Detroit Metal City

Once upon a time, a young anime fan who was catching up on all the Japanese cartoons he missed out on over the years noticed that a certain comedy anime called Detroit Metal City was in quite a few top anime lists. The descriptions stated it was a hilarious satirical takedown of the music industry with more laughs in it than an average season of Seinfeld, so said fan downloaded the anime eager to populate his top anime list with more “critically acclaimed” stuff and laughed his ass off at the “at the time” brilliant card the show played regarding how this badass heavy metal ... god was actually wimpier than Renton from Eureka Seven for twelve straight episodes. It was practically the only joke in the show, but he liked said joke so much that he instantly ranked it high on his increasingly overburdened “favorite anime list” upon finishing it, went to Frys a few days later for some random anime purchases, and bought the series for twenty-five bucks upon discovering a single copy next to some obscure series he had long since forgotten the name of with every intention of revisiting the joy of Krauser someday.

Two years later, said fan was eager to share the love with his friends who were visiting and put in his DVD for all of them to see. His friends were instantly turned off by the first episode, which would have annoyed the fan if it wasn’t for the fact that thanks to two years of criticizing the medium and getting caught up on most of what it had to offer, he discovered on rewatch that Detroit Metal City was not a good anime. Actually, that’s understating things. It was completely unfunny gimmicky shit that he only liked at the time because it was something he hadn’t seen before and revisiting the thing with a more trained mind revealed said series to be nothing more than a waste of a hundred bucks divided by four.

Something snapped in that fan that day, causing him to come up with several realizations. 1) He should never listen to his colleagues (or anybody else for that matter) for actual opinions on things. 2) All post-Fumoffu anime comedies are utter tripe that would never hold up on rewatch even if he used to like them. 3) He shouldn’t overcrowd his “favorite anime list” with titles that have no rewatch value whatsoever. 4) One day, he would review Detroit Metal City and expose it for the smelly piece of poo that it was to all the fans who still claim that it totally holds up...you liars.

Okay, so as I mentioned in that Diary of a Caustic Blogger level-esque introduction, Detroit Metal City is a twelve-episode OVA series about a wimpy kid named Negishi and his efforts to live a normal wimpy life whilst dealing with the fact that he’s actually a heavy metal god named Krauser due to some unfortunate circumstances that I’m not going to bother describing because if I spoiled that punchline, then there wouldn’t be anything left. Unfortunately, his manager who always goes on about how heavy metal makes her wet won’t leave him alone. And even when she does, Negishi lives in an area where Krauser seems to be everywhere, so he just can’t help getting involved and regretting it immediately afterwards. I know Japan loves to advertise the shit out of certain popular products to the point that you’d think they were as famous as Brad Pitt, but it’s established pretty early on that heavy metal is sort of an underground music genre as is, and I’d think the J-Rock audience would greatly over-eclipse Krauser’s rape threats.

Anyways, each episode is only thirteen minutes long and follows the wimpy god’s daily life trying to play his happy Swedish pop and getting away from his actual talents, along with trying to impress a girl he knew from the past that hates his metal identity. Can’t say I blame her. If I had to play songs constantly about raping the police, the girl, and that little rabies-infected puppy, I’d want to listen to the Clannad band too. It actually got to the point where I had to train myself to hit the chapter skip button whenever the opening song started, the same way people skip Ali Project when they finish a Geass episode, because that song is up there with Parasyte’s opening as one of the worst I’ve ever listened to.

And if it wasn’t for review purposes, I’d want to chapter skip the entire episode as well. As I also said in my overly-dramatic intro, Detroit Metal City really doesn’t have much to its jokes besides “get Negishi in trouble, have his Krauser life solve the problem mostly because his fans are dumb, said solution is a hollow victory”. That’s not a bad thing in of itself, but there’s a couple of problems with that approach. First off, how is exaggerating the fakeness of what goes on behind-the-scenes in increasingly absurd ways a good satire of the music industry by any definition of the word? Just because you’re changing locations and saying a different aspect is fake doesn’t exactly make me overlook that you’re just saying “the music industry isn’t what you think it is!” to which I just go “no fucking shit, son!” after the first half of the first episode. Second, aren’t jokes supposed to be ironic? How is exaggerating a truth that wasn’t even fresh in 2006, let alone 2009, to its logical extreme supposed to be irony, buttmunch?

Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with DMC having one basic joke as long as you expand on it in creative ways. Seinfeld’s episodes all but guaranteed that the ending would screw the characters in every way. But Seinfeld didn’t exactly specify a method or the degree of the casts’ misery, allowing it so that even if you kinda know things aren’t going to end well, you’ll still get surprised. But DMC’s base joke comes with so many other restrictions that imagination gets shunted out the window. Well okay, I tell a lie. There is one imaginative aspect. It’s just that it’s a fucking stupid one.

The whole thing is animated in sort of comic-book style where scene transitions and appearances look really artificial. Apparently this was supposed to further exaggerate the comedic absurdities of the show, but considering the situations themselves push absurd to the limit, all it is is a kid grabbing too many cookies from the cookie jar and getting a sugar rush along with two days in bed. Every time Krauser says he’s going to rape me, it just comes off like some high school bully trying to recreate the phone scene from I Know What You Did Last Summer despite the fact that all you did last summer was read a book and play soccer. Yes, his identity is ultimately fake, but his character is supposed to be real. And a real character fools you into thinking otherwise even if you know it can’t really happen, the same way a good story sucks you in even though dragons will never exist in real life.

But you can’t really accomplish that with prose that inserts penis metaphors every which way, and whilst it’s true that trying too hard to achieve realism just makes *insert school anime here* more unrealistic than Dragonball Z, you can only take that so far before you realize you forgot to put any sort of grounding to your product entirely. And it’s impossible to relate to the characters beyond what’s written on Wikipedia because the style just makes them seem too distant and fake to the point that all I see is the voice actor doing the recording in the background rather than an actual kid going through struggles. Also, whenever a joke is actually made, said shaky-cam still visuals used to convey the jokes are always accompanied by a lot of dialogue that kill all sense of timing and draw out the punchline far beyond the point when it’s funny. Yeah, we get it. The characters are screwed. I don’t need to hear their inner thoughts on the subject matter!

So as a result, none of the characters are the least bit sympathetic or even have much of a personality. I don’t care if this kid is getting screwed by his double life, especially since nothing ever changes afterwards and it doesn’t seem to be that big a deal. Aside from the fact that he can play music better than I ever will, there’s nothing interesting about him. He’s entirely reactionary, and so is everyone he runs into. Yeah, that girl he has a crush on seems nice and all, but I don’t know for sure and the show will never let me know any time soon. Unless I read the manga, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to do that.

I mean it’s not completely unexpected that the director of this show would try to implement something unique visual-wise given that he’s also the guy who adapted Mushishi and Aku no Hana, both anime I gave money to in order to be my live-in hookers. But whilst those shows have subtle, yet calm moods that complement the story and bring them across in a visually interesting way, Detroit Metal City’s atmosphere is loud and obnoxious and has very little movement and instead of adding to anything, it just overstuffs the whole mess to the point that I don’t know what to concentrate on resulting in an entirely forgettable experience. Nothing sticks but the novelty of seeing this in anime. And novelty’s expiration data is worse than the lifespan of a firefly.

Detroit Metal City could have been funny if the characters had any sort of actual grounding in reality rather than have both sides of Negishi’s life be as hyperactive and unfocused as a 70s hippie. If the show had dealt with the music industry the same way BoJack Horseman dealt with the movie industry, it wouldn’t exactly have been a riot, but at least there’d be strong characters and utilization of concepts to keep things going in case the jokes fall flat. That’d also be a concept unique to anime, except it’d actually have lasting appeal rather than the price tag I stuck on the front cover of its DVD box before laying it down on a yard sale table.

Now before I start writing my review it is good to note that this is coming from a person that has a history of watching shows like Beavis and Butthead and South Park. But the issue with shows like that is when you create a cesspool of stupidity than it falls under the subjectiveness of comedy if you actually want to eat the shit they are feeding you or not.

Detroit Metal City didn't produce any laughter for me watching the show. So this was not an enjoyable experience to me.
I’m not looking for any emotional attachment to any characters. The show lives and dies on ... its comedy.
I did a couple of smirks before face palming if you want to count that.

I also understand that this is a satire. I am actually a Metal music fan and do think most Doom Metal songs are garbage.
The show unfortunately never actually shows any good metal. There is no telling if the show is just making fun of Doom Metal or making fun of all metal in general.
So as a Metal fan I got no enjoyment out of this show either.

