding dorky when they shout during dramatic moments. All in all, it's easier to count the number of times the actors can actually be taken seriously in moments that are supposed to be serious.
    • Yukino's Shameful Strip. While the average reader probably isn't looking at the characters in the background, it's recommended for a good chuckle or two. One guy has his face scrunched up like his nose is itchy but he can't scratch it, there's a woman who's looking off-panel and spacing out, and finally there's an extremely gloomy/bored guy staring directly at the reader. For no reason. There are probably more, but they stand out the most.
    • During the final day of the Great Magic Games, we get a face-off between Erza, Kagura, and Minerva, and what does the announcer choose to say? "WE HAVE A THREESOME!" Whoops. Depending on the translation, Minerva also says something like this when she makes her entrance.
  • Archer from Fate/stay night activates his Noble Phantasm by reciting the magic words in English that's on the borderline of Gratuitous English and fluent English. This is supposed to make him sound cool, but the... interesting... enunciation induces liberal facepalms and cringing. Then there's the German dub. Pity this scene wasn't in the Visual Novel (which did not have voice acting).
    • Six words:
      • People generally blame the anime fansubbers for this one, but it's a pretty literal translation and is translated the exact same way in the visual novel (done by a different fan translator), where variations on the phrase appear several times. It crops up in other anime as well. Basically, it looks to be a Japanese Stock Phrase that translates extremely badly.
      • Note that the line is mostly mocked out of context. It makes much more sense when one takes into account that Shirou is referring to his own unnatural Healing Factor. As a matter of fact, before this point he didn't die when he was killed, and he is bringing attention to this fact.
    • "I was the bone of my sword, lol". DID YOU MEAN 'BANE'?
    • The death of Caster and Kuzuki was a Tear Jerker in the anime. In the UBW Movie however, and despite its superb quality, the drama is completely ruined by the fact Kuzuki has a huge-ass sword nailed on his back the entire time.
    • In the same vein as "People die if they are killed", "Just because you're correct doesn't mean you're right", taken from Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works] (pictured above). In context, this appears in a speech by Shirou and quickly deflates the drama. What he's actually saying is that although Archer has all the facts correct, Shirou doesn't care about his argument and will beat him regardless.
  • Fist of the North Star. The fashion victim villains (and a few good characters), the oh so manly and dramatic dialogue, the fight scenes... especially the one where Kenshiro taps his opponent with his finger and announces that "you will die in 10 seconds", and a counter appears in one corner of the screen.
    • Then there are the Funny Bruce Lee Noises Kenshiro makes while fighting. If you were listening to it without watching, you'd think he was fighting a flock of chickens.
  • Free!:
    • Any emotional moment that includes Rin Matsuoka is ruined by his horrible teeth. It makes sense for him to have them since he's compared to a shark, but they still make him look silly and out of place.
    • The ending of the first season can come across as somewhat overdone. Rin is kicked out of the swimming tournament he has been preparing for so long, and consequently has a breakdown. First he kicks a trash can into the camera (complete with the screen turning dark as it falls). He then runs away from the building, eventually leading to protagonist Haruka finding and confronting him. They get into a fistfight which devolves into them rolling around on the ground... And then Rin sees a piece of writing that Haruka just had happened to write in the sand earlier, and breaks down crying. As if this contrived coincidence wasn't enough, the mood is then completely ruined by the camera focusing on Rin's tears falling on Haruka's cheeks and Rin whining in a way completely unlike the way he usually sounds.
  • In the otherwise archetypical yaoi OAV Fujimi Orchestra, when the uke violinist is ravished by his seme orchestra conductor, he is in an Heroic BSoD and starts running naked on the streets. Wha...?
  • From Full Metal Panic!: At one point, Tessa's submarine is sinking dramatically when Chidori, being a Whispered, bonds with the submarine and corrects the trouble. Her image then comes up on the main screens, and a reassurance appears on the main screens on the bridge, written in English. Specifically, "Don't Worry, Everything is gonna Happy ♥". Made worse by that she apparently lived in the USA for a while and is somewhat proud of her English. It might be a Take That! to Americans with bad English, but still...
  • In Future Diary, Marco, the Seventh diary holder, has a huge and absolutely ridiculous pompadour. It's even more stupid-looking in the anime than in the manga.
    • In episode 23, =MurMur= is revealed to be manipulating everyone to become god herself. Even by the standards of this anime, it's going a little far.
    • Many fans can't help but look at Eighth, think Cooking Mama and chuckle.
    • In the anime, the drama of Minene getting a dart to the eye is ruined by her scream and the sight of her boobs bouncing.
    • Whenever someone screams First (Yuki's diary holder number) "FAAARRSSTOOO!!!!"
    • One sub translation of a scene in the anime has Minene telling Nishijima "You leave can too."
    • The sometimes Totally Radical nature of the English dub can lead to this. Perhaps the shining example of this is in Episode 12 when Minene tells Kurusu, "Give me swag, you get hostages."

    G 
  • In the first English dub of Galaxy Express 999, Captain Harlock is voiced by Peter Cullen channeling John Wayne. Harlock is supposed to be an elegant man of refinement and education. He is cultured and upper class. A few of his lines even suggest this; but with that particular voice, he just sounds pompous. (Face it - John Wayne isn't an elegant man of refinement, buster.)
  • Gankutsuou: The opening song of the anime "We Were Lovers" is a beautiful moving piece. However, when the singer says the word 'love' (in the line "I just pray that you will love me and trust me") it becomes hilarious due to the way he stresses the L in love.
    • In episode 14 Albert has become depressed due to all the crap he's endured and cheers up when Franz says he's leaving Paris for a while, thinking that means he's gonna take him with him as well, meaning he'll be able to get away from everything for a bit. However, Franz states he can't take Albert with him and Albert grabs Franz by the shirt, screaming into his face "why not?!" This becomes hilarious when he keeps his mouth wide open as if he's still screaming but doesn't say anything before Franz says "I'm sorry."
  • When the Brain Primeval is using its telekinetic powers to immobilise and attack GaoGaiGar, it becomes a bit silly if you notice that it's making a "muhmuhmuhmuhmuhmuhmuh" sound. It's probably supposed to represent pulsing or something, but still.
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, English dub, episode 21 of the first season.
    "HEY SAITO!! HAND OVER THAT WEAPON NOOOOOWW!!!"
    • The rest of the dub was great, but that line didn't get the punch it needed.
    • Far worse than that was the end of episode 16, in which Zaitsev confesses, "I was the one with the blind spot. On my heart."
    • From either season of the show, Batou screaming "MOTOKOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
      • Even Ishikawa found it funny.
      • The most ridiculous part of that was how indignant the supposed death scene looked. She just kind of flies over the railing with a huge splat, like she'd just been hit by a massive wave and her body doesn't have any weight. Plus the whole thing looks sped up, and for some reason the animation on that point is really choppy.
    • They were explaining the assassination plot on the Chinese ambassador to the suspect's sister, with: "Somebody's been making death threats on his life."
  • Brandon Heat's funeral (not to worry, he gets better) in Gungrave would probably have had more emotional weight if his tombstone didn't say "Blandon." Certain versions of the opening sequence had the graffiti on the walls spell his name "Blandon".
  • Woo sinks heavily into Narm territory in GUN×SWORD once he starts talking about his mother. The worst moment has to be when, for no good reason, he's seated naked in a throne, holding a collapsible rapier in one hand, talking about her... and then the sword expands. Fortunately, that is the last episode he talks about her.

