Rockin’ on the DMC
Takko recently brought home a Jet Comics manga by Wakasugi Kiminori called Detroit Metal City or DMC for short. At first I thought it was going to be a heavy metal version of Beck –which I never could get into– but thank my lucky stars, it wasn’t.
DMC is clearly a goof on Seikima II and specifically Demon Kogure though Western readers will probably see the band and it’s vocalist Klauser the II as a hybrid of KISS and GWAR. The genius trick in the manga though is that the vocalist and founder of the band is, in his real life, an aspiring cafe pop singer who worships at the altar of Shibuya-kei artists like Kahimi Karie and has a poster of Amelie in his room. Unfortunately, his career as a mild mannered swedish pop singer is going nowhere and his career as a demon god who sings lyrics like “rape all the women, they’re all pigs, I am the dark lord” has taken off.
The hijinx always start when he tries to supress his dark side and it comes roaring back to restore the balance to his yin/yang. One of the funnier bits comes when he tries to pull off a date with Aikawa, a girl who knows him from his pre-DMC days and doesn’t yet know that he is Klauser, and do a tv interview in character as Klauser II at the same time.