Friday Night Fights: Make Yourself Ready

In this week's contribution to Bahlactus's cosmic throwdown, World Welfare Work Association ("3WA") troubleshooter Yuri engages in a little workplace hostility with her partner and fellow "Lovely Angel," Kei.

(from Dirty Pair: A Plague of Angels #5, August 1991; by the incomparable Adam Warren)
I think it sums up my feelings regarding this current example of fanboy stupidity rather nicely. (Besides, there's nothing I could add that Charlie B. hasn't already said.)

While my interest in anime is pretty much nil these days, there will always be a place in my heart for the Dirty Pair. I was thrilled to discover that Dark Horse has begun to release translations of the original Japanese novels featuring the adventures of the ill-omened duo, whose nickname refers to the catastrophic collateral damage that inevitably occurs in their wake. (Now if only Amazon could get its shit together and ship me those novels, considering I ordered them over a month ago....)

The tendency by certain sectors of fandom to reduce the franchise to "that thing with the semi-naked chicks carrying big guns" is somewhat irksome. I'm not claiming that I'm above paying notice to Yuri and Kei's choice in attire, but space-bikinis aside, the real draw is the entertaining blend of comedy and science fiction on display in both the animated and comic book versions of the Dirty Pair. The American Dirty Pair comic miniseries helmed by Adam Warren are packed with visionary concepts taken from contemporary hard sci-fi, and Warren manages to strike the perfect balance between techobabble and T&A. (Masamune Shirow could take some pointers on that front.)

There's also a very personal and sentimental reason for my affection towards the Dirty Pair. As I probably mentioned in a previous post, the painting on the back of my punk jacket came from the cover of the third issue of the first Dirty Pair miniseries.


I chose the image because I wanted something a little different from the band logo or album cover route, and even though the thought never crossed my mind, it also captured the my "one foot in punkery, the other in geekery" stance damn near perfectly. When another punk-geek hybrid in my extended circle of collegiate acquaintances recognized the painting on my jacket and asked to see it, it was my first inkling that this particular individual, a dark-haired woman by the name of Maura, was interested in me (though it took a while before that realization managed to penetrate my thick skull).

Nakahara Meiko - Ru-Ru-Ru-Russian Roulette (from the Dirty Pair TV series OST, 1985) - This is the full-length version of the show's opening theme, and like most j-pop from that era, it manages to sound both timeless and incredibly dated at the same time. DANCE! DANCE! CHANCE! CHANCE!

don't need the masters

It's an all right place to visit, but I certainly wouldn't want to live there.

Today was supposed to be fairly quiet and uneventful, what with the wife away negotiating the cosplay-and-body-odor-heavy seas of the Anime Boston convention and little old me being left to my own devices here at our house on the hill.

Not that I'm unhappy with how things turned out. I could have done without the family hassles which manifested themselves and the dinnertime encounter with the Church of Latter-Day Saints' black-suited community outreach program. The visit from my brother was a nice surprise, though, especially as it included the gift of a stack of old Marvel comics from the 60's and 70's and a marathon sibling co-op session of the Xbox 360 version of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

The Pillows - Little Busters (from Little Busters, 1998; also available on Fooly Cooly OST 1: Addict, 2004) - I didn't accompany Maura to today's convention because that particular form of salinity lost its savor for me sometime in the early 1990's. It was a combination of popcult saturation fatigue (coupled with the ubiquitous shallow Japanophilia in the fan scene) and the simple fact that my personal tastes and prevailing trends in manga and anime have diverged a great deal over the years. (I'm an unreconstructed old school mecha jockey and space opera enthusiast.)

There are a lot of things of note out there at the moment, but very little that appeals to me personally with the exception of occasional works like Youtsuba&! or the not-that-recent, but wonderfully bizarre FLCL, which featured today's song (as well as several other gems) by the Japanese indie rock outfit The Pillows on its soundtrack.

better rev it up and put it to use

Today we have an excerpt from Andrew's Notes on the Grand Unified Theory of Pop Culture:

Even before production finished on 1982's Nick Nolte/Eddie Murphy cuss word vector, 48 Hrs., director Walter Hill, screenwriter Larry Gross, and producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver has already started work on their next project, a "rock and roll musical" intended as a big budget follow up on the cult success of Hill and Gordon's 1979 film, The Warriors.

