Genre Roulette: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

'''Genre Roulette''' is what the name suggests: A single work that switches between distinct genres, seemingly at random.

Musical '''Genre Roulette''' is closely related to [[Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly]]. The difference is that a Genre Roulette album can have a country song followed by a punk song, while an NPZR album will have a song that's country ''and'' punk at the same time.

 

 

{{examples}}

* The ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' anime played this with pretty much every episode being a parody of a certain genre. Everything from War Movies, to Dating Sims, to Sports, to Variety Shows to Post-Apocalyptic is given a once over.

** ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' made a point of this, opening ''every episode'' with manga author Koshi Rikdo giving his (reluctant) approval to give the series a Genre Shift. The style and weirdness remained consistent enough despite this, however.

* ''[[The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]''. As a whole though, you can probably put it into [[Magical Realism]], though every piece has its own defined genre.

* ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]''.

* ''[[Brigadoon Marin and Melan]]'' is a sci-fi adventure drama, but it's also a middle-school [[Slice of Life]] show, a comedy with occasional parodic elements, and a teen romance. One minute you're in the middle of a serious political discussion at an alien council, and the next minute, the aliens are trying to settle their dispute with a pie fight. Serious [[Mood Whiplash]] may result.

* ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' seamlessly combines the [[Space Western]], [[Film Noir]] and [[Yakuza]] genres, among others.

 

* [[Grant Morrison]]'s ''[[Seven Soldiers]]'' does this deliberately with each of the miniseries exhibiting the traits of a particular style of comic genre.

** ''The Return of Bruce Wayne'' and ''Multiversity'' are also set up the same way with each issue being a different genre based on the setting (time in RoBW and the worlds in Multiversity).

* Played with a bit in [[Ronin (comics)|Ronin]].

* [[Aquaman]] can be this at times, while most of the iconic DC heroes have their own niche, Aquaman is constantly reinvented. At one point he went from warrior king, to exiled [[Barbarian Hero]], to [[Messianic Archetype]], to Street Level Crimefighter, to {{spoiler|mentor to}} a [[Heroic Fantasy]]-inspired [[Legacy Character]] in the span of ''30 issues''.

 

* ''God Told Me To''. What genre it thinks it is depends on what scene it happens to be.

* ''[[Man of the Year]]'' does this, shifting between comedy, thriller, drama, and mystery all the time.

* ''[[Brotherhood of the Wolf]]'' is a mystery, martial arts film, monster horror film, drawing room drama, spy film and historical epic depending on the scene.

* ''[[Save The Green Planet]]'' has some regular [[Mood Whiplash]], from slapstick comedy to creepy psychological horror, with the odd martial arts scene thrown in.

 

* ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'', [[Historical Fiction]] overall skips between [[Science Fiction]], war, romance, pornography, family tragedy, horror and slapstick comedy.

** Pynchon does this a lot. It's even more blatant in ''Against the Day''.

* ''[[Cloud Atlas]]'', which skips between genres with merry abandon.

 

* One episode of ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' keeps flipping between genres, as [[Lampshaded]] by the captions:

{{quote|TODAY IN PARLIAMENT HAS NOW BECOME THE CLASSIC SERIAL

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' pushes the line between this trope and outright [[Genre Busting]]. It did so even more in the era of [[William Hartnell]], who played the First Doctor, before the series had quite settled into its format.

** As showrunner [[Fan Nickname|The Grand]] [[Steven Moffat|Moff]] put it: "Sometimes it's comedy, sometimes thriller, sometimes horror, sometimes children's stories, the silliest stories you've ever seen. Sometimes it's all that in the same episode". In Series Five alone we had a thriller, a dystopian rebellion, historical sci-fi with Churchill, a horror-adventure, a comedy romp with vampires, a [[Dream Within a Dream]] mystery, a political intrigue with reptile people, [[A Very Special Episode]] about Vincent Van Gogh and depression, a comedy, and a [[Wham! Episode|finale]].

* ''[[Community]]'': that is all. I mean what genre haven't they- wait, we should just ask Abed, I bet he knows.

* ''[[Super Sentai]]'', and by association ''[[Power Rangers]]'' in its yearly theming, in addition to its [[Toku]] base genre. This also applies with the ''[[Kamen Rider]]'' series as well. Episodes can run this line in all these series.

 

* In [[Bjork|Björk]]'s 1995 album, ''Post'', she switches from [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KxtgS2lU94 Industrial Rock], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGpLMNnhLFo Dance], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htobTBlCvUU Jazz], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP5OA0SCMZA Trip Hop], [[Chamber Pop]], [[Ambient]], and [[Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly|other]] [[Genre Busting|genres]].

