Recently I have been rewatching some of the comedy anime I watched and rated highly before. Overall, they felt less funny compared to when I watched them last time. Comedies do have diminishing return on rewatching. You remember best jokes well enough and hearing them ad infinite does not generates as much laughter as it used to when jokes were new. Moreover, you better notice various issues like some other jokes that are not funny, rudeness, unnecessary cruelty and other problems.
What makes a good comedy is a tricky question. Different people have different tastes in humor: what is funny for one is not so for another. One might also grow up from some forms of humor and find certain jokes you used to laugh at in the past no longer funny. Different types of comedy have their own terms for them, like satire, dark humor, absurdity, self-deprecated humor and so on.
Here I would not talk about something called Romantic Comedy. This is something women like for some reason I cannot really understand. From my point of view comedy is all about laughing at something that is funny. This funny is more often than not is not sexy, its complete opposite of sexy. Because if someone does something, that certainly will not win them any affection, while being completely certain it will work, then it's funny and you can laugh at their stupidity. If they do something that will actually work, it can be useful to know but it will not be funny.
In my case I like either dead pan absurdity where people do completely senseless things like it's perfectly normal or satire that makes fun of social issues and stupidity in real life. Anime that best represent this genre are Gintama, where they combine their idiocy, Excel Saga that calls itself Quack Experimental Anime, Nichijou that is very good at making their absurdity look like the most normal thing in the world and Kill Me Baby, that offers very common-sense solutions when characters expect something wild instead. Outside anime, movies by Zucker Brothers that often feature Leslie Nielsen fit this role best. British humor, particularly Monthy Python, Black Adder and Spitting Image do it well too.
As for comedy anime I did not like, then Azumanga Daioh because it makes fun of characters in a mean way for no good reason, there is nothing funny about Osaka and it's rude to make fun of her. Invader Ika Musume, because all jokes were too obvious to be funny, basically its dumb. Konosuba, because they think comedy is merely about being rude and for the most part ignored jokes altogether, one exception is headless horsemen trouble with noisy neighbors or something, I watched long ago so do not remember details, but there was a funny headless dude there. Nonetheless one joke is too litte to redeem Konosuba.
As to why watch comedy. To answer that question, I first need to talk about why it is good to laugh. That might seem self-explanatory, but I will iterate on it. Laughter makes you happier so something that makes you laugh is good and useful in itself. I had a friend that used to find funny things in pretty much anything around him. That allowed all of us to laugh, a lot. He even joked that if 1 minute of laughter extends life by 10 minutes then we will live forever. That is how much we laughed back then. I cannot know if he still laughs as much as we used to or not, maybe life got the best out of him and he too now fell into the same doom and gloom, unable to cope with fucked up reality around us. Now that I no longer have any contact with him, I watch comedy to bring back that laughter and lighten up life a little bit.
In view of that it's sad that old favorites no longer shine as bright and bring as much laughter as they used to. Unlike other shows it's hard to be consistently good (in this case funny) in a comedy genre. Some jokes really make you laugh for minute or more. Others could not even put a faint smile on your face.
Gintama always had a mixed bag of episodes, the best episodes produced more laughter time than episode runtime. Others just did not work. Watching it again made me pay more attention to what did not work. The excessive rudeness of characters, especially women, and unreasonable violence towards men is actually Gintama two big problems. When these things are mixed with a really ingenious and funny jokes, they go well enough, but without a good joke these things feel unpleasant, so unpleasant that I would have dropped Gintama altogether if not for the jokes.
Excel Saga seemed much less funny then how I remembered it, best jokes seemed missing altogether for some reason, but worst ones are still there. Again, too much unwarranted violence towards men. It was still good occasionally but far less so.
I do wonder why that was the case. Did my standards rose after I watched better shows? Did I started paying more attention to things I do not like? It's not like my tastes changed, but my perception of the show changed on balance. Before I thought it was more good than bad, now it seems bad outweighs the good for some reason.
Nonetheless I will still remember best Gintama jokes, like: to protect his identity we will cover his real name with <beep>, I am not <beep>, I am Katsura, writing in Kamchatkan, test to join Joi, using elder as weapon then complaining that other players use demon king as weapon, riding on a coffin, dying from hitting a sign, shed a skin and become a more evolved gorilla, aliens turning people into screwdrivers and then characters thinking it makes sense to work as truck drivers because their body parts were turned into screwdrivers, Nabeleon, girls like storms hurricanes and the like, writing love letter, what is this white thing, 24 hours inside out of control Shinsengumi, an assassin Gorilla 13, when these things will catch up with them, I will dump that pants pooping loser, Bentendo OwwEee que, all of the dialogue is funny, mayonnaise with mayonnaise, marathon evolved Taka-tin into a huge wrestler looking foreigner, answering quis correctly by asking to go to toilet, eating Arkraiser and then making deal of saving Earth for supply of Arkriser cartriges, what is this big white thing, its toilet paper, a ghost from the well that forget her kotatsu, Blureiko that makes everything blue instead of scary, Jump Samurai, why do you cook in my kitchen while playing that action music, loose-eared slut, chuubert assassins, temp Elizabeth that filled on Mondays, Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon that everyone recognises for some reason, catching space octopi is like daring a woman, most importantly is to show initiative, Space Captain Katsura, Zura development week, hardboiled, Abe-san, Mage on public hair, Pandemonium-san turning shy and cute, whole Barbershop saga was funny, Robot for doing business in space and more.
Fundamentally however a good comedy shows sharp mind and intelligence of the author. They can fool around, but they are actually much smarter than an average joe. It's like a secret code message that only smart people get (really get) and more stupid ones miss the point. That is something bad comedies seriously lacking as bad comedies are written by people too stupid to understand the message.
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