    H 
  • Considering how old Hana no Ko Lunlun is, some episodes get so melodramatic that it comes off as comical or even stupid instead of touching in these modern days.
    • Lunlun's argument to prove that Walter is a good person compared to his fellow criminals (which he is, but almost nobody knows it among the cast aside of Lunlun and Co. and his defense lawyer) is basically reduced to "I lost my mom and so did he! His paintings reflect that! How could he be a bad person, waaaaaah!" Lunlun, sweetie, we know you're trying to help, but please stick to being All-Loving Hero and don't try to play lawyer, okay?
    • In the Latin-American dub, the emotional moment in which the blind Heartwarming Orphan Lucero tries to dissuade her friends from using a World War II bomb as a "hostage" to get her the medical attention that she desperately needs becomes horribly hilarious once you notice that the dub VA is either a male trying to voice a little girl, or a very deep-voiced old woman trying to do likewise. Either way, the Larynx Dissonance hits HARD and makes what was supposed to be a Tear Jerker completely ridiculous.
    • When Fallen Princess Margot laments her bad luck and how she's bound to marry an old Upper-Class Twit to save her family from destitution, she covers her face with her hands and cries into them. Fine, her situation really sucks. Bad thing? She then flails around for a brief moment, and the already old animation gets so weird in these brief seconds that that it's funny instead of sad.
  • Harmageddon. Some gave it the nickname Narmageddon for a reason. The dub's acting ranges from tolerable to horrible, and it ruins scenes meant to be dramatic. For example, when Junko is trying to explain to Jo why she wants to break up with him, it comes out like this.
  • The scene in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya where Kyon, in his despair about being trapped in an Alternate Universe, starts calling out the names of religious figures. That would be fine, except that in addition to invoking Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and Zoroaster, he also calls out the name of... Lovecraft. Though,, given exactly who god is in this series, appealing to The Old Ones might be a sensible move.
  • In Heart Catch Pretty Cure, the main heroines have confronted Big Bad Dune's One-Winged Angel form and have countered with their own Super Mode (well, Super Super Mode. They were already in Super Mode then). The form's One-Hit KO reaches narm levels when you hear its name.
    "PRECURE! FIST PUNCH!"
    • Yes, we all know they have a bad time trying to come up with awesome attack names, but why did it have to happen at the end?
  • Hell Girl's damnation sequences are sometimes more silly than creepy — especially in the third season. Mecha Puppies and Ai dressed as a bee come to mind.
    • The third episode of the first season has a scene this troper has dubbed "Hit and run exposition" where a trio of schoolgirls ran (literally ran) into the shot, stopping right in front of the camera and blocking out everything else to immediately talk about the Hell Correspondence, giving a bare bones explanation amongst themselves within earshot of the victim of the week, and then ran out of the shot at full speed.
  • Alexander Anderson screaming "MARS!" repeatedly at the top of his lungs during the fourth Hellsing OVA is hilarious, even while he's slaughtering some gunmen sent to kill him.
    • Especially amusing to Finnish viewers: the Japanese pronounciation, "Marsu", sounds like the Finnish word for "Guinea pig". Try to keep your face straight when a guy keeps screaming that. And Maxwell does the same thing while making his most ridiculous expression yet.
    • On the subject of Anderson, the TV series has a latter-day bit in which, during a fight between Alucard and Anderson, Alucard blows off Anderson's arms. Anderson tries to continue the fight as if nothing's happened with a bayonet in his teeth. The absurdity of the situation, the obvious comparison to Monty Python (try to watch without thinking something like "'Tis but a scratch!" or "I've had worse!"), and his looking ridiculous result in a scene that was meant to look badass becoming grade-A narm.
    • Anderson is downright hilarious in Japanese due to his frequent use of Gratuitous English. It's supposed to be threatening when he starts reciting prayers and Bible verses; it would be if it weren't for Norio Wakamoto fumbling over his English lines. See here.
    • The total destruction of London and every single one of its citizens is pretty heavy stuff, but the appearance of one Nazi vampire chomping on a baby makes the scene so over-the-top that it becomes funny.
    • Not to mention the jazzy kinda upbeat background song about demons.
    • Alucard may have taken the prize in Volume/OVA 2, when a combination of No Indoor Voice, Rule of Three and Gratuitous English gave us "HURRY, HURRY, HURRY, HURRY, HURRY, HURRY!"
    • Also, Alucard's Scary Shiny Glasses when viewed up close and at certain angles. What's supposed to make him look intimidating is instead ruined by those two tiny... dots at the opposite ends of his lens that make him appear as a goofy, cross-eyed freak. Whoever designed his glasses must have really not paid attention to these embarrassing little details.
    • Pretty much the entirety of the action scenes in the 4th OVA, apart from the aforementioned "MARS!" moments, there's the whole scene with Rip Van Winkle. Joyfully killing and dancing while narmily singing a German song about demon-hunting. Also, her over-exagerated expressions and reactions help making the whole thing falter the line between purely creepy and purely hilarious.
    • OVA Episode 9, in the aftermath of Walter and the Captain killing Yumie and grazingly shooting Heinkel in the jaw, respectively, we see Heinkel dramatically swearing vengeance, while part of his mouth is ripped out, rendering his speech barelly intelligible (at least in the original japanese). It wouldn't be bad if, in at least one fansub, it was translated into a thteweotypical lithp.
    • OVA Episode 10, Integra shouts an order for Seras to "Search and Destroy!" when their enemy is right there, in front of them, not hiding or going anywhere.
  • The preview for the anime version of Hetalia: Axis Powers for a certain Tear Jerker strip has an Gratuitous English line saying "You were so great," with a strange emphasis on "were". Not TOO bad, but annoying. Thankfully, not in the episode.
  • Higurashi: When They Cry:
    • Watching what might have been, in brighter circumstances, the entire cast of Love Hina murdering each other with gardening implements, fountains of blood everywhere, everyone grinning like madmen... Genuine horror, or the funniest thing you've ever seen? Take your pick. If nothing else, the hilarity of the psychos is somewhat contagious.
    • Also from Higurashi: When They Cry Rei, the scene in which Rika gets hit by a truck. Rika had just been thinking to herself how glad she was that everyone had made it through their hardships and how she could begin to enjoy life now. Then, for no good reason, she became reckless and started bicycle racing on a twisting hilly road. Then Satoko yells, "Watch out for that truck!" Rika ignores the warning. Unfortunately, there is a truck. The look on Rika's face is priceless. The rhythm of that scene was like a joke being told, and the punchline was so perfect that this might be deliberate...
    • Some of the facial expressions exhibited by berserk characters are ridiculous. Here is one of the more amusing ones.
    • In the dub of Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Keiichi is cornered by a very psychotic and unstable Rena holding up a cleaver. Her arm brings it down along with a hysterical shriek of "KEIICHI, YOU SUCK!!!"
    • Tsumihoroboshi-hen has the part where, completely having lost her mind by this point, Rena claims several characters have been abducted and replaced by aliens. At the start of season 2, some characters are investigating Hinamizawa, and they keep bringing the alien theory up, which ruins the suspense and horror of the whole situation.
    • The animators pick some of the most awkward times possible to accentuate Mion's and Shion's assets. Like when we're getting a shot of their wide-eyed corpses drenched in blood.
    • Takano's laugh when she is destroying Hinamizawa by gassing all of the residents. She sounds like a LOON. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogjjD2xkTDA

