Leadoff Man: A Comedy Duo Built on Friendship

Meet the Friends Behind the Act

Leadoff Man is a Japanese comedy duo of Ayato Ozaki and Shintaro Tsukatani, represented by the talent agency Production Jinrikisha. Their act puts conversations between friends front and center. They perform manzai, a Japanese style of two-person stand-up built on back-and-forth banter.

Friends since high school, they both list playing catch with each other as a hobby. Their baseball loyalties differ: Ozaki follows the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, while Tsukatani roots for the Hanshin Tigers, both Japanese professional teams. Their agency describes their manzai as full of one-sided affection.

What Friends Talk About

The routines available on this site draw on dating, school memories, work, and travel. They favor conversations with a specific reason to happen: someone wants a girlfriend, needs a vacation, or has questions about the years before they met. Everyday concerns give the friends something personal to talk about.

Where to Start Watching

Start with “School Days”: friends who met in high school ask each other about their elementary and middle school years. It’s an inviting introduction to the duo’s focus on friendship, built around a question you might ask an old friend: what were you like before we met?

In “Dating App,” a man who struggles to talk to women tells his friend and comedy partner about the dating tips he found online and has been trying out with a woman he met through an app. It’s a good pick if you’ve ever tried applying advice from the internet to your love life.

Watch this one The Boyfriend Sales Pitch A hopeful dater sweetens the pitch with every no. The friend listening won't budge. 3:36 Roommate Wake-Up Duty Being late for work sparks an argument over whether a roommate should be an alarm clock. 3:21 Getting Ahead of the Vacation Plans A friend can't mention a vacation without the other jumping ahead in the conversation. 3:21 Catching Up on Childhood A childhood catch-up stalls on a subject one friend refuses to drop. 3:07 Dating Advice, Straight From the Internet A dating-app hopeful reports back on every online tip with way too much confidence. 2:58

We use AI as part of how we create our articles.

Subtitles on this video: AI translation from the Japanese.