10 WESTERN Songs I Wish Were Anime Themes - part 7 (Patreon)

Well folks, it’s that time again. Time for me to prove to nobody in particular that I still know how to RAWK. This month’s song is by White Wizzard, a 2010’s-era throwback to 1980’s-era Heavy Metal. The band consisted/consists of bass player Jon Leon and whatever random assortment of guitarists and drummers can avoid having "creative differences" with him long enough to make it through a performance. Seriously, every single White Wizzard release has come from a substantially different line-up, and as I write this, I literally can’t find a conclusive answer as to whether they’re currently broken up or not, because it’s happened so many times. Insert your own joke about rock musicians being horrible dysfunctional human beings here. Still, whoever happens to be playing the role of White Wizzard at the moment, they are/were a pretty fun little Metal throwback. I brought up Power Metal act HammerFall a few blogs ago, any anybody who likes them would do well to check White Wizzard out. They both have a strong Iron Maiden/NWOBHM influence at work, though HammerFall (like most Power Metal bands) are a bit more self-seriously fantastical in their songwriting. Generally speaking, White Wizzard owes an stronger debt to LA Hair Metal, in attitude if not aesthetics. While they’re not immune to writing songs with titles like “Blood On The Pyramids” or “Dark Alien Overture,” they also do songs about driving around in fast cars with bodacious babes like “Kings Of The Highway” or “High Speed GTO” or our pick for this blog: “West L.A. Nights.”

Do you remember that one Strong Bad e-mail where he basically generated a Hair Metal song out of thin air by randomly mixing the words “woman,” “to-nite” and any random street name in Los Angeles? “West L.A. Nights” is more or less that, except not done as a joke. This a completely earnest ode to the Sunset Strip and heartfelt paean to the glory days of Hair Metal excess. “The place where rockers used to rule,” as ol’ Jon says. It’s not wistful or bittersweet, though, but rather a fast, punchy, vital rock anthem that mostly acts like it’s still the summer of 1984. Granted, Jon Leon shows every sign of still believing it IS the summer of 1984, so he may have originally written “West L.A. Nights” about his ideal Saturday, only adding the touches of nostalgia in a rare moment of clarity. Either way, this is one heck of a catchy Metal anthem, possessing all the punch of a top-tier Iron Maiden track, though in a much simpler, more digestible package. Vocalist (at the time) Wyatt Anderson has a great inhumanly-high 80s Metal shriek, and the riff powering the song sounds straight out of a Mega Man game. Seriously, for all its metal posturing, it’d be extremely easy to repurpose the melody of “West L.A. Nights” as a Synthwave track, and I say that as a compliment. This song is more 80s than half the songs that came out of the 80s. I can absolutely see this song working well as the intro song to any series about characters living wild and being rebels and driving unnecessarily fast cars. So guess what my idea for this anime would be?

First of all, let’s just ask the obvious question: How are there not more Hair Metal songs being used as anime themes when “crazy hair” is right behind “big eyes” on the list of things people immediately think of when they thing about anime? It seems so obvious! But yeah, I’m going to give an actual plot rundown in a moment, but rest assured that the ACTUAL point of this particular series would be Beautiful Dudes with Fabulous Hair and Cosplay-Ready Outfits With Lots of Zippers and Buckles… who do stuff. Ya know, one of those franchises that’s officially categorized as “Shonen” because there's action in it, but the target audience is clearly adolescent girls? You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones designed to spawn really cringy fanart on tumblr and sell highly questionable doujins at conventions. With hot enough character designs, I could just make up any random plot synopsis and the target audience would be fine with it. But obviously, I couldn’t draw dreamy bishie dudes if I wanted, so I guess I’ll have to put actual effort into describing a plot for this one. Drat.

Okay, seriously, plot synopsis. Even though there’d be the usual language barrier at work, I still can’t help but imagine an anime built around the same “driving around California in fast cars” imagery that informs “West L.A. Nights.” Except this is me talking, so of course it’d have to also be in a futuristic SciFi setting. In the year 20XX, all of Southern California has been gobbled up by a single, sprawling, uninterrupted sea of cyberpunk urban blight… which is the least fantastical future ever predicted. They finally got their “electric cars only” wish though, thanks to a city-wide system where the future cars draw power directly from a grid in the streets. Not only does this mean nobody has to worry about buying gas, but it also allows self-driving vehicles to actually be, ya know, good. That, and now all of California knows what it’s like to live inside a giant slot car race set! Unfortunately, this ALSO makes it super easy for cars to get powered down or taken over by The Authorities or anybody else with access to the system. And since this is a good ol’ dystopian future, the government and police are subservient to corporations and organized crime, which makes people having their freedom of movement restricted even worse than it would be otherwise. And that brings us to our protagonists, a group of delinquents in possession of various illegal hot rods that still travel under their own power instead of the city’s grid. Nobody can shut their cars down remotely, and since everybody’s used to ending potential car chases that way, nobody’s a good enough driver to actually catch our guys. Of course, they’ll try anyway, and thus every episode will get at least one cool road-based action sequence against cops or bounty hunters or shady mob hitmen or the like.

Don’t think that makes our protagonists freedom fighters or revolutionaries or what have you. At best they’re self-serving adrenaline junkies who keep their hot rods just because it’s fun. At worst, they’re small-time crooks who steal from BIG-time crooks to pay for their indulgent partying and use their cars to stay one step ahead of anyone looking for them. Hey, a series with a 80s Metal throwback theme song just HAS to have characters who hang out at trashy nightclubs and sketchy after parties, right? I don’t even think they’d be a “team” or anything, just a bunch of dudes on the wrong side of the law who owe each other enough favors to help each other out of a jam every so often. Again, this is me writing this, and we’ve established I like my heroes with a strong hint of “ANTI-“, especially in a dystopian context. Also, that allows for plenty of chances for the characters to flashback to their tragic pasts or reflect on the emptiness of their current lives, which in turn means lots of chances for scenes of gorgeous guys staring out into the distance and looking pouty, which in turn means lots of opportunities for fangirls to squeal and make melodramatic AMVs and write terrible fanfics to make them feel better. It’d be a smash it, I tells ya!

Admittedly, though, if this were a modern TV show, there’s every chance that the car chases wouldn’t be very good. I can easily see a show like this trying to cheat and do all the cars in CG, which would almost certainly end up really awkward and terrible looking. You know, when the vehicles look like their out of a Dreamcast game and move at a totally different frame rate than the hand-drawn characters, but at the same time they’re way more detailed than those characters and just make THEM look worse by comparison? Also, the thought occurs that a concept like this would almost certainly demand to take place mostly at night (heck, I even put it in the name), but that would also open up a lot chances for terrible lighting. I’m talking scenes were everything is too bright and sterile and there’s not enough shadows, and when there ARE shadows they ones on the characters don’t match the ones in the background, and then if the cars are CG that’d be a whole third layer of details to not add up. Man, I have no faith in the anime industry to do this idea justice, do it? Maybe it’s because listening to “West L.A. Nights” has my brain in full 80s mode, so I’m hung up on how a bubble economy anime studio probably COULD to this right. I mean, cyberpunk dystopian urban hellscape? That’s totally a late-80s/early-90s anime, right there. As a series of over-indulgent OVAs, future-car chases through a neon-lit super city could totally look uber-stylish and cool. But just like Jon Leon and his precious Metal bands, I just gotta accept that those days are long gone…

Well, that’s a depressing ending. I gotta pick a more contemporary idea for the next blog…