    J 
  • While JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is mainly Narm Charm for many, the potential for a lot of its moments to be taken out of context can also be its main source of regular ol' Narm as well.
    • The famous exchange between William A. Zeppeli and Dio Brando in Phantom Blood. It mainly serves to show just how far beyond the Moral Event Horizon Dio has gone, but Zeppeli's reaction to his response makes it seem like Zeppeli just has a serious bread-eating addiction he doesn't like people mentioning.
      Zeppeli: Bastard... How many lives have you sucked to heal those wounds!?
      Dio: Do you remember how many breads you have eaten in your life?
      Zeppeli: [visibly angered]
    • Also from Phantom Blood:
      "Mr. Joestar, that looney's a lunatic!"
    • In the anime adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, David Productions focuses more on the fly created by Giorno to follow the hidden enemy beneath the sailboat, who kidnapped all members of the cast but Bucciarati, making it seem like the fly itself is the enemy. It can feel a bit silly watching an Italian fashion model lecture an angry housefly on the wonders of Italy's sea birds in one of the series's signature, elaborated educational segments, like some sort of drugged-up Edutainment kids' show.
    • Golden Wind also features an important turtle with the ability to house people inside a miniature room within the jewel of the key embedded in its shell, serving as a lounge, hideout, and base of operations for the main cast. Too often does the turtle turn every sentence its mentioned in into A Rare Sentence.
      "How do I piss inside the turtle?"
    • This line from Stone Ocean:
      "If these snails start to crawl up my arm... I'll have to go kill my brother."
    • The titular (and literal) steel balls in Steel Ball Run can be subject to this every time they're mentioned if you don't know they're literal. Case in point:
      Johnny: I only wanted to win this race... I only wanted to know the secret of your 'Steel Balls'...
    • The English translations of the more recent manga installments display the habit of placing certain words between a pair of apostrophes. It's understandable given that said words have no equivalent in the original Japanese language, but the practice sometimes ends up making characters look like they're trying to remember a note with a word written in it.
    • The English dub of the Stardust Crusaders 1990s O.V.A.s by Super Techno Arts is . . . something. Here's a rough transcript of its take on Polnareff's reaction to Geb clawing out Kakyoin's eyes., which was originally a tense moment.
      Polnareff: KAKYOIN! [suggestive grunts] It got Kakyoin! [more suggestive grunts] KAKYOIN! KAKYOIN! [Beat] IT GOT HIS EYES!
    • In Diamond is Unbreakable, Koichi's speech about not being afraid of an enemy and being brave is completely ruined by him making an utterly ridiculous analogy about having diarrhea in a public restroom.

    K 
  • A handful of anime bloggers noted that the scene in the Kyoto Animation adaptation of Kanon where Akiko is hit by an SUV ended up looking a bit silly. "She just disappears!" The protests from those who liked the scene fell on deaf ears, even when they pulled out a real-life video of someone getting hit by a car that looked exactly like that.
  • Kill la Kill: some of the dramatic moments involving Ragyo can feel a bit absurd due to the fact that her clothes tend to be a bit... odd. A good example is her outfit in episodes 17, 18, and 19, which looks the bastard offspring of Maleficent, a clown, Liberace, and a disco ball. Granted, it's likely meant to be a parody of Haute Coutre fashion (she's filthy rich and a fashion designer), but it's such a blatant case of Fashion-Victim Villain that it's can be hard to take the dramatic reveals of those episodes seriously.
  • The English dubbing of Kite falls into this. Sawa refers to the male lead as "Ovary." That ought to lower everyone's expectations.
  • K-On! is a Slice of Life series, and the somber moments are done well. This is not the case in episode 11 of the first season, "Crisis", when Ritsu has been absent from the club meetings for a while and the other four band members plus Sawako are having a discussion about it. Cue the Mood Whiplash when Sawako claims that Ritsu might order a big bowl of beef that she can't finish and drift off to heavy metal, combined with a picture of Ritsu with Kiss-inspired make-up and her child-like roars. The whiplash may have been intentional, but the viewer was not given enough time to get into a serious mood again before the dialogue continued.

    L 
  • Lycoris Recoil: The ending of Episode 8. As Himegama begins to tamper with the artificial heart of a drugged Chisato and Takina prepares to rescue her friend from the unknown danger, the dramatic music is suddenly replaced by the upbeat ending theme, which continues for the rest of this otherwise tense cliffhanger.

    M 
  • Macross:
    • Super Dimension Fortress Macross: The knife fight. Fans will know exactly what this means, but for everyone else: Max has completely on numerous occasions in previous episodes defeated and humiliated Millia in combat, and so she decides to sneak aboard the Macross to confront and kill him. Unbeknownst to him, he ends up facing off against her in a flight-sim video game at an arcade and again metaphorically wipes the floor with her. Finally, under the guise of asking him for a date, she challenges him to a knife fight. The most ridiculously narm-y fight in existance. The animators made no effort whatsoever to actually depict what an genuine knife fight would look like, opting for the two to go Flynning with their daggers. In the end, he wins again, and she finally begs him to kill her. He instead, proposes marriage.
    • In Macross Frontier episode 19, Ranka is running upstairs to the launch deck, elated because she thinks Alto loves her, when she suddenly barges in on Alto comforting Sheryl (who had collapsed due to her illness, but Ranka doesn't know about that). On the one hand, it's sad to see poor, brokenhearted Ranka stand there, saying, "It can't be..." with a frozen smile on her face. On the other, it becomes hilarious when one remembers that this is Alto Saotome, and that his predecessor was often caught in the exact same situations, with the exact same results. Ranka should have screamed "I HATE YOU, ALTO!" and punched him into the distance.
    • Macross Zero had what the ship was called before they named it "Macross": "Alien Spaceship 1". Okay, that's logical enough, but did you really need to acronym that to "ASS-1", Japan?
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Nanoha describes how she can relate to Fate, knowing how lonely she is. The accompanying flashback would be sad if Nanoha wasn't drawn in a Super-Deformed style during it.
    • The Tear Jerker quality of the second season's ending was decreased a tad with the phrase "I am the happiest magical book in the world". It makes sense, considering who's saying it, but it still made many people giggle.
    • In the third season (StrikerS), episode 9, while Teana's trying to describe her worth and how to improve it to Nanoha during the helicopter scene, Signum nonchalantly shuts Teana up by socking her in the cheek, sending her flying ten feet. (She held back.) The best part is, no one could have seen it coming. Teana's wangsting, and suddenly there's a hand on her shoulder and WHAM.
      • Also in StrikerS, the charges brought up against Quattro in episode 12 — "Attempted murder and the use of dangerous magic in a populated area" — become hilariously hypocritical when Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate try to capture them with two Wave Motion Guns and an attack that looks like it's destroying half of the city.
      • The way Vivio flails about in the second StrikerS opening just before Nanoha runs to her for the Take My Hand! shot can be quite funny to some.
    • Intelligent Devices' Gratuitous English to be expected. Bizarre syntax, word choice and fragmented sentences like so are unintentionally funny. Use in dramatic sequences like Subaru's fight with Ginga in Episode 23 is Narmful.
      • It's especially bad when you consider that they went to the effort of casting native English speakers for those roles. What's the point in doing that if you won't bother with getting the grammar right?
      • An example: In one episode of A's, Raising Heart tells Nanoha that it can still shoot even though it has been damaged in combat. What does it say?
        "I can be shot."
    • Some of the drama in the flashback at the beginning of Episode 10 of A's that shows Clyde Harlaown's death is lost at the beginning, when a display says "ALART". That last one, at least, was fixed for the DVD release.
    • In the newest chapter of Force, Subaru goes into battle. What's her codename? Swordfish
  • In the second episode of Mermaid Saga, a bad guy suddenly kills a henchman who questions their current goals by throwing a dresser at him. This is already odd-looking. It becomes hilarious when the others' reaction is limited to one guy saying, "He's already dead".
  • In Mirage of Blaze, episode 7, a emotional scene between Naoe and Kagetora is ruined with the sound of what appears to be porno music in the background, as well as when Kagetora slaps Naoe instead of punching him.
  • A scene from Episode 18 of Michiko & Hatchin has Michiko threaten someone she saw looking at Hana. He then says that she just reminded him of Rock Morena. Upon learning that he knows Rock, Michiko starts nosebleeding. It's not exaggerated like it usually is, but for a show that usually avoids such cliches, it's amusingly out of place.
  • From Monster Rancher, we have the series' threatening Big Bad... whose name is Moo. This is actually derived from "Mu", which means "not have" or "without", making it a case of Names to Run Away from Really Fast in Japanese. Why the dub decided to spell his name like the sound a cow makes is beyond our mere mortal understanding.
  • The last fight between Arika and Tomoe in the penultimate episode of My-Otome ends with Tomoe's Robe shattering and her falling to the ground, screaming defiantly in a manner similar to that of a cartoonish supervillain. After she makes impact with the ground, she somehow is able to limp away and shoo off a group of palace soldiers trying to capture her/tend to her wounds.
  • My-Otome 0~S.ifr~ had a Narm moment thanks to Gratuitous English. Lena Sayers is fighting a hopeless battle, struggling with a stern face to withstand the energy blast while her Robe is literally falling apart... Cut to her GEM, displaying the words "POWER OVER LODING". Poofsky! There goes the dramatic tension. Still awesome to watch, but the spelling fix would have made it perfect.

