Narrator: Difference between revisions

[[File:narrator2.jpg|link=Rocky and Bullwinkle|thumb|400px|With speed and dexterity astonishing for a woman of her advancing years, Mother bastes the turkey, tosses the salad, and mashes the potatoes!]]

 

[[Self-Demonstrating Article|That's what the sign had said, anyway.]] And so, [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|as if compelled to do so]], the Troper sat down at his computer screen and began to type...

 

 

To be a Narrator, the individual must directly relate to the story in some way, if only as the person telling it. For example, [[Alfred Hitchcock]] was ''not'' a Narrator for ''[[Alfred Hitchcock Presents]]'', because his footage was independent of and had no bearing on the story or stories it appeared with. [[Rod Serling]] ''was'' a narrator, because he specifically introduced stories, often provided a lead-in to set them up, and provided a closing after the story footage ended; in one episode he actually ''was'' in the story, explaining how it was clearly ridiculous fantasy until the protagonist hears him and burns an envelope with his name on it, causing him to disappear.

 

 

One way of subverting this trope is to [[Interactive Narrator|have one or more characters able to hear the narrator]] (in most instances, the characters do not hear the narrations), and refuse to do what the narrator describes. Another is to [[Unreliable Narrator|make the narrator a complete liar]].

See [[Narrator Tropes]] for specific types of narrators.

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* The [[Dragon Ball]] series. Recaps the previous episodes. And closes the final scene. On occasions he narrates in the middle of episodes. The Funimation Texas dub narrators are infamous for gravely voiced, "Last time, on Dragon Ball Z!". The Japanese dub sounds like an elder man telling a story.

* ''[[Digimon]]'' had an interesting variation on this: in the first two seasons, most episodes began with the previous one being recapped by a character and ended with narration by a generic narrator. However, the third season begins a new-year-is-new-universe format similar to [[Super Sentai]], and from then on, episodes are narrated by one of the previous year's characters!

** Of course, this is just for the dub...which is somewhat abandoned in ''[[Digimon Savers|Savers]]'' in favor of a next episode preview. One of the characters still recap the previous episode, but only when it's needed.

* Who could forget the narrator from ''[[Speed Racer]]''? [[Catch Phrase|Unknown to Speed, Racer X is secretly his older brother, Rex, who ran away from home years ago!]]

* ''[[Princess Tutu]]'' begins every show with a Narrator telling the audience a fairytale. Sometimes it's from the (fictional) fairytale that one of the characters is from, sometimes it concerns a character's backstory, and sometimes it's a story that's somehow related to the episode. Drosselmeyer also serves as an odd narrator in some scenes, appearing on-screen to question details about the characters and the scene, and to occasionally tell the characters (who can rarely hear him) what they ''should'' do. {{spoiler|Considering he's actually writing the story, it makes sense for him to be the narrator.}}

* ''[[Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-hen]]'''s Narrator may be THE MOST [[Hot-Blooded|HOT BLOODED]] Narrator. EVER! Oh, and he's also a [[Large Ham]] as well.

* The [[GaoGaiGar]] Narrator explains all the scientific Keys to Victory without really letting emotion into it. He doesn't need to - explaining ''how'' the [[Monster of the Week]] will be getting its ass(es) handed to it in through what is basically the Japanese version of [[Morgan Freeman]] is enough.

** He's only a typical narrator in the Japanese version. In the dub, he openly hates his job and tries to seperate himself from the insanity. In one episode, he actually quit his job because the series recycled a plotline too many times, and a new British narrator replaces him until he comes back at the end. He also only does the show because he's deep in gambling debts, apparently.

* ''[[Kimba the White Lion]]'' sometimes uses a narrator who would set up the premise of the episode or go over plot points that the audience may have missed from previous episodes.

* [[The Sandman]] would occasionally make use of a narration, sometimes it would be one of the series’ characters and other times it would be anonymous but fairly poetic.

* One of [[Frank Miller]]’s signature tropes is his usually hard boiled style narration.

** “Nextwave is in your room and touching you stuff”

* For the Frankenstein segments of [[Grant Morrison]]’s [[Seven Soldiers]] the narrator was also a [[Large Ham]].

