Detroit Metal City

Dominating the world of indie music, Detroit Metal City (DMC) is a popular death metal band known for its captivatingly dark and crude style. Its extravagant lead singer, Johannes Krauser II, is especially infamous as a demonic being who has risen from the fiery pits of hell itself in order to bring the world to its knees and lord over all mortals—or at least that's what he's publicized to be.

Unbeknownst to his many worshippers, Krauser II is just the alter ego of an average college graduate named Souichi Negishi. Although he is soft-spoken, peace-loving, and would rather listen to Swedish pop all day, he must participate in DMC's garish concerts in order to make ends meet. Detroit Metal City chronicles Negishi's hilarious misadventures as he attempts to juggle his hectic band life, a seemingly budding romance, and dealing with his incredibly obsessive and dedicated fans.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Negishi, Souichi Main

Ueda, Yuuji Japanese

Death Records Manager Supporting

Kobayashi, Ai Japanese

Krauser-tan Supporting

Ise, Mariya Japanese

Nishida, Terumichi Supporting

Yasumura, Makoto Japanese

Nashimoto, Keisuke Supporting

Matsuyama, Takashi Japanese

Wada, Masayuki Supporting

Nakano, Yuto Japanese

DMC Fan Supporting

Saji, Hideki Supporting

Nagashima, Shuugo Japanese

ILL Dark, Jack Supporting

Takeuchi, Riki Japanese

Aikawa, Yuri Supporting

Nagasawa, Masami Japanese

Takahashi, Atsushi Producer

Nagahama, Hiroshi Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Tanaka, Kazuya Sound Director

Kishio, Daisuke Theme Song Performance

Reviews

Dec 15, 2008

Beatnik

Recommended

It’s about a reserved young lad, Negishi, moving to the city of debauchery that is Tokyo and fronting a death metal band, as Krauser II, even though he would rather be at home drinking green tea and listening to laid back indie pop.

It’s tear-inducingly hilarious.

DMC's humour is similar to Cromartie High School in its lunacy, albeit more traditional in narrative-stakes, and it’s also more unrelenting and risqué with its filthy potty mouth and explicit scenarios usually involving public humiliation involving a young man dressed like an 80's prog-rock-gone-wrong band member furiously thrusting his groin against a piece of government property in order to placate his ... maniacal fans.

DMC's cast of deranged characters, animated by the ever-brilliant Studio 4c, liven up every scene they're in, thanks to each episode's short length. There are no typical anime-style long pans or random shots of furniture or scenery wasting our time. Instead we get scenes crammed with Negishi getting mistreated, usually by DMC's violently blunt dominatrix manager, although if we're extra lucky we'll also get a scene where DMC drummer Nishida opens his mouth, or the DMC S&M mascot Pig of Capitalism frolics on stage.

One of the masterstrokes of this show, perhaps the main stroke of genius and source of such mirth, is the voice acting. Particularly the pacing. The dialogue is sublime in its breezy and hushed volume; actors regularly speak in normal conversational tones, and cut each other off with off-the-cuff remarks about nonsensical things and then scenes cut away immediately without giving anyone time to breath. The ultimate affect is hilarity, as you might see in Brit comedy skit shows and such.

Detroit Metal City's secret weapon are the maniacal fans mentioned earlier. Their commentary on the main band's hijinks are comedy gold, their crazy antics all in the name of their beloved musical heroes creates most of the show's best scenes, although having said that we shouldn’t ignore the main frontman of DMC himself, whether its Negishi or Krauser we're watching, his two identities continually spiral further and further into increasingly awkward and humiliating situations, that usually involve simulated assault.

If any criticism could be thrown at DMC, it would be that the show doesn’t seriously explore the concept of losing your sense of identity when you're fronting such a ridiculous band, but then any focus on such an admittedly good topic as that would have robbed the show of precious laughs and scenes of humiliating sexual harassment so in the end comedy wins over gravitas.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Oct 3, 2012

Lindle

Mixed Feelings

Detroit Metal City strikes a bizarre balance of the cringeworthily unfunny and the gut-bustingly hilarious.

