Ziggy: Soreyuke! R&R Band

While Ziggy isn't exactly good, it deserves attention from those who have a taste for the kind of wild, anything goes type of anime that was easily available in the 80s/early 90s OVA scene. The plot's absurd, the characters are barely developed, and the animation is mediocre, but who cares? You get to watch a Japanese hair metal band run around London, play bad songs, and clear themselves of murder charges! The film contains some unintentional comedy at its finest and deserves a viewing (preferably after a few drinks).

There are a lot of great moments in Ziggy just waiting for well-deserved mockery, like the band ... playing an impromptu concert while on the run from the police, and a hilariously sexist and clueless scene where the members of an all-female punk-ish band giggle around in the kitchen, happily cooking a big meal for the all-male members of Ziggy and some assorted British punk dudes. You will also learn, again and again and again, about how important it is to never stop rockin'.

To be fair, the people in charge of this production weren't completely deluded into thinking an audience would hail this fiasco as being great art. Once you learn why Ziggy's been framed for murder, it's pretty clear that the whole movie's just meant to be a joke. The big reveal is genuinely hilarious and in the best tradition of campy films featuring rock bands. There's an aerial battle that takes absurdity to new levels, and plenty of other deliberately ludicrous moments leading to the grand finale.

I had a lot of fun watching this little gem and definitely recommend it for a certain kind of anime fan. Ziggy is never dull. You'll be laughing (or at least cringing) all the way through. Just don't expect it to be anything more than what it is: an obscure bit of anime that manages to entertain despite itself.

Ziggy: Soreyuke! R&R Band follows Japanese rock Ziggy as they come to London for a recording session, only to find themselves getting attacked by a group of men as the arrive at the hotel. The musicians barely escape with their lives, but soon find out that their producer has been murdered, and they are the suspects. Chased by the police and a mysterious organization who has murdered their producer, they soon find shelter at a local rockers' place.

And that mysterious organization? The Nazis. That's right, the Nazis are back and want to take over over the world, but this time they want to take over ... the world through popular music. I know that this is technically a spoiler, but would you even be paying attention if not for the twist being that hilariously contrived? And to top it all off, the anime has members of Ziggy working with a cop from Scotland Yard who pilots an old World War II plane to attack a Nazi zeppelin to save another member of the band and to try and stop the Nazis.

Now, to pull it back a bit so that I don't oversell this OVA, you have to approach this with moderate expectations. As awesome as that premise is for something, it's still not as memorably crazy or over-the-top as some other anime is, like Angel Cop or Mad Bull 34, but I'd argue that in some ways that's better. Sometimes being that over the top is tiring, so seeing something like this being a lot more low key can be a bit more enjoyable to some extent.

But considering that the anime's plot is just an excuse to get the whole OVA going and the music being front and center of the whole thing, it's pretty obvious that this was meant to to push the soundtrack that was being heavily featured throughout the whole thing, with the songs being features prominently in the credits.

And that's because this was a promotional piece for the real world Japanese rock band Ziggy. But for those who aren't in the know, who exactly are Ziggy?

Ziggy was and still kinda is (more on that later) a blues rock/hard rock band that was founded in Morishige Juichi in 1984. Throughout the years, the bands line-up has been constantly changing, with multiple members joining, leaving, and rejoining the band.

In the year 2000, they changed their name to "SNAKE HIP SHAKES" and released a few albums under than name, but they eventually changed it back to "ZIGGY" in 2003. In 2008, the band announced an indefinite hiatus and have only come back for short periods of time in 2010 and 2014, with 2014 being Ziggy's 30th anniversary.

The TL;DR read version of it is that this 70 minute OVA was nothing but a promotional piece to put on store shelves to promote the band that it was designed around.

The band members didn't even voice the characters in the anime, but I suppose that's because either the band was touring at the time, it would have been too expensive, or the band members either couldn't be bothered to do the voices for the anime or knew that actors would have been a better choice.

And this wasn't the only anime to feature the music of Ziggy, with the long-running anime Detective Conan/Case Closed featuring other songs by Ziggy, including "Happy End" and "Step by Step".

Ziggy is an anime that not only could have been made in the 80s, with it's cheesy "Take down the man with the power of heart and music" plot and silly soundtrack, but it could have only been made during the Japanese bubble economy where Japan was having an exponential economic growth, which, coincidentally, would pop the year after the released of this anime.

And while it's nothing more than a way to sell people on the band, it still enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong, it's not some hidden classic, but it is a mildly amusing romp with a silly plot solely meant to get people to buy more CDs, but it was fun seeing some random 80s band take down the Nazis.