Manzai is a kind of Straight Man and Wise Guy duo, but it’s also the interaction between two characters who constantly play off each other.

The tsukkomi is the Straight Man of the pair, while the boke is more or less the Wise Guy, but it’s not an exact match. The act usually involves the two talking about something; the tsukkomi trying to correct the boke’s misconceptions, sometimes by acting out a scene in order to help make his point. The boke sets up the gags by getting everything completely wrong, either because he’s a moron or because he’s being a smartass to the tsukkomi.

Every line of conversation repeatedly leads up to the boke saying or doing something unbelievably stupid, at which point the tsukkomi will finally lose his patience and Dope Slap him; a good manzai act needs both halves of the duo to be funny, both for the boke’s idiocy and the tsukkomi’s short temper -` A´-