    N 
  • In the last episode of Noir, Big Bad Altena lets her hair loose in front of a volcanic vent while delivering the final challenge to the protagonists. It was supposed to be dramatic, but more fans than not found the scene unintentionally funny. Altena's hair and skirt blowing around made her look like a Marilyn Monroe wannabe and an octopus simultaneously, wrecking the intended effect.
    • The somewhat unusual locale for anime, Paris, is also a source of Narm. In one episode, Noir is being chased by armed suits through the bamboo forests of northern France... wait a minute, there are no bamboo forests in Europe! (It was a flashback; but by the time that scene aired, the series was going out of its way to avoid showing or mentioning any travel between France and Japan. That led to disorientation here.)
    • In episode 8, there's a scene with six men standing around a dead Mafioso. When an even bigger boss shows up, they exclaim in perfect unison, "Don Salvatore!"

    O 

  • In one moment of the Outlanders OVA, Tetsuya witnesses a hapless human soldier get stabbed through his open mouth by the series's Amazonian, Chainmail Bikini -wearing heroine, and loudly comments on his apparent, inminent death by sword. The seriousness of the scene quickly falls flat on its ass for two reasons: Tetsuya sounds more mildly inconvenienced than terrified, and the fact that he delivers it in a muffled voice at the same time the dying soldier is shown in the next shot makes it seem like the latter is protesting about his death with a fucking sword in his mouth, as if it had about as much psychological impact as stepping on a dog turd. It doesn't help that the scene is accompanied by cheerfully dissonant music you'd hear while strolling through a route in Pokémon, while the place is littered with mutilated corpses and Scenery Gorn.
    dookah now i'm phreekehn dehd!
  • Outlaw Star has two of the most fearsome outlaws ever in the galaxy: The McDougal Brothers. It takes away tension when someone mentions their name. Luckily, they're scary enough to outweigh any hilarity in their names.
    • This gets even better with their first names: Ron and Harry. Outlaw Star came first, but really.
    • Never mind their name (it's threatening in an Old West kind of way); their (or at least Harry's) effeminate appearance goes beyond Bishōnen. Flowing blue hair in a large pastel bow...
    • Harry's overreactions. Grazed in the arm by a bullet? Replace the whole damn thing with robotics.
    • The entirety of the wrestling episode. Was supposed to be Hot-Blooded but was just too silly.
    • A tense lead-up to the first grappler-to-grappler battle turns narmy when the grappler arms pull out... spaceship-sized pistols and blades, making for an incredibly weird and goofy mecha fight.
    • In the english dub Harry hits Melfina with roses when she tries to refuse his advances and tells her "I didn't mean to do that, Melfina! I'm sorry, I promise I'm not going to hurt you!" *backhands her to the floor about a few minutes later*

