Lockdown! at the Disco #16: The Weeb Episode

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Read the Transcript of the Episode!

Hello! Hi! I hope you’ve got your passport handy for this one because we’re about to take a little trip to Japan. If it’s all cool with you, we’ll be taking a ramshackle roguish space shuttle to get there – don’t ask me why. It is what it is, we just have a tiny pit stop to make amongst the stars in order to get to our destination – so hop in, space cowboy and let’s do this…

TRACK ONE: “Tank!” – Seatbelts

And here we are! We’ve landed. That was a smooth, fun journey, huh? Although, our travel snacks went all over the place. Who smuggled Malteasers on the ship? We’ll be cleaning them up until Christmas…ANYWAYS - this is Comics Youth Radio presents Lockdown! at the Disco and I am your tour guide for today because this is The Weeb Episode where we’re going to be celebrating our fave Japanese culture – including anime, manga, and music. 

Opening our show today was “Tank!” by Seatbelts and that’s the opening theme tune to Cowboy Bebop which is perhaps one of the greatest and most fun animes you can watch. You can track that down on Crunchy Roll and I highly recommend that you do, it’s a great time about a gang of misfit bounty hunters in space which Joss Whedon wholeheartedly ripped off with Firefly.

It also has one of the most banging soundtracks you might ever hear – just jam after jam of upbeat jazz, which is currently available in full on Spotify. Give it a listen, it’ll make your day better.

Now for those who might be unfamiliar with the phrase, Weeb is generally a derisive term used for a non-Japanese person so obsessed with Japanese culture that they wish they were actually Japanese. And here on today’s episode we’re going to be reclaiming it – many of us here at Comics Youth are weebs and proud.

For one thing, I’d be happy to be anything but British right now. But also, Japan just has so much interesting culture – better than some of the stuff that gets churned out of this country - and you know what? I’d be sound with being Japanese. Give me an honorary citizenship because I’m down for it.

And maybe that’s partly also why throughout lockdown I’ve been just escaping into a lot of anime and manga when I’ve had moments to relax. I don’t want things that remind me of what is happening right now or of this country and it’s many issues, and I find American and British content to be extremely difficult to watch right now for that reason. 

Like, I read the news. That’s enough with connecting to the real world. In my downtime, I want to flee – and I do so by fleeing to Japan via books and a screen.

A little content warning on this episode that while the songs are clean from explicit language as far as I can tell this week – and let’s thank our lucky stars that I’ve managed to pull that one off for once – that some of the anime and manga we’ll be talking about in this episode may be better suited for some of our more mature young adults.

We’ll be chatting about plenty of fun, wholesome content too – but also anime and manga that explores mental health and apocalyptic scenarios and which contain horror or violence. Though we’ll obviously try and keep those recommendations to a minimum.

So let’s get into it shall we? This next track is “Ride On Shooting Star” by The Pillows from the maniacal anime FLCL.

TRACK TWO: “Ride On Shooting Star” – The Pillows

TRACK THREE: “Hit in the USA” – Beat Crusaders

That boss little number was “Hit in the USA” by Beat Crusaders and it’s the theme tune to a terrific anime show called Beck – also known as Mongolian Chop Squad.  It’s all about a bunch of teenagers who decide to start a band and get big in the US! It has so many great songs in it and a lot of very sweet and relatable moments. But it’s also very, very funny.

If you are or have ever been or intend to be in a band, then you’ll see a lot of yourself in this show whether you want to or not!

And before that was “Ride on Shooting Star” by The Pillows from FLCL – spelt F-L-C-L just FYI – and it’s this super oddball delirium of a show about a boy who meets a very strange Vespa-riding girl who causes mad things to grow out of his forehead.

Loads of insane stuff happens, including them getting embroiled with a mysterious, otherworldly organization and it’s just a hyperactive gem with a really unique animation style. My fella introduced me to several episodes of FLCL during our first date and let me tell ya, there’s a show that really wins a girls heart!

But I was really taken with the animation style and it helped get me into a lot of great anime off the back of it. And there’s one creator in particular who I’ve become obsessed with in the past year – for his unique animation style but also his distinctive perspective on the world – and that’s Masaaki Yuasa.

