10 WESTERN Songs I Wish Were Anime Themes - part 3 (Patreon)

Some of these blogs have leaned heavily on personal anecdotes about my connection with the band or genre in question, and how it figures into my broader musical tastes or life story in general. If you’re sick of all that, good news!  I can honestly say I have no emotional investment to HammerFall or Power Metal in general. I discovered this was a thing the same way pretty much everybody else outside of upper Europe did –hearing “Through the Fire and Flames” by DragonForce in Guitar Hero– and just dug deeper from there. I don’t even have any memory of the first time I heard HammerFall. Logically, I can assume it turned up on a Pandora playlist, since that’s how I found about half the music I discovered around that time, but I couldn’t begin to guess what my introductory song would have been. Heck, I don’t even remember picking up any HammerFall albums, just that I already had most of their current discography in my iTunes library by 2011 when I needed a lot of loud, fast music to keep me awake on a con road trip. It did the trick well enough, pure audio caffeine, but I think that actually doomed my budding interest in the genre. I’ve told the story elsewhere, but I can’t really listen to most of my Road Trip Music during everyday life anymore without starting to feel sick and tired, because that's what I associate with con trips now, so I’ve only rarely listened to this stuff since the close of the decade.  For a time, though, HammerFall became my kinda sorta I guess favorite Power Metal band, since THEY sounded like they rewrote the same four or five songs over and over instead of just the same one or two songs like most of their compatriots. Yeah, I know, that’s unnecessarily mean, and it’s not like I’m one of those snobs who calls the genre “Bubblegum Metal” like it’s a bad thing… but I totally see where those snobs are coming from. After all, one of the first things I thought of while listening to this Heavy Metal band sings songs about slaying dragons and crusaders killing each other was “Wow, this would make a great opening theme song for a cartoon!”

But it really would, though!  If you thought that these theme blogs were leaning too hard towards lighter, softer music, then rejoice in me bringing the headbanging! HammerFall’s discography is loaded with catchy, energetic, memorable songs with hooks that dig their way into your brain whether you like it or not. That’s JUST the sort of memetic effect a good show theme ought to have, right? Simultaneously getting you jazzed up to watch the show and also ensuring that you keep thinking about it afterwards? Honestly, the hardest thing was trying to narrow it down to just ONE song. I wasn't being snarky earlier without reason; it really IS hard to keep most HammerFall songs from blurring into a hazy, suit-of-armor-shaped smudge. The strong points of any one song are also the strong points of about a dozen others. In the end, I think the chorus of “Dreamland” is the hook that pushes it juuuust out ahead of the rest of the pack. The verses may sound like every other song on its album (or the albums before and after it) but that chorus is just BEGGING to accompany some fast, kinetic shots of an anime cast running around and leaping into the sky and doing super moves with WAY more fluid animation than what’s in the actual show. And that quick little moment right before the chorus kicks in, when the rhythm section drops out and there’s a quick little Thin Lizzy twin guitar lick, I’m a total sucker for that kind of thing. I can absolutely see that bit as the transition point between shots of the cast looking seriously into the distance while the wind blows and the fast, action shots of the chorus. It’d also be a great “time for thing to get action packed” cue in especially important episodes, though at this point it feels like I’m starting to just rip off the very first of these blogs. The point is, I think “Dreamland” by HammerFall would make a really good anime OP. So now comes the point where I answer the question nobody asked: what KIND of anime?

Seriously, now, how could it be anything BUT a Shonen action series with a spiky-haired protagonist? Like, on ANY level, from practical to philosophical to spiritual, Power Metal is the Shonen manga of Heavy Metal. It couldn’t NOT be my choice. It also makes writing up a storyline for this anime pretty dang easy, too. “Chosen One kid with special destiny powers fights big bad monsters with an ever-escalating set of super moves that he always shouts the names of.” Okay, thanks for coming! See you next month!

…alright, fine. I’ll actually put some effort into this, and also justify why a modern anime might pick a 90s Swedish Power Metal song as an OP in the first place. The song’s called “Dreamland,” right? So the show’s action is set in a dream world. And what’s the natural enemy of dreams? Nightmares, of course! So our show is about a spiky-haired hero kid and his pals who hop into people’s dreams to fight off their nightmares –which obviously look like gross fang monsters– while wielding big giant swords… because giving them vaguely medieval-looking gear justifies my choice of a band with a heavy swords & sorcery gimmick. And then every body shouts a lot and uses big super moves and blah blah blah.

