Detroit Metal City 6

Kiminori Wakasugi – Viz – 2010 – 10+ volumes

Because I reviewed something classy like a Moto Hagio book, I can only follow that up with Detroit Metal City.

Honestly, even I was put off a little by how much the Boss talked about how she needed her juices flowing. She used some sort of… animal metaphor. A few times. “I want to hear the sound of baby animals in my vagina” might be the line. I have a feeling that, if it does make sense, it’s something I’m better off not knowing.

As grossed out as I was by the frequency of this line of discussion, I also laughed every time. I think it came up a lot because the first part of the volume spent a chapter each on the three main members of Detroit Metal City. Negishi got an awesome bath scene in Aikawa’s apartment, Wada was deciding if he wanted to join a Visual Kei band (complete with hilariously lame Visual Kei lyrics, about as stereotypical as the metal ones that come up all the time), and Nishida participated in a Taiko Drum Master tournament that was not at all lecherous.

Actually, most of the volume was unrelated short stories, building up to the beginnings of a storyline about the confrontation between Krauser I and Krauser II that looks like it won’t truly get underway until volume 7. This volume offers some background information about Death Records, the Boss, and Kraser I, all of it worth knowing. Part of the exposition for this story involves Negishi giving metal guitar lessons as himself instead of Krauser. I think the best thing about Negishi, and one of the things that makes this series so funny even after telling the same jokes for six volumes, is that as much as Negishi hates metal, he’s just really, really good at it, and can’t help but do it. The story never really comments on this or probes it further, which makes it even better, because it’s just a fact of life. He’s a really nerdy kid that’s really good at something he apparently hates. And unforgivably terrible at the thing he loves. He speaks to a small part of all of us, I think. What’s better here is that someone who is presumably his match in hardcore metal is portrayed as equally uninteresting in real life.

My favorite part of this volume, however, was another Negishi/Aikawa story. Negishi, fixated on Aikawa’s breasts, loses the thread of conversation, and Aikawa accuses him of not paying attention. Furious, he writes lyrics for three solid days and performs a truly nonsensical song about breasts, violence, and being long for the sake of being long. There’s a double-page illustration of Krauser belting out pi to over 300 digits. I think that makes this my favorite manga for life.