Negishi throughout the anime suffers from Multi-personality disorder due to him at heart wanting to be a pop star but knows that all he is good at is being “The Demon Lord”.
I do believe that this is something that most of us can relate to.
I wish I could express myself artistically but my brain is more logic heavy than on the creative side.
So I’m better suited for things like management and business skills than being a guitarist or being able to draw well.

So on a story standpoint I believe could have been solid, but still gets dragged down due to the rest of the show’s elements.
The plot also gets dragged out in the middle part of the show. There is no progression and becomes episodic.
Then just finishes the show off with band battles instead of completing any plot points.
Clearly this is a low budget anime. I try to not let that get in the way of my scoring but at the same time I’m not a fan of character designs and derpy eyes.
I tend to be very picky with eyes and hair and this anime is appealing in neither of those departments.

The only positive part of this show was showcasing multi-personality disorder but doesn’t attempt to bring out the full potential of what it could have been.
This could also be classified as a gag show and I don’t exactly have the best history with those shows either.
It seems that on every facet of what I enjoy in anime. This anime does not reach
It is because of that is why I can’t suggest who exactly this is made for.
Clearly it is a very popular show with the average rating.
My only conclusion is either you’re the type of person that laughs at everything or you have a dark soul and like to hear songs of people getting raped every episode.
I for one am neither and find this show to be an abysmal experience and suggest you leave this cesspool be.

Soichiro is a fan of folksy, upbeat swedish-style pop music, and he dreams of pursuing a career in making that music. He leaves his home in the country to move to the big city, where he somehow winds up as the frontman of a death metal band... This is never explained... wearing a costume that seems to be *cough* inspired by the American rock band Kiss. This band, which has achieved fame and fervor throughout the disaffected youth of Japan, is called “Detroit Metal City.”

And thus young Soichiro is torn... In his personal life, he’s the exact opposite of his stage ... persona, Johannes Krauss 2, a hardcore demon who brutally murdered his parents and rapes pretty much whatever he wants to, whenever he wants to. Despite his talent with this music, he despises it, and wants nothing more than to escape it all and engage in a career that will make both his family and the girl of his dreams proud of him... And yet he just keeps getting pulled back.

I know I played up this plot summary as a nuanced character study, but trust me, it’s a lot less interesting than it sounds.

I’m going to have a difficult time talking about the animation, mostly because in order to do so, I have to use the word animation... Which is a word this series never really deserves to be associated with. DMC has some of the cheapest looking, laziest looking animation that I’ve seen in my entire life. At it’s best, it looks like someone took pictures from the manga, colored them in, and flipped back and forth between them just to create the illusion of movement. At its worst, it’s stiff, jarring, contains way too many key frames, and abuses speed lines worse than Naruto.

The character designs aren’t that bad, as everybody seems realistically proportioned in both their bodies and their faces. Yep, nothing cartoony or moe to speak of, so that’s a plus... Oh, except for a few chunky midgets... Because Japan loves its midgets. But with that aside, this show is barely animated, save for the opening.

Say, do you remember Method and Red, a one season Fox show from just over ten years ago? No, of course you don’t. Nobody does. Although you should, because that show was actually pretty damn funny. Anyway, it’s about rappers Methodman and Redman moving into a wealthy, upscale, predominately white neighborhood. At one point, one of the characters... An uptight yuppie mother from the Neighbors Association... calls rap music “X-rated nursery rhymes that objectify women.” Was that fair of her to say? No, not really. I’m no connoisseur of the genre, but I know enough to know that rap music is at least a bit more diverse than a lot of people who’ve never paid attention to it are willing to give it credit for.

Now, imagine if that woman was tasked to write an entire comedy series based on her perception of the genre. The very idea of this is cringeworthy, right?

Well, Detroit Metal City had a character like her. That character was called... The writer. No, I don’t mean that literally, like there was some meta character named The Writer... I mean the actual writer who created and penned this masterpiece. Because if you’re a fan of Death Metal... And a fan of this show... Then I have a really disappointing observation I’d like to share with you. Are you ready? Here it is... DMC hates Death Metal. It hates the music, it hates the musicians, and it hates you. And it is absolutely giddy about the fact that you haven’t figured that out yet.