    P 
  • Name ANY dramatic moment in Pani Poni Dash!. However, it might have been on purpose, due to how cheesy the scenes are.
    • The worst example of this is the 11th episode. as it's revealed Sayaka idolizes Ms. Igurashi. The context of Sayaka idolizing a drunkard (oddly, this is the only episode where she isn't seen drinking, and naturally, Miyako lampshades it) makes the sweet moment (along with Himeko) seem... off.
    • No, no, no, the 19th episode takes the cake. After Himeko gets possessed by the mushroom that locates where her Idiot Hair used to be, she tells Becky that she never wants to see her again. Cue sad music, Becky running away sad. Overacting, out of place, and considering just a few minutes ago, Ichijo was seen with a big claw, you'd think they're parodying something. It's played seriously, and again, it just doesn't work.
    • From episode 7; a spell to possibly help Behoimi to get magic powers is done. Rei then says some magic words, only to then just randomly spout out "Yeah". We go from something tense to... something awkward. This is on the dub version, by the way.
  • In Persona 4: The Animation, the episodes about Nanako's kidnapping and death are genuinely well-done... except for the scene in which Narukami is angsting about it and then Yousuke shows up with a face that gives the impression that he had just been smoking bongs. It was supposed to show how Yousuke had it hard too, but for some people, the animators were trying just TOO hard.
    • Later, while Yu is giving Adachi a retort, the fact that he's been magically restrained and beaten results in a pose where he's basically shoving his ass at the viewer. Aaaawkward.
    • The ending sequence of Episode 25 would be pure Heartwarming, were it not for Yu looking out of the train window and seeing all of his loved ones running after him in perfect unison, with almost identical facial expressions. Luckily this was reanimated for the bonus episode.
  • In Pokémon: The First Movie, where Ash has just released the Pokémon captured by Mewtwo and is guiding them up to do battle against Mewtwo's army of cloned, enhanced Pokémon. Ash declares that they won't allow him to go through with his plan of genocide. It's all tense and dramatic right up until Ash attempts to attack Mewtwo himself. As in, Ash actually running at an Olympus Mon with the clear intention of physically, and personally, punching him right in the face, common sense be damned. Mewtwo was seen deflecting a wave of fire from a Charizard, a charging Rhydon, and a Hyper Beam from a Gyarados, all with no effort whatsoever; charging Mewtwo seems a rather foolish thing for Ash to do. Mewtwo, for his part, contemptuously flings Ash several hundred feet through the air, which would have killed him were it not for Mew's intervention.
    • When Ash was turned into stone after being hit by Mew and Mewtwo, all of the Pokémon start crying. The tears float to Ash and bring him back to life. Pokémon has been filled with these for a long time...
    • Good luck getting through the crying Dewgong. Whatever your opinion is on the rest of the Pokémon crying, nothing could make "GOOOOOOONG!" sound dramatic or sad.
      • It's even worse in the Japanese version.
    • Most of the dialogue from the first movie can qualify, including this:
      "She's very small, but very pretty!"
    • Believe it or not, one of the most hilarious lines in the dub comes from Mewtwo, who, after delivering menacing, awesome Badass Boast after Badass Boast, goes a little too over-the-top with this extremely hammy gem before the final battle (to Mew): "Who will rule? My super Pokémon, or your pa-thetic group of spineless, inferior Pokémon?"
    • In the English dub, any seriousness in the first Pokémon movie was lost when a certain Pokemon was referred to by the wrong name: a trainer referring to his own Pidgeot as "Pidgeotto".
      • The dub writers apparently didn't realize that Pidgeotto's evolved form had a different name. A Pidgeotto's not BIG ENOUGH to carry a person through a storm on its back!
      • During the somewhat scary scene in which Team Rocket witness the clones being released, the dub has them mistakenly call a Scyther "Alakazam". Unlike the Pidgeotto/Pidgeot example above, there's no excuse for this one!
      • Actually, according to the audio commentary, that one was left in on purpose since the writers thought it was plausible for Team Rocket to make a mistake, and that it would be something cool kids could catch.
    • The televised sequel Mewtwo Returns begins with Mewtwo narrating the events of the previous movie in full Dan Green gravitas. It loses a lot of its power when he, in his words, "encountered my nemesis". "Mew mew mew mew mew mew..."
  • The Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai movie, in which Dialga and Palkia are fighting each other. A girl who has temporarily joined the team yells at the two Pokémon to stop fighting. Think about this for a moment. Even if the creators of time and space were willing to follow orders from some insignificant human, they wouldn't have heard her because they were flying high above the city!
    • Then there's some of the lines yelled by the good semi-Eldritch Abomination Darkrai. Yes, a dark lord of nightmares screams, "THIS GARDEN IS FOR EVERYONE!"
      • What's even worse is that Darkrai was holding back both Dialga and Palkia when he said that, so it was meant to be his Moment of Awesome.
  • There was the English dub of Pokémon: The Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon. A virtual Mew gets destroyed, and the villain remarks in a very nonchalant tone, "Good riddance. Flawed specimen." The delivery of this line made it narm.
    • To say nothing of how Ash responds afterwards "Flawed specimen? You've got a whoooole lot of nerve talkin' about Mew like that!" He's supposed to be pissed but just sounds like he's merely been irritated by a bully's insult.
  • Pokémon: I Choose You!:
    • Pikachu talking to Ash during the climax is clearly supposed to be a heartfelt and serious moment, but it comes so completely out of left field that it can be incredibly difficult to take the scene as it's presented.
    • Ash's Dream where he's in a world where Pokémon don't exist. After waking up from it, he tells his friends about his dream, which they exclaim that it sounds like a pretty terrible one.
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • The anime in general makes it hard to take some of the more dramatic battles seriously because every defeated Pokémon has swirly eyes when they're knocked out.
    • Cynthia's speech after Ash and Paul's final battle about how "when one life touches another, relationships grow". The dialogue itself and the way it's delivered sounded very much like she was describing Ash and Paul falling in love with each other.
    • There was also the episode called "The Scuffle Of Legends," mostly because "scuffle" tends to be used in the context of two children having a mild altercation on the playground, not when two colossal monsters are battling and could potentially screw up the entire planet.
    • You can attribute this awkward title to a hamfisted atttempt to work in the Stock Phrase "The stuff of legend", as the localization team at the time were up to their necks in the pit of gratuitous title puns.
    • The very concept of Pokémon Speak as used in the animenote . While it works for the smaller/cuter Mons (especially Pikachu), that monstrous alligator or armored praying mantis with pincers or gigantic Spider Tank becomes a whole lot less scary and badass if it talks in some sort of human-like baby talk consisting only of its own name. At least some of them (such as Charizard) put a more realistic spin on the concept; they emit more animalistic cries that vaguely sound like their Japanese name ("Lizardon!"), just like a few real animals. It's even worse when some Pokémon don't even speak their whole name. When Ash had a Krokorok, for example, all it could really say was "CROWK-UHHH!" in a manner that made the ever-infamous "Find the computer room!" sound like Freddie Mercury in comparison. Notably, the Pokémon Speak is less Narmy in Japanese, largely due to Japanese syllable structure, 4Kids' Michael Haigney admitting to half-assing some of the English Pokémon voices, and it even being Played for Laughs and used for puns on occasion. So the Narm of Pokémon Speak might just be a case of a concept that works in Japanese and doesn't translate very well to English.
    • Somewhat related to the above: The Mega Evolution special is incredibly badass, especially compared to the rest of the series, but Siebold's Blastoise looks and sounds like a fat oaf (at least in the Japanese version). This is a bit disappointing compared to the Blastoise in Pokémon: The First Movie voiced by Tesshō Genda, of all people.
    • From "Tentacool & Tentacruel" the big rampage the Tentacruel goes on, knocking all the Pokemon out of its way has one moment where Misty's Goldeen gets swatted and makes an absolutely hilarious sound.
    • Ash's current voice actress, Sarah Natochenny, doesn't do drama particularly well. All of her attempts to yell or sound angry sound very stiffed and pained.
    • The English dub occasionally mixes up Pokemon names, which causes this. One infamous scene has an Officer Jenny refer to a Growlithe as its evolved form, Arcanine. Jennies don't even use Arcanine!
    • The singing Alolan Dugtrio from the Sun and Moon Episode 23, Getting the Band Back Together. It's supposed to be famous for its singing, but its voice and even the music is too blatantly awful to be taken seriously or even be believably liked by all these people, and the fact it sings in Pokémon Speak doesn't help. Apparently the Pokemon world likes godawful music sung by three headed mole Pokemon with surfer dude hair.
    • In Yo, Ho, Ho! Go, Popplio!, Lana tells Ash the story of how she met her Popplio by saving it from being bullied by several Team Skull Grunts. The scene is framed as a heroic rescue, but it's a little hard to take seriously because two of the grunts are literally just throwing sand at Popplio while the other three are doing a ridiculous dance in the background for no apparent reason. Even sillier is Lana's goofy-looking angry face with puffy cheeks when she sees what the grunts are doing.
  • The famous car chase scene from Polyphonica episode 7. The annotations in this video point out everything wrong. QUALITY animation, physics-defying driving, consistency issues - you name it, they list it. It was Enhanced on DVD to fix Off-Model animation and consistency issues, though the physics of the scene don't change at all.
  • In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the girls have pretty well-animated and cool Transformation Sequences. The bad thing? Mami Tomoe's cute little hops with bended knees and pigeon toes before she transforms for the first time are... quite distracting. And kinda out of place.
    • In episode 11, Walpurgisnacht is supposed to be a very dramatic fight... except for Walpurgis the witch having a super ultra high-pitched Evil Laugh that completely ruins the effect. Shut up, stupid witch/bitch, just SHUT THE GODDAMNED HELL UP!
      • Although it may have been ruined before that. Homura's ready for the final showdown as a dramatic thunderstorm looms, and... giant green elephant.
    • And in episode 12, as Madoka makes her game-breaking wish and in engulfed by intense power that blasts lots of stuff away for the sheer awesome, Kyuubey pulls his Most Epic Face Ever, which is either this or Narm Charm to the nth degree.
    • Charlotte's One-Winged Angel is a large worm that appears to be made out of candy and looks as though it has the face of a clown. It's something of the equivalent of Lelouch's pink sword in dramatic effect, especially after it devours Mami.
      • To those unfamiliar with Code Geass and its Narm, 'Lelouch's pink sword' is something that seems incredibly silly and Narmy when first introduced, but turns out to be less... amusing later on. Unless you're so jaded by Code Geass-like stuff that Charlotte ends up ruining the whole scene instead of enhancing it, that is.
    • In episode 8, Homura breaks down in front of Madoka and tearfully begs her not to throw her life away. The latter's response amounts to awkwardly mumbling "I have to go now" and running away. (Though for others, it crosses into Foreshadowing and Fridge Brilliance, considering how Madoka reacted like that because she cannot remember all the times she has thrown her life away in other timelines, while Homura does.)
    • Mami's mental breakdown was rather overblown because of how much her eyes dilated and how OOC it was. One second calm and composed, bam, next second Kyouko's dead and she's holding a gun.
    • The scene at the end of episode 3 where Mami is eaten by Charlotte can be hard to take seriously when the sounds heard during this action resemble the squishing of silly putty.
    • From the English dub, as Kyoko is fighting Okyavia von Seckendorff: "Hey God, if you're there, my life SUCKED." It's less silly and more poignant in the original, where the equivalent line translates to "Please, God...look at the life I've lived."

