A joke doesn't have to be the center of attention to be silly. I think you've misunderstood what I was trying to get at, since you pretty much reiterated what I said before haha. I also think you're generalizing a bit. Sure it might imply a tropical setting, but that's certainly not the case in every instance it's used. I know it's not an anime, but take The Flintstones for example. It's meant to be ridiculous and comical. It's also shown up in scenes where the character is very, very hungry and swallows it whole(or whatever).
Maybe you're not necessarily laughing at the meat, but it sure is funnier that it looks the way it does than, I dunno, a T-Bone steak.
I'm not really saying that it has to be the center of attention, but the difference between the Flinstones and anime, speaking completely generally, is that its environments are inherently comedic because its the Stone Age with a modern twist. The show's concept is joke in itself.
I think I'm being a bit misunderstood here, mainly because I'm completely twisting a word into another word (intentionally). When I say "Tropical", I mean "Like or having the properties of a trope", kind of lending to its nature as a symbol and its presence in various anime. 'Cause there's just no adjective version of "trope". But the Meat-on-the-Stick generally isn't used to make the scene more comedic. Because all things considered, the MotS is a means to an end. Oftentimes, to make the scene lighter and jokier, the character that's eating will be talking with their mouth full. But if I saw Luffy eating...I dunno, foie gras and doing it, it'd be less comical not because of what it looks like, but because it doesn't match the environment and setting. T-Bone Steak, too. You'd be wondering why it's there and even if you don't catch it, you'll notice something on the scene is out of place. It's not the what that makes it comedic, it's the goofy "mouth-full-of-food" face, but if the "what" is out of place than it will have a larger, probably unintentional presence.
But in the land of Fairy Tails and Pirates, MotS makes sense. It fits the environment, is easy to draw, and is recognizable without any need to explain what it is. Even if it can lend itself to making the scene lighter, it's because the viewer associates it as that more than anything else; it's pretty unlikely that if you got a non-anime fan to sit down and watch a single show with it that they'd make the same connection, and that's because its a symbol. If it seems comedic to you, it's not because it's inherent (after all, it's just meat on a stick, the only effect it inherently has is to possibly make you hungry or disgusted) but because you associate it with things that you've seen in the past.
Sidenote: This is a discussion. This is about as much as I hope to see in threads where you just list things that you do/n't like. It's certainly more fun than just listing things off and leaving it at that. After all, it's not everyday that I get to discuss the machinations behind lolis and Meat-on-a-stick
deargoddon'ttakethatoutofcontext, and I mean c'mon, where else would we actually discuss this stuff? We don't even go to these places in the DCC.
