Also written: manzai, straight man
The comic double act of manzai and manga: one character says something absurd, the other corrects them. Read from the closing, as a 9.
9Filed under 9. The Closing takes a completion, and this entry is releases one.
Boke (ボケ) is the fool, the one who misunderstands or says something ridiculous. Tsukkomi (ツッコミ) is the straight man, who points out the absurdity, often loudly and often with a slap or a smack of a folded paper fan. The pairing comes from manzai, the stand-up double act of Japanese comedy.
The rhythm is everywhere in manga comedy. A character makes an outrageous remark, and in the next panel another shouts the correction, sometimes in oversized lettering. In translation, a tsukkomi can look like random shouting; it is a set role, as recognisable to Japanese readers as a punchline.
Many casts are built around it. In Gintama, Shinpachi's job is almost entirely tsukkomi; in many romantic comedies the heroine plays straight to a ridiculous lead. Characters can also switch roles from scene to scene.
Knowing the convention makes manga comedy much easier to read: the second panel is not a new joke but the completion of the first.
Every letter here carries a digit; together they make 54, which folds down to 9. The weight sits in “Tsukkomi”, which carries 29 on its own and reduces to 11.
What the 9 brings is reckoning. The reference files it as a completion. Whatever else this entry is doing, it is doing it with the 9's sense of a cycle closing and something being released.
The vowels alone reduce to 3, the consonants to 6. Expression underneath, responsibility on the surface. The gap between them is where the subject is most interesting.
The 9 asks you to work out what survived the ending. The 9 sentimentalises. An ending is not automatically a meaning, and the reference tries not to pretend otherwise. The other entries that reduce to 9 are collected on The Closing.