10 Songs I Wish Were Anime Themes - part 9 (Patreon)

(First off, the only non-region-locked posts of this song I could find on YouTube were live videos that felt totally different than the studio version, so I -GAH I MEAN A TOTALLY SEPARATE MYSTERIOUS YOUTUBE ACCOUNT- had to go and post a copy.  Amazingly, the Japanese Recording Industry hasn't totally taken the video down yet, but we can't rely on that being the case forever.  Listen to this while you can!)

Believe it or not, there was once a time when I really did try to keep up with new artists, both in Japan and at home. I talk about stuff that’s at least forty-year-old so often than I do need to occasionally remind people that at least SOME of this stuff actually did come across my radar when it was new. However, the argument could be made that bands like Fujifabric were part of the reason I gave up even trying to stay current, because it very often didn’t go well. I had a pretty bad track record with artist changing direction in was I didn’t like or just straight up going inactive right around the time I started following them, and that’s a lot easier to take when it’s all in the past tense. In this case, Fijufabric were an up and coming Indie band making some major strides towards mainstream success when guitarist, vocalist, and sole remaining original member Masahiko Shimura died unexpectedly on Christmas Eve 2009. This happened only a few weeks before I first discovered the band on a mixtape, so needless to say the sudden tragic loss of a promising talented young man far too soon was REALLY inconvenient to me personally. Surprising, the remainder of Fujifabric never actually broke up, but instead soldiered on in a sort of self-cover-band mode for a while doing live shows with all-star guest vocalists, before officially resuming “real” activities with a new vocalist at the tail end of 2011. By then, however, I’d already fallen out of the habit of even trying to keep up, and I must confess I’ve never even heard any of their post-Shimura work.

And I’m sure I should, because the stuff Fujifabric did that I HAVE heard is really good. If you like The Pillows and want more Jrock with that same general Indie vibe but with a BIT more complexity and polish, this is the band for you. They’re clearly the band for a lot of other people, too, because they’ve been on quite a few film and anime soundtracks over the years. And yet, somehow, my one clear pick for a shoulda-been anime theme got overlooked: the title track of 2008’s Teenager. I dunno, maybe they didn’t want to license out a title track for fear of confusing the promotion of the album or something, but “Teenager” is SUCH an obvious OP that it still boggles my mind that it never was one. It’s catchy, it’s energetic, it’s got a memorably iconic keyboard riff, it’s well suited to a quick-cut montage of the main characters scrambling because they’re late for something (including a break for some claps, which is always editing gold), and most importantly IT’S CALLED FRICKIN’ “TEENAGER.” Think about how what a percentage of anime produced every year have a cast below the age of twenty. There are SO MANY SHOWS that could naturally use this song. Obviously, slice of life comedies and school dramas are the two immediate things to come to mind, but just about every genre could theoretically make use of a song like this. Action, Mystery, Adventure, Scifi, Magical Girl, Mecha, ANYTHING with highschool-aged protagonists could make use of a catchy tune about the energy and confusion of adolescence… the problem for ME is that I’ve already used just about all of those genres in one of these blogs already. What’s even left?

Okay, I gotta confess that I’m not even sure if this is a recognized sub-genre with a name, but you know those Light Novel-based shows with especially labyrinthine plots and sprawling casts that are even more over the top and weird than usual in anime? Like Baccano or Durarara? That’s kind of what I’m thinking of here. One of those shows full of outrageously impossible action sequences and nonsensical plot twists and stuff designed to keep audiences coming back for the next installment at the expense of all logic or reason. You know they kind of series I’m talking about, you probably heard some old grump like me complaining about one of them… or at the very least, complaining about their bratty kid fans. And guess what? I’m incorporating THAT into my idea, too!

Let’s imagine a series that starts off in a flashback: with a group of teen girls summoning a goddess, who in turn recruits them to be her servants and charges them with overthrowing the existing societies than the Old Gods have created for their own benefit so that out new goddess can make one of her own. The girls are granted all kinds of anime super powers to aid them in their quest, and more importantly, immortality and eternal youth until the accomplish their mission. Problem is, they suck at it. Flash forward to present day, decades later, and the girls haven’t overthrown anything. They their powers hidden to avoid getting locked up in some government lab, so their lives are dominated by staying out of sight and working whatever crap jobs apparent teens with no past can get. Heck, they don’t even work together anymore, they each have their own little crew of weirdos they’ve granted additional powers to… and THEY’RE all losers to. You know those Chunibyo in recent shows who wear cosplay stuff in public and talk like Final Fantasy characters and are generally pathetic cringelords? Well, imagine if a group of those characters actually HAD the magical anime powers they pretend to have… but were still pathetic cringelords anyway. That’s this show. Loud, obnoxious, idiotic brats getting into violent turf wars over stuff that doesn’t matter and expending absurd amounts of energy over absolutely nothing. In other words, Teenagers. (NOW GET OFF MY LAWN)

But seriously, out of all the goofy anime ideas I’ve thrown out in these blogs, I think this is the one that an actual talented writer could get the most out of. There’s already an abundance of works in which the “kids with superpowers” premise has been used as a metaphor for adolescence in general, and I think adding eternal youth to the mix allows for an added exploration of prolonged adolescence. Anime does love exploring its own love/hate relationship with its fanbase, and one could say a lot about obsessive teens and basement-dwelling man-children through the premise of characters who literally CAN’T grow up. For example, this premise just BEGS for lots of flashbacks to previous decades, and subsequently indulging in the surface-level novelty of seeing the main characters acting and dressing differently. For example, maybe the character who is currently a spiky-haired suit-wearing tomboy was once a dress-wearing girly girl back in the day. Fans love alternate costumes and mysterious pasts they can write fanfics about. What’s more, though, these flashbacks would allow the series to subtlety laugh at the “IT’S NOT JUST A PHASE, MOM!” posturing that teens exhibit over things that totally one hundred percent are indeed a phase. These girls could go through drastic, persona-defining personal transformations every decade or so, only to drop their newly discovered “true selves” the second something new caught their eye, and thus the cycle would repeat. The more things change the more they stay the same. Heck, I mentioned the girls would be running their own separate, competing crews in Present Day, but I think we’d still see them regularly hanging out with each other anyway. I mean, are they going to find any OTHER seventy year old teenagers who they can talk to? Heck, even the omnipotent goddess who kicked this whole thing off should turn out to be a lazy slob who just lays around and eats junk food instead of actually doing any goddess stuff. Anime fans love them a useless goddess.

Huh. The more I unpack this idea, the more it makes it sound more mopey and low-key than it should. Yes, anyone who reads Far Out There knows I’m interested in the idea of superpowers being really inconvenient, but the main focus on this show would still be comedy and action. Lost of physically impossible fight scenes where people scream out their attack names and make over the top speeches while performing ludicrous tasks and shockingly turning on each other at a moments notice and all the other tropes of an anime for teen audiences, because the main characters are just acting out their own pretend anime in real life. It should be fast and kinetic and lively, just like the song that would kick off every episode.