    R 
  • The Read or Die OVA. It's really hard to take anything seriously when during tense moments someone calls Yomiko "ZA PEIPAA." Furthermore, the idea of someone being called "The Paper."
  • Record of Lodoss War: The series is usually made with exceptional quality, but the kobolds and goblins sound just like a five year old kid trying to imitate a parrot.
  • Ringing Bell: When the wolf kills Chirin's mother, Chirin starts crying...and starts running and jumping around while he's crying. Bobsheaux even remarks that Chirin looks more like a child throwing a temper tantrum because his mom said he wouldn't get any candy.
  • In Rosario + Vampire, it is stated that one of Moka's weaknesses as a vampire is fresh water. This is shown the first time when she jumps in a pool to save Tsukune. The second time, all they do is flick water on her, and she is screaming like crazy, and sparks are going everywhere.
    • The gratutious fanservice that goes on even during the serious moments is more likely to induce laughter than arousal. For instance, in episode 12's On the Next sequence, Moka gives a dramatic narration, and theeeen... Panty shot! Any chance of that sequence being taken seriously is killed instantly.
  • In Rurouni Kenshin, the filler Shimabara arc has the scene where Shougo and his followers are surrounded by the Japanese military and resist their attacks before the Kenshingumi and the Dutch ambassador (the only authority figure willing to help) can get there. It's all very dramatic, specially considering Magdaria's recent Heroic Sacrifice, up until a little Christian kid named Ganta loses it, tells his best friend Sakura goodbye... and begins screaming "'I'M GOING TO HEAVENNNN!" as he runs right into a bomb and almost gets blown up, only Shougo's Big Damn Heroes saving him. While It Makes Sense in Context (Ganta has mentally cracked due to his father's recent murder and the whole "let's kill Japanese Christians" deal), it comes off as so random and sudden that the until-then really tragic scene turns into borderline Black Comedy.
    • Not to mention the theme song for Rurouni Kenshin is rather inappropriate, considering the show's more dramatic atmosphere. Like the mention below, it sounds like the Heathcliff song.
    • The first theme song, Judy and Mary's Sobakasu, is especially narmy. Here, we have a badass who can practically take down ANY foe without actually killing him. Some blood, broken bones, swearing, and dramatic scenes. What do we get for his theme song? A very theme song that bears a slight resemblance to the 1980s Heathcliff one. That would be like playing the Muppet Babies theme during the opening for Sons of Anarchy.
    • The sex scene with Shishio and Yumi in the Kyoto OVA, it's completely out of place being based off a shonen manga, and it makes no sense because Shishio suffers from massive burns. Not to mention the rather ridiculous and out-of-place dialogue between the two during it.