And if you think i’m just pulling this out of my ass, just look at how that form of music is portrayed in the series... A nice, well mannered young man gets mixed up in it, whereupon he develops a split personality, and that personality happens to be angry, abusive, misogynistic, and violently rapey. Yes, I know it’s exclaimed in the manga that he has unresolved rage issues that he vents through his stage persona, but rageaholics aren’t typically known to compulsively dry-hump other men and inanimate objects. And when they are, they need professional help, not a recording contract. It’s also made very clear that this alternate personality of his has the power to absolutely destroy his personal relationships, and yet he can’t stop going back to it. Kind of like hard drugs.

Which is saying nothing about the music, which is literally about nothing other than sexual aggression and murder. And I don’t use the word literally lightly. The opening theme... In other words, the very first song we’re exposed to out of the entire show... Is a DMC song where Soichiros very first lines are “Yesterday I raped my mother, today I’m going to kill my father.” And there isn’t a hint of irony or satire in it... Throughout the show, his fans really believe that Krauss is a murderer who raped and murdered his parents as a child and was let out of jail to make music. A lie that the band promotes with a straight face.

As for the rest of the music, it ranges from “Kill and enslave everybody” to “Women are sex pigs.” And this is meant to be funny.

Hey, did you ever see Metalacolypse? It’s another show that paints Death Metal as violent and misogynistic. You know why it was awesome? Because it was creative, funny, well produced, and knew damn well how to go to some of the worst possible places without ever becoming too offensive. It’s a show that felt genuine love and passion for it’s subject, and as such, it was able to put everything that’s awesome about Death Metal on full display while over-exaggerating and ruthlessly parodying the things that aren’t so awesome about it. DMC couldn’t do that, and throughout the entire thirteen episode run, it felt more like a cautionary tale against Death Metal... With enough knowledge and research behind it to make Reefer Madness look legit.

This wouldn’t be a problem if DMC was written well, but alas, this just isn’t the case. I know there are some people who would say “Hey, it’s a gag comedy based on a four panel manga... Of course it’s not written well! You’re expecting too much of it!” Well, dear reader, you just insulted your show far more than I ever could, because there are plenty of anime with similar adaptive roots, and this is by far the least amusing one I’ve ever seen. The only character with enough personality traits to even be considered a character would be the main one, and while there is some definite nuance to his situation, he’s so stupid that it makes him really difficult to root for.

Out of the other characters who matter... Let’s see... I know there were a few... Oh! There’s Capitalist Pig, a middle aged midget who gets tied up, gagged, and abused on-stage. But it’s okay, because he’s a masochist. Yeah, that’s all well and good, but his only significant story arc was about Soichiro trying to set him up with the girl of his dreams, and then blatantly dicking him over at the most crucial moment, just to be thanked anyway right afterwards.

Umm... There’s his little brother, who got so turned onto Soichiro’s music that he grew his hair out, died it, and now refuses to go to school or help out around the farm. And the resolution for that problem was... Well, really stupid, and never ever brought up again.

There are three women who play somewhat significant roles in the show... Kind of... There’s the band’s manager, who’s only personality trait is that she doesn’t care about anything that doesn’t make her wet. There’s the lead singer of a punk band, who was stupid enough to believe a Japanese guy with a cold was the reincarnation of legendary rocker Sid Vicious. There’s also Yuri(Yay! I remembered someone’s name without looking it up!), Soichiro’s former friend from college, who’s interested in him despite not being very close to him in school. Her attraction to him is never explained, but she hates Death Metal and all it represents. There’s something wrong with both of those statements, as there are several moments in the show where Soichiro acts VERY verbally abusive towards her without ever suffering any consequences. I’m assuming she still likes him afterwards, because she doesn’t appear in any of the last few episodes.

Much like certain other shows I’ve reviewed, or plan to review, the writing in DMC has one other serious flaw... It’s so dependent on coincidence that pretty much everything that happens can be predicted at some point during it’s respective episode. This is true not only with the pop band Tetrapod Melon Tea(For the love of god don’t ask) and the American villain from the final episode. While surrendering to the police for disturbing the police, Soichiro trips and just happens to smash one of them over the head with his guitar. He then stumbles backwards into a female officer, and falls onto her n a very rapey way, then runs off while fans chant about his nefarious deeds. This is never followed up on, nor is his humping of a certain famous monument... Which them lights up and is rained upon, another complete coincidence that adds to his legacy.

