Detroit Metal City 02, Strike Witches 08

Detroit Metal City 02

if there's anything that contain deep, profound beauty in postmodern media, that would be satires. to make a good satire, one need to know deeply about the subject matters. furthermore, by satirizing things, you actually avoid being pretentious. why? because satires are made with full knowledge that those who will enjoy the work know what they're doing, and will be very quick to point out when something is amiss-- much quicker than when you're doing "serious" non-satires. the irony is killing me.

Detroit Metal City (from this point on, DMC) is a satire about the culture of metal. it also points out the massive gap between the so-called MTV generation, and the then-counter-culture of metal. now, before you throw arguments, i for one was never part of any "band culture", be it metal, rock, rap, or ska. i hate bands, to be honest. those no-good people who think they're of any importance, and assert it with their loud noise they believe are (yikes!) music. i might as well listen to a primate's flatulence.

ahem, pardon my momentary lack of self-control. let's go over this again. MTV generations are those who overwhelm themselves with passive entertainment. for such an overwhelming amount of passive entertainment, someone gotta mass-produce them. and nothing is sacred in this schema. anything that those kids are willing to buy, someone will turn into entertainment. even if it's about shouting profanities while eating living bat raw (i pity the bats, honestly. poor, poor cute bats...). which is how the band DMC make a living.

now for the presented-as opposite, the "counter-culture". from what i can grasp from looking at this Cosmic Horroranarchy ball, it seems that the youths of that time (who are now the age of my eldest auntie) are dissatisfied by their reality. crass materialism was at its peak, and capitalism was really brutal in its zealous crusade to answer every question with "HAVE MOAR MONEY" (not that that changed much today). some of those oddballs are really disturbed, and disturbed people do shout out their thoughts in ways that are jarring. and thus were born metal (death metal, brutal death metal, satanic brutal death metal-- can't bother to recall all of them), et ceteras.

but then, what? life must continue. capitalism eventually triumphed over communism (and to some extent, socialism-- but socialism are enjoying a lot of revitalization today), and later on, triumphed over democracy as well. people can no longer understand this and that about what constitute a counter-culture, and just think that "it's cool". and if it's "cool", that can be made into an entertainment, that sells. what's "metal"? it's about "vending out your steam mindlessly", without thinking the really, really horrible world order that give way for the birth of this blasphemy known as metal. sure, many people have no time to think (shiver me timbers...), but still, it's a horrid (as in Cthulhu horrid) to see the unholy union that's MTV and metal...

the entire DMC anime is a satire that puts into animation this huge wall of text up to this point (and by an indie(?) studio, at that-- Studio 4*C).


Strike Witches 08

suddenly, a plot out of nowhere! but in the preview, it seems that they're all fine and well. after watching eps 08, i got this gut i feeling i haven't experienced since watching My-HiME. it's the instinctive ability to tell whether a silence is a scion of storm. it's the inevitable plot twist that turn a supposedly sweet and silly animu series into one full of betrayal and flaunt the dark nature of humans.

man, and i'm such a heavy Sakamoto//Wilcke shipper too. i interpret the "dont wanna lose significant others" while pointing gun at Sakamoto as i would rather see you dead by my own hands, not anyone else's. especially seeing how Sakamoto was very close to having a Neuroi shrapnel capped into her head. of course if that's true, logic would have to be thrown out of the window and into the Strait of Dover. let's see... i think only Chikane-chan have "that much schizoid of a personality".

four more episodes to go, dum dee dum...