* Canadian indie band Islands' debut album ''Return to the Sea'' featured a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq3-98XJCfw ten minute epic], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoRmTMjksfM synthpop], [http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=mqIHptgTam0 catchy indie-pop] and a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCxadMtJcIA rap interlude].

* The band WHY? switch between alternative hip-hop, indie rock, folk, R.E.M.-inspired jangle pop and bizarre combinations of these genres. Their 2008 album ''Alopecia'' for instance, wobbled in between the band's various genres. Compare the first single, alternative rap song "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ikWDmCatKA A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under]" to the third single, indie rock song "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5BQfC78Q4g Fatalist Palmistry]". The second single from the album, "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqcckeKtSU4 The Hollows]", is somewhat of a meeting point between the band's two main genres.

* ''Peergynt Lobogris'' switches between ambient rock, new age and jazz music.

** The Beatles in general did this a lot over the course of their career.

* Played with by [[Reel Big Fish]] on ''Our Live Album Is Better Than Your Live Album'' with [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|"S.R. (The Many Versions Of)"]] where they played the entire song or parts thereof several times, picking new genres after each variation and commenting on the crowd's reaction as they included ska-punk, punk rock, blues, disco, death metal, a "sensitive and tender emo song", old school rap and more. The verdict was "play more country, the people love it!"

* As is [[Bob Dylan]].

* This could be said of many of [[Radiohead]]'s albums, but ''Amnesiac'' fits this trope particularly well. Its tracks include the gloomy jazz of "Life in a Glasshouse," the twitchy electronic "Like Spinning Plates," the relatively straightforward rock of "Knives Out," and the indescribable "Pyramid Song."

* Suicide Machines go back and forth from ska punk and ska-core (Destruction by Definition, Battle Hymns) to pop punk (Suicide Machines, Steal This Record) and back to a mix of hardcore and ska punk for their last two albums (A Match and some Gasoline, War Profiteering is Killing Us All), sometimes switching back and forth from ska to hardcore every other song.

* ''[[Gorillaz]]'', and just with three albums. In their first ''[[Self-Titled Album]]'', they managed to mix rock, alternative, dub, punk (even though is just one song, and appropriately titled 'Punk'), and hip-hop, and the last song (M1 A1) features sounds and clips from the ''[[Day of the Dead]]'' film. Demon Days, the following album, followed a similar pattern, but with a darker and somber sound, along some dance/synth (DARE), some acoustic dark tunes (El Mañana), and even a choral (Demon Days), along with another horror film sample, from the film ''[[Dawn of the Dead (film)|Dawn of the Dead]]'' (Intro). The third album, Plastic Beach, can only be described as "crazy", what with mixing in one song the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music with hip hop, and all the album has all over sounds of soul, electro, rock, pop, and even [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|seagulls and sea sounds and a breakfast commercial]]. Of course, Damon Albarn it's clearly doing a good job, so it's not risky business.

* [[Vanilla Ice]]'s music has elements of [[Nu-metal]], Jazz, Country, Hip-Hop, [[Gangsta Rap]], Funk, [[Alternative Rock]], etc.

* Crotchduster embodies this to the max. They switch between Power Metal, Death Metal, Grindcore, Synth-Pop, Comedy, Electronic, self made audio samples, Classic Rock, Blues, Jazz, A Cappella, etc. etc. You name it, they've used it at some point. And they only have ONE. FUCKING. ALBUM.

 

== [[Toys]] ==

* ''[[Bionicle]]'''s exact genre depends on which comic/book/on-line serial you read or which animation/movie you watch. Its tone also shifts from kid-friendly fables that teach [[An Aesop]] at the end to [[What Do You Mean It's for Kids?|highly violent, messed up, borderline-horror]] stories that make you wonder how they got [[LEGO]] to approve them.

 

* ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'' parodies this. After T-Rex comes up with [http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1183 the ultimate disaster movie], [http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1184 he realizes how he can make a nigh-infinite number of sequels]: By [[POV Sequel|by showing the same series of events from different perspectives]], he can shoehorn his story into any genre imaginable.

* ''[[The Dreamer]]'' jumps from historical fiction to YA lit in a matter of pages.

* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' tends to change its genre with every [[Story Arc]]. Compare the fantasy epic shown in [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/weekly/041120 these] strips from 2004, to [http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/weekly/050618 this] [[Sitcom]]-style [[Broke Episode]] from 2005, to [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/weekly/061014 this] crime thriller from 2006, to [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/weekly/070818 this] [[Fantastic Comedy]] from 2007. The only consistent trait is that most strips have some sort of joke in them, but even that's [[Cerebus Syndrome|not always the case]].

 

* ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' switches between a samurai movie, a spaghetti western, then a buddy comedy, silent movie slapstick, horror, crime drama, ''[[Indiana Jones]]''-esque pulp adventure, a gladiator flick, etc., and sometimes all in the same episode!