The end result was Streets of Fire, an art-directed mess of a film and one of the the summer of 1984's bigger cinematic bombs, grossing a little more than half of its $14.5 million production costs during its initial run. Frequently evoked as a poster child of the style over substance ethos and as a cautionary example of adhering to an "MTV" aesthetic, the film has since gone on to be a modest cult favorite, spurred on by countless showings on basic cable during the late 1980's and early 1990's. Fans of the film tend toward rabidity, while the unconverted tend to just shake their heads sadly whenever the subject is brought up.

It's not bad for what it is, a minor action/romance timewaster set in a very 1980's reimagining of 1950's Chicago. Tough but tender mercenary Cody (played by tabula rasa Michael Paré) returns home to rescue his old flame, rock goddess Ellen Aim (played by the stunningly gorgeous Diane Lane)...

...from a pack of fiendish bikers led by the lean and fearsome Raven (played by Willem Dafoe, who rocks the "shirtless in pleather overalls" look like no one's business). The battle between good and evil culminates with a sledgehammer fight beneath the El tracks, which is how more movies ought to end. (I'm talking to you, P.S. I Love You.)

It's certainly not the worst way to spend ninety minutes, and there's plenty of fun to be had in spotting the supporting cast members, which include, among others, Robert Townsend (as a doo-wop singer), Rick Moranis (as Ellen Aim's manager), Fear frontman Lee Ving (as Raven's lieutenant), Elizabeth "E.G." Daily (as a groupie), and the always welcome Bill Paxton (as "Clyde the Bartender").

The film's soundtrack also encroaches (cheesily, but still) on excellence, which is kind of important for a quasi-musical -- sorry, a rock and roll fable (as opposed to an acid jazz parable or a jump blues syllogism.) The only track from the score that registered on the popular consciousness was Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You" (lipsynched by a moonwalkin' doo-wop act in the film and music video) which made it into the Top 40 charts, making it a bigger success than the film itself. The Fixx and The Blasters also contributed songs, but the movie's signature sound (apart from Ry Cooder's distinctively twangy score) comes from the tracks "performed" by Ellen Aim and her band, The Attackers (played by Boston new wave outfit Face to Face), particularly the two bombastic rock tracks ("Nowhere Fast" and "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young") penned by Jim Steinman (the man who gave Meat Loaf his flavor) and performed by Fire, Inc., a front band featuring frequent Steinman collaborators Holly Sherwood and Rory Dodd.

Fire, Inc. - Nowhere Fast (from the Streets of Fire OST, 1984) - Judging it as a rock song, I'd have to say it makes a perfectly adequate show tune.

Ellen Aim's other overdubbed efforts featured vocal performances by Face to Face's Laurie Sargent and Maria (Lone Justice) McKee. Oh, and guitarist/Weird Al collaborator/pinball wizard Rick Derringer was also involved in some capacity.

(On a side note, the movie's title and ostensible inspiration were drawn from Bruce Springsteen's "Darkness at the Edge of Town," but The Boss balked over the proposal to have other performers rerecord the song for the film.)

As I mentioned before, the film tanked at the box office. "Tonight is what it means to be dead," remarked Joel Silver upon seeing the initial grosses, paraphrasing the movie's tagline. I can remember hanging out on the roof of a friend's garage with our neighborhood gang back in the summer of '84, arguing over what movie to see. We split along gender lines; the girls wanted to see Streets of Fire and the boys wanted to see (I swear, though the release dates don't line up) Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. The boys won, as much as sitting through a lousy Charles Band 3-D sci-fi flick can be viewed as "winning."

Though unappreciated upon its release, Streets of Fire went on to have a significant influence in Japan, where its hyper-stylized aesthetic dovetailed nicely with contemporary trends in anime. (You can't go wrong with bad boys and idol singers in that market.) The first installment of Megazone 23 features a scene where the principal characters attend a showing of the film, but the original Bubblegum Crisis OVA series took the homage a couple steps further with the character of Priss Asagiri...

...a rock singer-slash-cyberpunk avenger whose look and sound are directly patterned after Ellen Aim's.

Priss and The Replicants - Akuma to Tenchi no Kiss (from Bubblegum Crisis: Complete Vocal Collection, 2000) - A case of going one better than the source material, I'd argue. The band's name is a clever (well, I thought so) homage to another, equally art-directed 80's flick.