 

== [[Film]] ==

* Parodied until the break of dawn by the ''[[George of the Jungle]]'' [[The Film of the Series|movie]]. The narrator not only narrates the action, he talks to the audience (at one point assuring them "[[Never Say "Die"|Nobody dies in this movie]]... they just get really big boo-boos"), corrects the actors when they mishear his description and at one point gets into an argument with one of the [[Mooks]] over how he's describing him, even rewinding the movie just to give him a hard time.

** The narrator was also parodied with in the old ''[[George of the Jungle]]'' cartoons, including one point where he made a character in the cartoon crash his plane into the top of the mountain with the warning, "Let that be a lesson to you: never monkey around with a narrator."

* The [[Adam Sandler]] flick ''Eight Crazy Nights'' had narration as well.

* ''Little Children'' plays this oddly straight, with a narrator explicitly saying what the characters are thinking at a given moment. It's surprisingly effective, though frequent PBS viewers will be rather weirded out, as the narrator they use is Will Lyman, the voice of ''Frontline'' and many an episode of ''Nova''.

* The Criminologist fulfills this role in [[The Rocky Horror Picture Show]].

** "I would like ([[Audience Participation|You would, wouldn't you?]]), if I may (No, you may not), to take you on a strange journey (So strange they made a movie out of it!)."

* It's entirely possible to just listen to ''[[Casino]]'' from another room and understand almost everything that's going on because of the detailed narration.

* Kuzco in ''[[The Emperor's New Groove|The Emperors New Groove]]''. Eventually, the ''onscreen'' Kuzco tells him to shut up.

* Every adventure in the ''[[Hank the Cowdog]]'' series is told by Hank himself.

 

* [[Rod Serling]] in ''[[The Twilight Zone]]''.

* Ron Howard's voiceovers in ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]''.

** Yuna narrates the sequel.

* Marquis Ondore narrates, via his memoirs, several key points in ''[[Final Fantasy XII]].''

** It's also implied Alazlam Durai is getting this information from the "Durai Reports", written by his ancestor Olan Durai (who hangs around at the periphery of the plot through much of the game, only actually appearing in battle once)

* In the 2004 version of ''[[The Bard's Tale]]'', the events of the game are narrated by the man who's reading the tale (as voiced by the late [[Tony Jay]]). He and the eponymous Bard (as voiced by Cary Elwes) frequently bicker throughout the game, discussing issues like [[Kleptomaniac Hero|the morality of claiming items from chests for one's self]], or [[Money Spider|the absurdity of finding money]] [[Randomly Drops|or sellable goods from killing various creatures]].

* ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'' has two narrators. Antimony does the bulk of the narration from some unspecified point in time. (According to [[Word of God|Tom Siddell]], [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|she's telling the whole story]], even the bits without narrator-text boxes.) And Tea (that white-haired girl) serves as a fourth-wall-breaking [[Mr. Exposition|Miss Exposition]] on a few of the end-of-chapter bonus pages.

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' has a narrator who sometimes interacts with the characters.

* The BLU Spy in ''[[Cuanta Vida]]''.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* A weird example is the Narrator from [http://chimerabazaar.blogspot.com/ The Chimera Bazaar's] spin-off [http://nightmareabyss.blogspot.com/ Nightmare Abyss] who is a main character.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* The narrator of ''[[Powerpuff Girls]]'', starting out every episode with, "The City of Townsville:" and ending every episode with a variation of, "[[So Once Again the Day Is Saved|So, once again, the day is saved, thanks to the Powerpuff Girls!]]" In the [[Freaky Friday]] episode, the Narrator ended up sounding like Bubbles at the end.

* The Storyteller in ''[[Dave the Barbarian]]''.

* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' has a French-accented narrator inspired by Jacques Cousteau, who seems to be "studying" SpongeBob and friends. He rarely interacts with the characters, save for one memorable moment where, as he was narrating, SpongeBob ran over him.

** Also, in the movie, the French narrator started talking, only for ''the Fish announcer to speak up and state it was his job to narrate''. He does this, then the two converse until they realize they [[Is This Thing Still On?|left the mike on.]]

* The narrator of ''[[Sheep in The Big City]]'' has so little fourth wall that he regularly appears on-camera in a recording studio. He interacts with the characters so often it's more noteworthy when they ''can't'' seem to hear him, has been fired, physically attacked...the list goes on.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Characters As Device]]

[[Category:Exposition]]

[[Category:Narrator Tropes]]