Detroit Metal City - First Impressions
Updated 22 Oct 18: As part of my move to Squarespace I went back and looked at all my past work. Literally every single post has been given a thorough 99-point inspection and makeover. It was a lot of work but it’s been something I’ve been wanting to do even before the move. Consider my move to Squarespace as the “digitally remastered director’s cut" version of the blog. I’m serious! What does such a process involve? Off the top of my head:
Fixing broken and dead links.
Correcting bad grammar, spelling.
Giving every entry its own banner image.
Enhancing entries with more rich content and multimedia whenever possible.
Consolidating most entries that spanned multiple pages into a single one.
Updating outdated information.
Deleting or raising up weaker entries up to my current higher standards.
Trying to do that using Blogger’s limited toolset would have taken forever. It’s why I never did it! But I’ve always wanted to. With Squarespace it’s only taken me a few weeks to do what would have taken years on Blogger. I wish I made this move years ago.
All this to say that this was originally 12 separate posts. Those posts were rather short so I deleted them. But I’ve saved the videos which you can watch below from the playlist. I’ve also included the text from those short blog entries as the video descriptions if you still want to read them. See? Nothing was lost! Enjoy.
Unbeknownst to his friends and relatives Soichi Negishi is the lead vocalist for the highly controversial death metal band Detroit Metal City. Wearing makeup and a wig Negishi assumes the role of Krauser II and sings songs about patricide, murder and rape. Negishi would rather be in a trendy Swedish pop band but unfortunately for him he's better at death metal. Did I mention he also writes the songs for DMC? Comedy ensues when Negishi's onstage and offstage personalities clash.
This show stands out amongst its peers thanks to it's unique visual style. I haven't read the manga but I'm going to assume this show is a literal, panel-for-panel translation of the source material. Instead of seeing the action play out full frame like you might see on other manga adaptations, you'll see a lot of pillarboxing and letterboxing. It sounds terrible on paper but works! I've seen something similar attempted before but the results weren't as interesting to watch. There's something different about this show. Whatever it is, it doesn't hurt that Studio 4°C is behind the wheel.
Actually I just remembered The Maxx kind of did this and it was awesome! But I was thinking of manga adaptations before, not American comics. Damn, I wish I could remember what it was. Probably a 4 panel gag manga.
New York photographer, party mammal, and Internet troll for hire. Alain-Christian is an OG who’s been blogging for over 20 years dating back to the early days of AOL. He loves sharing his offbeat opinions on pop culture, bestowing his tech knowledge, and making arts.