The trans-Pacific love for Streets of Fire wasn't limited to anime offerings, either. The lead designer of Capcom's Final Fight, the quintessential example of the co-op "beat 'em up" videogame genre, was very much smitten with the movie. That would explain why the game features a character named Cody, a scruffy street fightin' man with a more-than-passing resemblance to Michael Paré, punching and kicking through a city full of thugs in order to rescue his girlfriend. (He is assisted in his efforts by a ninja and a pro wrestler -- thus providing a wonderful capsule view of the late 80's zeitgeist. All that's missing is Fido Dido.) Personally, I lament the fact the game didn't feature a playable analogue for Amy Madigan's tough-as-nails mercenary character from the film.

After a nine-year abscence, Cody (now an escaped convict) went on to join the cast of Street Fighter Alpha 3 before appearing as a supporting character (and 'roided up monstrous adversary) in the excremental Final Fight: Streetwise. As of late, Michael Paré has been working with director (and I use that term in the loosest sense of the word) Uwe Boll in films such as BloodRayne (I and II), Far Cry, and Postal, which, I have to admit, is an even worse fate than the one suffered by his videogame counterpart.

...and that thing is not starring in horrible videogame-based movies made for tax write-off purposes...

but I thought it was just for fun

(The Mikester made me do it.)
The San Diego Comic-Con is upon us, offering the fan-faithful an opportunity to get the advance scoop on this year’s iteration of Snakes on a Plane or receive the official word about the creative team involved in comics’ NEXT BIG THING from the mouth of a weary publishing rep (as opposed to from the comics internet, where the info has been common knowledge for a few months now).

SDCC’s shift in focus from a gathering of fans and creators to multimedia trade show has been the subject of much discussion. Is it validation of the medium’s (by extension, its affiliated subculture’s) significance outside its traditionally small realm? Or proof that the scene has been co-opted by deep-pocketed marketing flacks from outside the comics’ biz for their own purposes? To me, it means too many people (with a significant proportion possessing dubious personal hygiene habits) crammed in with too much stuff in too confined (relatively speaking) a space.

To tell the truth, I’ve never been a big fan of conventions, even when I used to attend them with some regularity. Attending cons was a necessary evil, a means to an end – that end being the acquisition of fan ephemera unavailable from my usual suppliers. My typical con sojourn involved getting in, getting what I came for, and getting my ass out of there as briskly and efficiently as possible. The panels, symposiums, and creator appearances held zero appeal for me.

I’m apathetic about whole hobnobbing with celebrities (and I use that term in the broadest possible way) deal. While it’s nice to be able put a face behind a work I happen to enjoy (or despise, for that matter) or to pick up some contextual insights through an interview or article with a creator, I have a hard time imagining a scenario where I could offer more than a terse “I liked/hated -----” at a face-to-face meeting in a noisy venue. This is why I always disappoint when asked one of those “which five people living or dead would you like to meet” questions. My natural introvertedness and my aversion to hero worship have effectively killed my interest in meet-and-greet affairs. I did once shake hands with Larry Storch, and I quite literally bumped into Brett Anderson prior to an in-store appearance by Suede in the mid-1990’s.

I also really, really hate crowd scenes (which has also restricted my concert and club going to only the top tier of “must see” acts), and even the most sparsely attended cons make me feel claustrophobic. After a few minutes spent flipping through a longbox of poorly sorted teen humor comics, with several hundred pounds of Dorito-fed fanboy pressing in on either side of you, a two week stay in the Black Hole of Calcutta seems like a welcome alternative.

I’ve been trying to think of any amusing stories from my con-attending days, but so far I’m drawing a blank. Maura, on the other hand, has several. That crazy gal loves the con scene and makes the effort to travel to at least one of the bigger events every year, usually of the anime variety, though she’d like to eventually make it to the Small Press Expo or SDCC in the near future. My favorite story of hers has to do with an Anime Weekend in Atlanta even she attended a while back where the non-convention guests staged a minor revolt at the check-in counter over the all-pervasive aroma emanating from the otaku herd. Way to counter the stereotype, guys.

So, yeah, no nerd Hajj for me. It’s just as well, as I lost my faith some time ago and I’m fully content with being a comics agnostic.

Translator - Everywhere That I’m Not (from Heartbeats and Triggers, 1982) – “You’re in San Diego, but I’m not! You’re paying five bucks for a bottle of water, but I’m not! You’re stuck in line listening to a cosplayer dressed like Speedball loudly summarize his Generation X slashfic, but I’m not!” Actually, this song is a catchy bit of guitar pop honoring John Lennon, from a SF new wave outfit that, like too many bands of that era, never got the attention they justly deserved.