This short, 12-episode OVA which will henceforth be abbreviated to "DMC" for convenience's sake, revolves around Negishi Souchi, an aspiring musician fresh out of college who has moved to Tokyo with a love of catchy, lighthearted European pop music. However, due to a misreading of his lyrics, he has accidentally ended up as the lead singer of death metal band Detroit Metal City, who are the antithesis of everything he stands for, using the alter-ego of Johannes Krauser II, a psychopathic omnipotent devil-creature who murdered his parents and raped them. In ... that order.

DMC's humour tends to come from three things. The first is Negishi/Krauser trying, and failing, to balance out his two lifestyles and stop anyone from finding out who he really is, and this is about as unfunny as it sounds. This whole idea has been done to death before, and was not ever really all that funny in the first place. To make matters worse, this is basically the entire joke. None of the variations on it really change what's supposed to be funny about it. And it is repeated ad nauseam throughout the series.

The second of these is how over-the-top everything is, in particular the ridiculous song lyrics and excessive swearing throughout. These are initially funny but wear off pretty fast... and this only applies to the funny song lyrics. Excessive swearing just isn't funny. There is also one character, their manager, who is the worst thing about the whole series. The entire "joke" of her character is that she says "cunt" a lot and gets sexual thrills from music... and I'm not sure how that was ever supposed to be funny. It's just disturbing and used entirely for cheap shock factor.

The third, however, is what saves DMC and then some: the parody aspects. DMC is at it's absolute funniest whenever it is making fun of death metal. Partly this is just by how utterly silly DMC's lyrical content is and what utter caricatures it's fans are, but the best moments of this happen by contrasting the legacy behind the band members and their fandom's insane worship to what is actually happening. The best example by far involves Krauser humping Tokyo Tower with a crowd of onlookers treating it as though it were an amazing spectacle of a satanic ritual... all while you're very aware that it is literally just a man in a silly costume humping a tower. Or, for another example, a contest of who can pronounce the word "fuck" best, made so much better by how dead seriously everyone takes it. The real cherry on top is simply how oblivious everyone is to how far DMC has descended into self-parody.

The characters from DMC are basically nothing special. They all fill their roles fine, but that's about it, with a few exceptions from Negishi when he gradually slips into Krauser mode.

The music in DMC impressed me, because aside from it's silly lyrics, the music is actually the kind of thing you could imagine people buying into, which is something of a refreshing change considering you see many anime about music with very amateurish music quality. This isn't even restricted to just DMC's music, either. Some of Negishi's pop music is genuinely catchy, and some of the background music is good too, if infrequent and unlikely to catch your ear in favour of "Satsugai".

The animation isn't particularly high-quality, but if it was, it would probably just have been out of place. It has a much more stripped-back feel to it that's reminiscent of many 90's American cartoons, which is really just as well because it'd fit in nicely with some of MTV's cartoon titles of the day. It also plays around with framing a lot as well, only filling up around half or so of the screen a lot of the time, and often expanding as offscreen characters talk so as to bring them into view. It doesn't really add all that much in the long run, but it's a nice touch nonetheless.

In most cases I'd call something like DMC fairly average, with the good cancelling out the bad. However DMC does have something else going for it that makes it an exception: it's short. Clocking in at only 12 episodes, each of which are only half the length of a regular TV broadcast episode. The entire series runs around 2 and a half hours, around the length of some movies, and with it's fast pace in hand you can easily knock it out in a single sitting. It's brevity saves it from outstaying it's welcome and repeating itself too much, which it most likely would have done if it had run any longer than it did.

Overall, DMC is hit and miss, but if this seems like something you might enjoy then you've not got much to lose.

Final Words: If you've got a couple of hours to kill and want a quick fix, I'd probably recommend this.

Story/Plot: 5/10
Characters: 5/10
Animation/Art: 8/10
Music: 9/10
Acting: 6/10

Overall: 6/10

For Fans Of: Dead Leaves, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 10, 2015

Flawfinder

Not Recommended

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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