For the longest time, I was fully intending to give this series a 1/10. I hated it to the point that I was actively looking for chores to do between each episode, but at least it was mercifully short... Only fifteen minutes per episode... and it had a pretty well acted Japanese dub. This is especially true of the gravely performance put forth by Yuji Oeda in the role of Krauss... He only plays the Krauss version, but he plays it very convincingly. Then something happened at the end of episode one that changed my mind. And since this show doesn’t really have any plot or story to spoil, I’m going to tell you exactly what it was.

After a particularly racist stage show that painted the band’s manager as just barely incompetent enough to host a WWE show, we see a woman and her four year old child waiting in the lobby for her father as a group of fans point her out as a Mini-Krauss. She starts belting out a DMC song that’s called An Anthem to Female Pigs(Or something like that), which is just a constant repeat of the phrase “I only need your lower half.” Fair enough... This kind of thing could be funny. If it had stopped there.

The mother gives her daughter a bottle of milk, and the crowd proclaims excitedly that she’s drinking a white liquid. Oh, and before you start saying i’m getting too offended by a ‘child drinking something that looks like semen’ joke, just hold on, because it gets worse. Her father comes out of the bathroom, and the adorable little tot runs at him, jumping into her father’s arms, as the crowd cheers that she’s raping him. And since they’re stupid enough to think that Krauss was REALLY released from jail after murdering his parents just so he could make music, there’s no particular reason to say that they’re joking about this. It beg the question of how they’d react if they were to stumble upon a real life crime as it were taking place. Would they cheer it on? Would they join in? DMC is creating these people.

While there’s no dub for this series... And I really can’t blame them... The DVD has been released stateside by Sentai Filmworks, and I can only speculate that they’re releasing a lot of undubbed DVDs because they’re strapped for cash and don’t want to spend the money on voice actors for the majority of their projects. Fair enough, they’ve been through some hard times recently, and I can respect that decision. The DVD itself can be found for dirt cheap, with the average store price ranging somewhere around twenty dollars or so. There’s also a translated manga from Viz Media, and while I haven’t read it, it can’t possibly be worse than the show.

And it feels, to me at least, like my twenty dollars alone paid for their entire animation budget. I didn’t find anything about this show to be enjoyable... It’s not funny, it’s terribly written, it’s misogynistic down to it’s deepest core, and the in-show music was clearly written by somebody with no understanding of the genre they were supposed to be representing. The characters are awful, the situations are poorly thought out, and for a show that portrays itself as being realistic, the presence of the law is entirely inconsistent. Soichiro’s deplorable behavior is not only excused and forgiven, it’s often encouraged by infuriatingly positive outcomes. Even at fifteen minutes an episode, this show was a chore to sit through, and I feel dumber for having done so. It doesn’t feel as potentially dangerous as Popotan did, but it still stands right alongside it as the second worst anime I’ve ever watched. I give Detroit Metal City a 0/10, making it the second show I’ve done so with. If you see a higher score than that, that’s because it’s on Myanimelist, where you literally can’t give anything a score lower than 1.

Although the anime is pretty funny, I expected more from this show before watching it. But I only started watching it because I love Heavy Metal music and when I realised the show only made fun of the genre I dropped it.

Story behind it is quite good though, although they could have made use of it better. The show is a little bit too excessive for me. I feel like they could have made it more realistic.

The art style is horrible. I don't think I have to tell you more about that.

The music is awesome, although I don't approve of the lyrics in the ... songs. I'm not offended by it at all, but I feel like the lyrics confirms the common view on Heavy Metal. If you think that every band is like DMC, then trust me, you're wrong. There are far more serious Heavy Metal acts out there.

The voice acting is decent I guess. Not a fan of Japanese dubs in general. I'd say the main character's voice actor is quite good though.

Overall 4/10, which is decent. As I've written before, I expected a lot more from this show than to confirm the stereotypical view on Heavy Metal.

I don't know what is this show trying to achieve. Is it pondering to metalheads or making fun of us in the most stereotypical way imaginable?

Music, while I'll admit has some good riffs (too bad they are as generic as it gets), has terrible lyrics that lack complexity of most metal pieces.

The art is rather weird, for the lack of the better word, as the "artistic" changes of the way the film is cropped are rather hard to watch though it gives the show much appreciated comic book aesthetic.

Overall, you could probably enjoy it if you didn't like the genre of music it tries to ... portray, however if you do you will feel like a geek watching "Big Bang Theory".

Note: I didn't watch more than one episode because I dislike the idea of watching some boomer tier "metal bad" stuff, this only touches on the things I doubt will change through out the whole run so I won't be rating both story and characters.