The Go-Go’s - Vacation (from Vacation, 1982) - Former Go-Go Jane Wiedlin is going to present the Eisner Awards at this year’s SDCC. For those unfamiliar with things comics-related, the Eisners are like the Oscars, but don’t really mean anything to folks outside the insular little scene.

Okay, so they’re more like the Tony Awards, then.

I know I posted this track last year (in a post about waiting for Maura to return from a con, oddly enough), but it fits perfectly with the Wiedlin-SDCC connection and the fact that my second vacation of this summer began a couple of hours ago. Synchronicity trumps all.

Harajuku Antichrist

The things we do for love. The other day I got a opportunity to get my hands on some import anime soundtracks. There wasn’t anything in the assortment that interested my personally, but there was a nice selection of music from the anime series and live action movie adapted from Ai Yazawa’s Nana, which Maura happens to be a fan of. Shojo (manga aimed at younger females) tends to leave me cold, although I do find the occasional flip through the wife’s copies of Shojo Beat an enlightening experience, not for the comics content but for the fashion and lifestyle features, which read like something out of Seventeen after a crash infusion of facile ex oriente lux exoticism. (The habit western anime fans have of appropriating decontextualized and poorly understood chunks of Japanese culture deserves a book in itself.)

Based on my above stated biases, I’d normally just have kicked the soundtracks over to Maura and left it at that, but seeing as Nana has a punk rawk connection, with one of the two identically named women who give the manga its title being an aspiring punk musician, I was a little curious whether the music would have a bit more kick than the customary j-pop/idol singer material one usually finds on these sorts of albums.

Going over the track listings, I came across this lovely gem of a cover on the Nana Best album and decided to give it a spin. I’m not sure what I expected, but in my wildest dreams did not anticipate what came over my headphones. Here’s a pictorial reenactment of my reaction (French Foreign Legion hat optional):

I think it was in an old issue of the “adult” manga anthology Pulp that I read an interview with Chynna Clugston where she mentions encountering some Japanese youths in Quadrophrenia-perfect mod gear. When she asked them what bands they liked, they responded with “Poison.” (What, you didn’t know that “Unskinny Bop” is a masterpiece of Northern Soul?) The dissonance between fashion and music styles in Japanese pop culture is nothing new, as I have learned though many viewings of 80’s sci-fi anime series where nearly all roads lead to terrible jazz rock or Pink Lady clonage.

I didn’t for a minute think that a series targeting young Japanese women would feature a soundtrack composed of the terrifyingly atonal and extreme sounds I associate with the radical wing of the Japanese punk rock scene, but something a little less Avril and little more Polysics would have been nice. I warned everyone about allowing Hot Topic to spread unchecked, but did they listen to me? Now look what’s happened…

Need something to blot out the pain? How about a speed metal version of the Uchuu Senkan Yamato (aka Space Battleship Yamato, aka Star Blazers) theme?

Animetal - Uchuu Senkan Yamato (from Marathon, 1997) – I’ve been watching the uncut Japanese version of the first Yamato series recently. One difference between the original and the edited for the American market Star Blazers? R2D2-analog IQ-9 didn’t try to peek under Nova’s skirt in Star Blazers. I guess western audiences weren’t into sexual harassment scenes featuring squat comic relief robots in the late 70’s.

I’m floating in a beam of light

I try to keep my life as uncomplicated as possible, but occasionally I find myself riding a gamma ray laser to the heart of a distant neutron star on a mission of inescapable importance, my head pounding as my relative mass brushes up against infinity. Even though I’m traveling at 99.9999999999% the speed of light, my target is so remote that my custom soundtrack mix CD will loop itself, twice.

Only for you, wife. Only for you.

Class Action – Blast Off (from Tribute to Flexipop, Vol. 7) – More excellent and rare 80’s synthpop culled from the wonderful Flexipop library of bootleg compilations.

Girlschool – C’mon Let’s Go (from Hit & Run, 1981) – My wife, a woman who (rightfully) responds to my residual affection for heavy metal with much eyerolling, is rather fond of Girlschool. I’m not sure if that’s due to a sense of gender solidarity, or because of the MST3K connection (this track was on the Zombie Nightmare soundtrack), or because the band largely avoids the ridiculous genre clichés of their all-male counterparts.

The Pillows – Ride on Shooting Star (from Fooly Cooly OST 1: Addict, 2004) – Has anyone else noticed how much Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. cribbed from FLCL? Consider it noted and remarked upon, then. The lack over overlap between anime/manga fans and superhero fandom works in some writers’ favor.