    S 
  • ADV's dub of Sakura Wars (2000) could sometimes lead to Narm. For example, Kohran often sounds like she's drunk. This makes lines like "I'm not a little girl, and I don't need your pity!" pretty funny, as she sounds like an alcoholic drowning her sorrows in a bar.
    • To a lesser extent, there's also Kanna's thick New York accent.
  • The first episode of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, which is Narmy anyway by today's standards, features one outstanding moment: a giant robot is breaking into a nuclear power plant. The army's guns have no effect. The robot is now flying into the sky, just about to blast them all with a giant laser. What does the general say about this? With no expression whatsoever, he glowers at the robot and says, in perfect monotone, "you damn uranium thief".
  • The final scene of School Days in which the main character is stabbed to death by one of his girlfriends is supposed to be shocking; since the protagonist is a Jerkass, it comes off as cathartic.
    • The scene where Kotonoha kills Sekai and cuts her open to check whether she's pregnant is supposed to raise the question of whether one or both of them is lying, mistaken, or simply insane. It comes off as Black Comedy because of how Kotonoha goes about doing it. The last scene, where Kotonoha sails away while cradling Makoto's severed head and speaking to it as though he were alive comes off as both disturbing and funny.
  • School-Live!:
    • Taroumaru's death in the final episode. It is genuinely sad and terrible but is overdone in an awkward way. He was already a zombie so you would expect Miki would have assumed he wouldn't make it, even with the anti-zombie vaccine, however she sobs her heart out. The thing that makes it really narmy is that Miki didn't react nearly as strongly to Kurumi, her close human friend, almost becoming a zombie. Kurumi is saved but there's barely a reaction but the poor puppy who didn't even like Miki does a Heroic Sacrifice and it's very dramatic. It's worth noting that the manga averted this, due to Taromaru having a far smaller role in the manga and being long dead by the time Kurumi is infected, and thus her being cured of the infection is treated with more dramatic weight then it was in the anime.
    • The climax to the final episode has Yuki telling zombies to leave the school over the speaker... and they do leave! It makes more sense in the manga where they move away from Kurumi and Miki because a noise distracted them. In the anime if anything they should have tried to get to Yuki, not run away from her.
  • selector infected WIXOSS:
    • Episode 7 had Iona, the Dark Magical Girl, give Ruko a Breaking Speech in a scene very reminiscent to Return of the Jedi's "feel the anger flow through you" scene, and every action Iona henceforth takes is reminiscent of Ian McDiarmid's hammy acting.
    • In episode 8, Yuzuki tries to tell Ruko to stop being friends with her. She does this by putting a hand in front of Ruko's eyes and keeping it there until she's run away and out of sight. It's like she tried to do a Stealth Hi/Bye like Batman, but utterly failed by not even disappearing from the shot when Ruko turned around. Then she stopped and gave up, like she'd just realised how stupid she looked.
  • The end of the opening of Serial Experiments Lain:
    PRESENT DAY, PRESENT TIME! HA HA HA HA
  • Sgt. Frog: The third movie. Dark Keroro has nearly taken over the world and reveals his giant doomsday device. And what does it do? Slowly scoot along the landscape, plowing into things. REALLY SLOWLY.
    • And the goofy little dance Dark Keroro did to summon: didn't it crack you up?
    • The Second Movie. Where's The real "Deep Sea Princess"? It's was actually Natsumi all along wearing a some "Deep Sea Princess" gown.
  • In Shakugan no Shana Flame Hazes and Crimson lords have narmy sounding aliases when translated into English. Shana is the "Flaming-Haired Blazing-Eyed Hunter". Margery Daw is the "Interpreter of Condolence" or "Chanter of Elegies". Wilhelmina is "Manipulator of Ten Thousand Ribbons" or "Specialist of Everything". Khamsin is the "Mobilizer of Ceremonial Equipment". Behemoth is the "Steadfast Sharp Peak". Valac is the "President of Reptiles". East Edge is the "Summoner of Star River". Quetzalcoatl is the "Windy Echo of Enlightenment". That about sums it up.
    • Shana answers her English teacher's question ("That which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet") in correct but otherwise indecipherable English. It would have been a Moment of Awesome for Shana if we had been able to understand her.
  • Shaman King: In the Distant Finale of the 2021 adaptation, despite now being grown men, all the Elemental Warriors (with the exception of Horohoro who is voiced by a man) are still voiced by women and sound exactly like their younger selves. It borders on unintentional hilarity.
  • In Shattered Angels, the main hero (Kyoshiro), has lead a group consisting of the other Angels' masters to stop his brother and save the five from reawakening the thing that brought about their last Apocalypse Wow. When they get there, Kyoshiro spots one of the girls, Kuu, and shouts out her name. Not so bad, right? Well, for some reason, the Japanese actor decides to raise his voice at the "uu" part of her name, so it comes off as less of a call out and more someone stepped on his foot as he shouted out.
    • During the big "I'm a Perfect Angel" revelation...
    Kaon: Sorry for bringing you here so forcefully... I was wondering if we could have a chat...
    Kuu: Yes... please be gentle with me...
    • It could be argued that the only reason the series doesn't get its own page is that it was too short to accumulate much Narm.
  • In SHUFFLE!, Kaede's Yandere side is horrifying, but not in this scene due to Asa's comically Off-Model facial expressions.
    • The scary scene where Kaede drops a boxcutter on Rin's eye from the top of the stairs is made Narmy when we see Kaede's arm somehow manage to reach all the way from the top of the stairs over to where Rin is to drop the boxcutter.
  • As a result of "Blind Idiot" Translation, the Switch Off arc of Sket Dance turns Kazuyoshi Usui (Switch) and Sawa Yamauchi's Love Confession into one. In the Japanese version when Kazuyoshi tells her that he loved her, she breaks down and reveals that she loved him too, but due to the death of Kazuyoshi's litle brother Masafumi, she is so traumatized that she has to move to a different town (because he was killed right in front of her eyes, by a psychotic girl who originally wanted to kill Sawa herself, leading to Survivor's Guilt). The English subbed version (and the Scanlation english manga version) translates this conversation literally which becomes:
    Kazuyoshi: I loved you.
    Sawa: Me too!.
    [Runs away crying]
  • Slayers had an otherwise well-received dub, especially for it's time, but Sylphiel's voice was always considered an exception. Her subdued vocal tone and delivery turned her Big "NO!" (at the sight of her city burning to the ground and her father killed) straight into this. Gourry sounded more upset than she did!
    • Bits of the first season, when the dub was still finding it's footing, ran into bits of this too whenever Zelgadis (also suffering from an overtly subdued voice at the time) screamed or yelled. The actor usually sounded constipated, killing any epic moment the character had! Fortunately they fixed this later that season.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie brings us this English-dub gem during a clash with Sonic and Metal Sonic:
    Sonic: You may know everything I'm going to do, but that's not going to help you because I know everything you're going to do! STRANGE, ISN'T IT!?
  • Sonic X has the odd Narm here and there. One instance which stands out is, surprisingly, corrected in the dub version (done by the infamous 4Kids Entertainment) from the original Japanese. In the episode The Birth of Super Sonic, there is a scene where Christopher Thorndyke is so disturbed by seeing Sonic attacked that he somehow manages to break out of a set of solid steel restraints holding him to the wall before reaching out and ripping the Chaos Emeralds out of an active robot, doing himself a great deal of damage. In the dub, this is an impressive sight. In the original, Chris's seiyu is... more vocal about the whole thing; the tone of Chris's screaming turned it into Narm of epic proportions.
    • When Chris tries to reason with Shadow on the Space Colony Ark (and steal Amy's heartwarming moment), telling him that it's not fair to blame people for what happened 50 years ago, Shadow delivers this rhyming rebuttal:
    Don't talk to me about fair, not after what happened here!
    • Then there's the last episode. In the (more tearjerking) Japanese version, Tails breaks down upon being told to shoot Cosmo in order to defeat the Metarex. He finally works up the nerve to. The last words he says before doing it are "Cosmo... I LOVE YOU!". The dub cuts this scene for an unknown reason and just has Tails say good luck and goodbye. The delivery is... like a vocal version of Tobey Maguire's facial expressions.
  • In Soul Eater, Maka defeats Asura by "filling her fist with courage" and punching him in the face. This, for some reason, causes him to crack apart as though he was made of glass and explode. This has even been mocked multiple times in the manga. The more recent villains that Maka has faced actually tell her that courage alone won't let you win, and that people don't explode when they die.
  • The theme song for the anime based on Spelunker, Spelunker is a Teacher (yes, really), is a pretty awesome remix of many of the tunes from the infamous game. Now if only it wasn't undercut by the hilariously nonsensical Gratuitous English lyrics:
    Doing all make you feel so good
    I want to risk my life for myself
    When you believe me what I do
    Surmount incredible diff-i-calities
    Oh, everyone say me
    He is just a spelunker
    Doing nothing make you feel so bad
    I know a weak alive anywhere
    When you stop to blame others
    Surmount incredible diff-i-calities
    Oh, that's it for my life
    Cause I am just a spelunker

    T 
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: There's the pronunciation of Simon's name both in the original (She-Moan) and the dub (See-Moan), which can produce laughs because they both sound vaguely dirty and like "Simone" (Si-MOAN), which is a girl's name.
    • According to Matt Greenfield, the would've-been ADR director of the ADV Films dub, ADV would've dubbed the name as the English "Simon" (Sai-mun) and averted this.
    • Much of Gurren Lagann's main motifs are drills and genetic material. Maybe that's why Simon's name is pronounced like that...
    • In the 24th episode, when Simon is told that his drill won't be enough to penetrate an enemy's shield, his response is just hilarious. His very first thought is "So you're saying I need to get a bigger drill?"
    • "EAT THIS!"
      "NEVER!!"
      • This gem from the dub could be intentional:
      "The magma of our souls burns with a mighty flame! Super Ultra Combining, Gurren Lagann!"
    • Less fun, however, is dub!Kinon's Big "NO!" when it looks like Rossiu's going to off himself after all. It sounds like she stubbed her toe.
      "No! Stay away!"
      "AAAAAAOOOOWWW!"
    • When the Anti Spiral is being fought in the dub, he pulls a Breaking Lecture... and then starts saying "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO, NOT AT ALL!" This makes the scene rather funny.
      • Strangely, dub fans often cite this exact line as an example of how awesome the actor is!
      "ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWAH"
    • The Anti-Spiral spacecraft. The hands with faces, and the evil Mt. Rushmores, are creepy. The jet-propelled feet... not so much.
    • Lagann-hen's version of Kittan's Heroic Sacrifice. For some reason, Kittan's voice becomes so ridiculously high that it becomes difficult to take the scene seriously.
  • From The Big O: the protagonist dramatically shouts, "I'm one of the tomatoes!" It made sense if you knew the Backstory, but it would produce nothing but giggles from anyone new checking in.
    • The doppleganger Roger bot was another, especially once it starts mimicking Roger's "Big O!" activation call. It was a plan by Beck, so you can't expect too much seriousness, though.
    • Megadeus would be an intimidating moniker for a giant robot, as it translates to "Super God." But it should be pronounced "mega-day-us." It is pronounced "Mega-deuce," which sounds like an Unusual Euphemism for a really big crap.
    • The title itself. The creators clearly were unaware of the English word "orgasm" when they thought of it.
  • In The Prince of Tennis, when Inui shows up all bandaged after he and Kaidoh's doubles match with against Renji and Kirihara. First there's his Moment of Awesome; then he's dramatically taken away; and all of a sudden... WHAT? HE'S A MUMMY NOW?! Pffffft.
  • Like an example cited under Narm.Code Geass, this is purely Fansub-created Narm. During a rather serious, dramatic conversation in episode 15 of Toradora!, one of Taiga's lines is translated as "Because of that, I was able to relieve myself." If that sounds funny to you out-of-context, then just imagine its effects in-context.
  • Similar to the Nanoha series that it inspired, Triangle Heart 3's OVA has Gratuitous English that makes the villain's evil scheming at the end of the first episode hard to take seriously. The fansubbers had to correct the grammar in the subtitles.
    • The flashback at the beginning of the third episode, in which Kyouya and Miyuki learn of Kyouya's father's death, would be more dramatic if the lighting didn't make the two of them and Momoko look like they're playing "Spectre Face" with flashlights, and if all three didn't have Dull Grief expressions on their faces.
  • Trigun has quite a few examples. Most of what Rem Saverem says qualifies, especially when she appears in dream sequences.
    • Vash begging a criminal to stop a massacre instead of kicking their ass.
    • Even Knives has moments of Narm, notably when he starts emoting about "Why doesn't my brother love meeeeee?"
    • Vash's and Knives's lines switch between genuine drama and horror and pure Narm because of the immaturity of some of their comments.
      "If humans want to harm us, let's just leave then come back!"
    • Vash shoots Knives and then runs away after Knives first tests his angel arm. Knives clutches his wounded thigh and cries, "My leg! Why is there so much pain in my leg? Did you shoot me? DID YOU JUST SHOOT ME?!" while he and Vash are looking at each other in horror. Then Vash lets out an almighty scream and runs away. After that, Knives curls up in fetal position while crying his eyes out. In another anime, this kind of character would be crying "Daddyyyyyy!" all the time before going Yandere. (Vash is more the "Mommyyyy!" type.)
      • Given his propensity to spend days Wangsting, fretting, and generally feeling sorry for himself, that could make Knives a genocidal and attractive version of Shinji Ikari. Knives is half horror, half Narm; he shows what would happen if an angry, jealous two-year-old had the bitterness of an adult and superhuman powers. He absolutely can't deal with frustration, and his self-control skills rank in the negative.
      • To be completely fair, it seems like most of this was intentional. Vash and Knives, left to wander by themselves for a hundred years, have become unstoppable war machines with the minds of children. The entire story is about Vash's struggle to grow up, in a way.
    • The scene in the episode that follows Legato's death when Vash tries to pet Kuroneko. Kuroneko scratches him, and he gets that wounded look. Sure, the whole universe is against him, but that's going too far. You can practically hear him think, "Even the cat doesn't like meeee! Boo hoo!"
  • Any scene with Ion Fortuna in Trinity Blood. Granted, he is going through puberty, but his voice cracks a little too often. In one scene, it cracked three times in one sentence. It happens so often that it almost stops being funny; some viewers start to dread hearing him talk. (It doesn't help that Ion is a filler character who is primarily there to have a Romantic Plot Tumor that doesn't lead anywhere.)
    • In the first few dubbed episodes of Trinity Blood, Tres Iques, the badass Gunslinger android with a super-monotone voice, uttered two words directly before a fight.
      Genocide Mode.

