StrongBad is a character from HomeStarRunner.com, a popular online cartoon website. He has his own segment called “StrongBad Email,” where fans send StrongBad questions through email and he usually answers them by acting out his response. In this particular segment, a viewer by the name of “James F.” asks, “Dear StrongBad, what would you look like as a Japanese cartoon and what would it be about?” StrongBad then goes on to describing his transformation into a Japanese anime character, stressing the most notable characteristics of a stereotypical anime character. Within the segment, while StrongBad is in his anime representation, a panda comes bouncing from nowhere and falls on the character HomeStarRunner, who was previously speaking with StrongBad in him trying to be “The Guy” like StrongBad. The segment ends with StrongBad back on his computer typing his final remarks, claiming, “Japanese cartoons are weird,” setting Japanese anime productions as the exotic and foreign “other.”
On a personal note, I found this segment quite entertaining because although StrongBad explains through stereotypical means (e.g. When StrongBad says, “…and for some reason I would have blue hair, you’ve gotta have blue hair…”), through Western eyes, he does a decent job of explaining Japanese animation superficially. Japanese anime connoisseurs would definitely argue against such a misrepresentation, given that anime sometimes does touch on more mature themes such as war, human relationships, love, etc., and StrongBad only dealt with a “space” scene where he would “fly around in cool poses.”