He’s the director of very sweet films like Ride Your Wave and Lu Over the Wall, but he’s also renowned for making much more experimental and acerbic stuff like Mind Game – which is this strange, cerebral exploration with an incredible collage art style almost that leaves you breathless to watch. My jaw was on the floor for most of that film – and also The Night is Short, Walk On Girl – which you can currently watch on Netflix and I very much recommend it.

But he’s also known for his TV shows. One of them, The Tatami Galaxy is related to Night is Short, Walk on Girl and is this fast-paced story about a teenager trying to figure out his life and who he is and in the process of that finds these strange multitudes to existence which I won’t go into in too much detail because it’s so special and has some genuinely spectacular twists and turns.

More recently, he’s made TV shows for Netflix like Devilman Crybaby and Japan Sinks which explore more horror narratives. Devilman Crybaby is an ultra-violent story about a world that starts to slowly get overcome by demons, and this gang of teenagers try to figure out how to survive and how to live in this new world. It’s a devastating show, I’ve gotta say. And not an easy watch – and definitely one only for over 18’s by the way! But in how it talks about people who are ‘other’ via the metaphor of humans taken over by demons, the show makes some very interesting statements about discrimination and the violence put upon marginalised people and the hatred that can boil over when people choose ignorance over compassion.

And then a couple of months ago, his latest show Japan Sinks: 2020 came out on Netflix.It’s about a devastating earthquake that shreds through Japan and the impact that has on a family and the people they meet along the way as they try to survive the aftermath of it and the looming threat of more devastation.

And again, it’s not an easy watch. The drama and the horror escalates with every episode. But what really struck me, and made me sob my little heart out by the end of Japan Sinks: 2020 is that despite the constant horror depicted in it, the show really pivots around the idea of hope and resilience and of rebirth and rebuilding.

It’s kind of the show that we needed this year. It’s a show that says Yeah, things are tough and sometimes – just when you think they’ll get better, they get worse. But out of the hardship and the ruin that we can all encounter in this life and this world, we can also rediscover our humanity and our kindness and we can rebuild the world into something wonderful.

One of the characters in the show clutches a couple of precious vinyls tight and lovingly to his body throughout the start of the show. And one of them is an album called Green by Hiroshi Yoshimura – who is a pioneer of ambient music. And this is the beautiful title track from that album.

Listen to it, clutch it tight to your chest, and always remember to retain some hope.

TRACK FOUR: “Green” – Hiroshi Yoshimura
TRACK FIVE: “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” – Yoko Takahashi

That fun little number was “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” by Yoko Takahashi and it’s theme tune to Neon Genesis Evangelion – a show that myself and Comics Youth head honcho Rhiannon are very much obsessed with.

Again, this is a show I only discovered while in lockdown but it absolutely blew me away and there hasn’t been a single day since that I haven’t thought about it. In a nutshell, the show is about violent, monstrous angels who descend upon Earth to destroy humanity. For whatever reason, a very shady organisation decides that only special teenagers of a specific age are the ones who can clamber into some mecha robots to take on these monsters and save humanity.

There’s a lot going on in Evangelion – it has a lot of layers and much to say about some surprising things including gender, exploitation, and the burden that’s put upon young people to undo the damage of previous generations – but what really struck a chord with me about the show is what it has to say about hope and mental health.

Hideaki Anno created Evangelion in the midst of discovering his own depression, which was so bad that he barely left his home for four years. He described himself during this time as being “a broken man who can do nothing for four years … one who was simply not dead.” And his experience of mental illness is something that spills into Evangelion in incredible ways.

The show starts out quite lighthearted with this bubbling darkness beneath the surface, and as it goes on that darkness builds. It threatens to destroy everything. And the weight of mental illness, and the battle against it, is a thread that lingers throughout. The final episode of the show – and the movie that followed simply called End of Evangelion – really delves deep into mental illness and it also provides the reminder that every life is worth fighting for. The simple act of shared existence, of connection, of survival – is worth fighting for. And where there is life, there is hope.

The message is uplifting, but word to the wise: It’s another show and movie that can be difficult to watch. The movie actually made me feel nauseous in how devastating it is. But it likewise made me cry and smile for how powerful its message is regarding survival and hope.

But there are also more wholesome and less heavy anime films you can watch for similarly hopeful narratives – particularly as they pertain to saving the planet and taking better care of nature as well as ourselves and each other. And to bring us into that vibe, here are two beautiful themes from the world of Studio Ghibli.