    V 
  • Violinist of Hameln has a lot of this between plot holes.
    • Some of this could be the fansubber's fault. Depending on the source, Trom Bone's attack can be called "Scissor Slash"; but some fansubs have him using the attack "Jesus Slash".
    • Hamel gets depressed about a horn sprouting from the middle of his head that he apparently just woke up with one day.
    • Raiel's football player/train conductor parody outfit.
    • The whole battle in Staccato. We have a couple dozen gallons of blood squirting about twenty feet in a huge, gorey fountain; Hamel screaming his head off for no apparent reason; etc.
  • The Vision of Escaflowne has a narmy scene where Van resuscitates Hitomi. Combine Van's face and torso moving up and down with the sound effects of heavy breathing, and well... Did they think it through?
    • From our good friend HBI 2 K, Out of Context Theatre (starts at 1:35). "Push harder, harder!"
    • Dilandau is impossible to take seriously despite being seriously evil. Especially hilarious are his panic attacks both times he's nearly killed by Van. Screaming in a high-pitched voice with your mouth hanging open two feet isn't the best way to have people take your moment of peril seriously.
      • "My cheek BURNS Van, just like the city! And all because YOU'RE in it!!!" Seriously?!
      • Dilandau's chirpy baby voice in the English dub only makes matters worse.
      • It's even HARDER to take him seriously when you realize his Japanese seiyuu is Minami Takayama, the same one who voices pint-sized detective Conan Edogawa in Detective Conan.
    • Hitomi's Dream Sequence in which she's back on Earth, and Allen's there with her, having decided to abandon his life on Gaea for her. They go on a date for no apparent reason. The problem? He's still in his Asturian knight outfit, which looks out of place in modern Japan. The other problem? He acts completely out of character throughout the whole sequence. It's as if someone took a not particularly imaginative preteen Japanese girl's idea of what a first date should be like and then had Hitomi and Allen act it out — it's like a romantic Transplanted Character Fic. Then, at the end, Millerna turns up literally out of nowhere, and Allen goes "Oooh, Millerna!" and immediately forgets about Hitomi. The whole thing leads to Fridge Brilliance about whether Hitomi truly loves Allen or just loves his bishounen-ness and how he looks a whole lot like Amano-senpai. That scene was really weird.
    • Earlier in the series, we have King Duke Freid's death. You know, being turned into a Human Pincushion is really, really not a nice way to die. But when someone gets struck with dozens of bolts simultaneously from nearly every conceivable angle, it goes from dramatic to both disturbing and funny in a span of seconds.
  • In one episode of Voltron, the villains have caused mass panic through a deadly red rain. A child named Tammy falls over in the press of terrified people, and the mother is dragged away saying her name, which should be a dramatic scene, except that the mother delivers the line as though Tammy is trying to climb up a stack of cans in a supermarket.

    W 

    Y 
  • The dramatic effect of the scene in Yozakura Quartet Episode 7 when Ao wakes up from a dream after being kidnapped by Enjin was lost when the last part of the dream involved her backing up against the wall with eyes wide in terror as a plate of cheesecake fell to the ground in slow motion. The plate broke and the slice of cheesecake was smashed to bits—also in slow motion.
    • In Japan, this made sense: Drop and fail are the same word in Japanese, so the subtext of that scene in Japanese is that she will never get Gin back. Since English in fundamentally different, the multiple meanings get lost; then the Narm kicks in.
  • Throughout the YuYu Hakusho anime, Koenma is often shown making humorous commentary on fights from his office in Spirit World, which is often at odds with the serious nature of the situations. The worst case is just after Yusuke gets the Forlorn Hope from Kurama. The manga had a scene in which Kurama, having survived using the mirror to cure his mother, tearfully tells her that he is not going anywhere, while Yusuke goes home and offers to make his mother dinner, moved by Kurama's devotion to his mother. In the anime, this touching moment is removed; instead, Yusuke jokes with Botan while Koenma is concerned about getting the last treasure (although probably more out of fear of his father's punishment than of Hiei).
    • During an epic battle in the YuYu Hakusho Dark Tournament arc, as Hiei is using his dangerous Dragon of the Darkness Flame technique, his face becomes rounder and more childlike, dangerously close to Super-Deformed; coupled with his deep voice as he shouts, this is funny. In the same episode, Bui gets reduced to wordless screaming each time he attacks and it fails to do damage against Hiei. After the third time around, it gets hilarious.
      • Byakko the White Tiger's Japanese voice. The character is supposed to be a raging beast, but the seiyuu plays the role with as much Dull Surprise as he could. Especially funny is the "roar", which sounds just like someone saying "Rooooooooar!" instead of actually roaring, and yet the characters treat it like a terrifying sound.
      • There's also Kuro Momotaro's Armor Of The Phoenix, which looks (and sounds!) more like the Armor Of The Chicken!
    • A minor villain in an early episode who's blackmailing Kuwabara by threatening his cat, enjoys being bad a little too much to be taken seriously. It's especially narmful in the Japanese version where the subtitles give us this:

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