…I’m still not giving this my all, am I? I guess I’ve kind of spoiled myself with several high concept anime ideas that are wonky enough for me to get away with just the elevator pitch. With a Shonen series where the general formula is almost always the same, I guess the devil’s in the details, so let’s get REALLY detailed. I’ve never done it this way before, but let’s imagine the basic outline of this show’s first episode (or two) and hammer out the details that way:

We meet hero kid, the generic Shonen protagonist. Good-hearted and energetic, but a bit of a lunk-headed idiot (all the better for him to receive exposition), he’s a lousy student and not very imaginative. In fact, he claims he’s never once even had a dream. Or he used to, until one night he sees a vision of a white-haired girl in a black void saying cryptic stuff about breaking a seal and searching for a legendary sword. The next morning he’s all worked up about finally having a dream (and probably recieving some cringe-y jokes from his friends on how he had a dream about a girl who “wanted to see his sword”) but gets even MORE worked up when the dream girl actually shows up at school! Granted, her hair’s not white anymore, and she acts like she’s never met hero kid, but he’s certain it’s her. And despite playing coy all day, while everyone else is watching, she says more cryptic stuff about seeing him again soon as they're leaving school. Sure enough, hero kid dreams about her again that night… but this time there’s also a bunch of big monsters covered in teeth and claws trying to get him. At dream girl’s urging, however, hero kid is able to manifest a GIANT blade (his hair turning white in the process) and slays the monsters.

Then comes the expo-dump.  The monsters are literally Nightmares, demonic beasts that spread into people’s dreams and feed off their emotions. The girl is a member of the Dream Crusaders, people with the mystical power to travel into the dreams of others and stop the spread of the Nightmares. Normally, Dream Crusaders don’t interact with each other in the waking world, but hero kid is a special case. It turns out his parents (who died while he was a baby, because of COURSE hero kid is an orphan) were both phenomenally powerful Crusaders, and all signs pointed to their offspring being possibly the strongest ever. The Nightmares didn’t like the sound of this, obviously, so their Big Bad sought to eliminate the kid before he had a chance to become a threat. Hero kid’s parents managed to put a "dream seal" on him to mask his power and keep the Nightmares from finding him, though it kept him from dreaming at all in the process. But then Mom and Dad went got themselves killed before they had a chance to remove it, let alone start teaching hero kid how to follow in the family business. None of the other Dream Crusaders could help him either, since they couldn’t find hero kid any more than the Nightmares could. At long last, though, dream girl has tracked hero kid down and unlocked his true epic powers of destiny, which she will now provide some belated lessons in how to use, and totally not be a romantic interest or anything. And THEN the action scenes start happening.

Whatcha think? Does it sound like every teen hero story you’ve ever heard? Can you immediately picture EXACTLY how every single story beat would go, and make at least an educated guess at which genre conventions it would lean on as a crutch? Actually, about that, this is a case where I could see this idea going two ways: the one I’D like to see, and the one that’d probably end up happening. What I’d really LIKE would be a series willing to have fun with the "dream" aspect of the premise. Ya know, lots of wacky and surreal environments that break the normal rules of reality, all based on the psyche of whoever’s head they’re in. In fact, each episode could introduce new characters of the week for us to get to know in the waking world, then see a whole new side of them once we hop into their dreams. Even the Nightmares could look different from episode to episode, taking on the general shape of whatever phobias or complexes the dreamer is struggling with. It’d be a good way to have fun with the premise, take advantage of the strengths of the animation medium, AND establish a nice foundational structure for episodes to be built around.

Buuuuut I can also see how the premise could be taken in a much more generic, action-y direction. Fangorious, shapeshifting monsters aren’t the most marketable of enemies, so I could see them being replaced with more generic, humanoid bosses who’d be easier to made merchandise out of. Having the same handful of antagonists over and over would be way less creative, but creativity is a lot of work. And speaking of work, I can also totally see the show not wanting to go through the trouble of creating new wacky, surreal dreamscapes every episode and instead introducing some kind of sub-dream/battle arena where they could fight “without damaging the dreamer’s psyche” or whatever excuse they’d want, which would just so happen to be a generic wasteland that’s easy to draw over and over. On that note, taking the action out of individual people’s dreams and into some other setting would mean they wouldn’t need to waste precious run time establishing other characters and could just focus on the main crew’s fight scenes. Because that’s what sells toys, dang it!

In fact, as I write this out now, it occurs to me that I can totally see BOTH these things happening in the same series.  Like, a dinky little sleeper of a manga debuts about wacky dream shenanigans, doing the “new dream land every few chapters” thing and showing a lot of promise… and then introducing some more generic bad guys after the first arc or two and totally changing gears to be more about them. Maybe the editors at the magazine would want more of an action comic, maybe the mangaka just wouldn’t be able to keep up with the workload of the first premise and needed to retool it to something more straightforward, maybe this stuff was only supposed to be in one arc, but it got so popular that it took over the whole series, I can think of plenty of precedents. And then the anime would come out and jump straight into the action storyline, skipping over most of the wackier early stuff entirely. And then you’d have the handful of old school fans who liked the series back before it got lame and the newbies who have no idea there was every an earlier version of the franchise and they’d all argue over what’s better and ya’ll know the drill.

Dang it, I thought this was going to be a more lighthearted blog, but a grumpy old man rand about how Shonen Jump franchises go downhill. I don't even know why THIS is the one that set me off, I did that one about Surf Ninjas earlier, and that idea was basically just Naruto in swimsuits.  I guess I was just in more of a Cranky Old Man mood when I sat down to write this. I need to come up with an idea for the next song that has less "You kids get off my lawn!" potential...