TRACK SIX: “Kiki’s Delivery Service” – Joe Hisaishi
TRACK SEVEN: “One Summer’s Day” – Joe Hisaishi

It’s just cosiness on tap, isn’t it? There we had the theme to Kiki’s Delivery Service – a coming of age film about a young witch who does odd jobs to bring in a little cash – followed by “One Summer’s Day” which is the theme to Spirited Away.

Throughout lockdown many of our young people at Comics Youth have been watching a lot of Studio Ghibli films and they’ve been doing wholesome watch parties online together of them. And it’s easy to see why – the majority of the extensive Studio Ghibli back catalogue is currently available to watch on Netflix, and with the exception of one film which we won’t talk about, all of them are phenomenal and everyone has their fave.

Rosa told us that she’s a huge fan of the adorable Ponyo but can’t explain why, but did say that Sosuke looks like her best friend and that she loves the scene where he has Ponyo in a bucket and is hiding her.

Bell told us that her fave is Princess Mononoke because of how it explores the balance of nature, life and death and how fruitless war and greed are – as well as the amazing creature designs and the amazing soundtrack.

Meanwhile, Tom shared that he loves Spirited Away because of how kooky and bizarre it is. Something that Lucas M struggled with when he watched it with his pal Avery the other day because neither of them knew what was going on.

So, here’s a little Spirited Away 101 for ya: It definitely is a kooky and bizarre film as Tom put it, and it follows a 10 year old girl who stumbles upon an abandoned amusement park with her parents. She then gets stuck in this mysterious place after her parents help themselves to a giant feast and are promptly turned into pigs and she’s forced to work in this supernatural realm in order to free herself and her parents.

It’s a wild ride! And it has many similarities to Alice in Wonderland and to The Wizard of Oz, if you want to look for such things.  Like those stories, Spirited Away centers around a coming of age story, but it does so in a way that incorporates Japanese Shinto-Buddhist folklore alongside some deep commentary about some very interesting topics.

For one thing, the film explores the effects of western capitalism – taking sharp aim at capitalist greed, western imperialism, and the capitalist mythology that work is not a form of enslavement but of liberation – and how western capitalism has impacted and changed traditional Japanese culture.

And in delving into these pretty complex ideas, the film also has plenty to say about environmental issues, protecting the planet, and of the generational conflicts that can arise when young people hold different values to the generation who may well be running a country and a planet into the ground for capitalist profit.

Looping back to how the film is inspired by Japanese Shinto-Buddhist folklore, Studio Ghibli head honcho Hayao Miyazaki that how spirits are encountered in the film stems back to his grandparents’ time, when it was believed that these spirits – known as Kami – existed everywhere – “in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything” and he says, “My generation does not believe this, but I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything.”

So there you go, that was my Spirited Away 101 – and I hope you can rewatch and take something even deeper from it next time you do.

And now, we’re gonna blast some real heavy tunes for you by two Japanese bands. This is “Farewell to Words” by Japanese screamo band Envy and it was requested by my wonderful friend and Comics Youth co-worker Anna.

TRACK EIGHT: “Farewell to Words” – Envy
TRACK NINE: “Karate” – BABYMETAL

That was “Karate” by the ever fun BABYMETAL – a band who prove that you can still be totally heavy and gnarly and shred while being as femme and as cute as girly as you like. Femme doesn’t equate weakness, folks! Femme can be heavy and gnarly and it can shred.

And that’s it for today’s episode! I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey with me and picked up some fun recommendations along the way. Lockdown! at the Disco will be on hiatus for a week because I’m on annual leave for a week of relaxation and recovery and I intend on eating a lot of crisps and swaddling myself in blankets and reading all of the manga.

Our next episode when we return will be The Nostalgia Episode where we talk about all the things that gives us nostalgia, what nostalgia is, and why it can be such a comfort in times of upheaval and change. And so for that I want to hear your song requests for the tunes that make you nostalgic for a specific time or place and why. Or songs that are about nostalgia or invoke the feeling of nostalgia.

Get in touch with me to let me know what you’d like to hear for that via amy@comicsyouth.co.uk.

Until then, remember – everything is not cool, but it can be! Stay safe, stay sassy, and don’t let anyone tell you that being a Weeb is a bad thing? It’s pretty cool.

This is “Goodbye” by Toe and this is Amy Roberts signing off….BYEEEEEEEEEE

TRACK TEN: “Goodbye” - Toe