Detroit Metal City 1

Rating Mature Genre manga Author Artist: Kiminori Wakasugi Publisher VIZ Media

I don’t know what this manga is or where it came from, but I like it.  Whether it’s the unnecessary vulgarity, outrageous situations, or interesting lead character, this intro volume managed to impress and entertain.

It tells the story of Soichi Negishi, a 23-year-old virgin with a love for Swedish pop music.  He has dreamed for years that he would one day start a wholesome pop band and be able to pour his heart out to audiences with his songs.  The only problem with that is that he is currently the lead guitar and vocals of Detroit Metal City, an indie death metal band on the rise.  It is a career Soichi could never have predicted for himself, and one that he seems to constantly regret.  There is a constant clash between his personal life and his work life, and that is where most of the situational comedy in this volume lies.

Having grown up as a goody-two-shoes his whole life, Soichi constantly does what he can to hide his career from old friends, sweet neighbors, and more importantly, his family.  This is a goal that usually doesn’t end very well for him, and while this is mostly a positive and entertaining thing for the reader, it is an act that seems to wear thin after awhile.  About halfway through the first volume, it became painful to watch Soichi pathetically attempt to change his life.  His personal problems lead him to act out, which in turn leads to him looking like a total badass, which is something he really isn’t.  Or is it?  That’s where the character starts to get interesting.  At first I thought that Kauser II (his band character’s name) was a person he shouldn’t be, but the more I read, the more I felt that he needed Kauser II in his life in order to survive.  To be perfectly honest, his life isn’t the best.  Nobody likes his (pop) music, his love life is an epic fail, and he’s way too nice to succeed at anything.  How quickly he resorts to Kauser II is both a shocking and an interesting aspect of his character and really makes him someone I want to learn more about.  So when I began to think that he should just leave the band since he’s so unhappy, I only had to look at how much he needed his alter ego to live.

The art in this volume is very eye-catching.  Every scene in the story looks messy and gritty, like it should have a nasty odor to it.  It also has a strange look, almost like the artist has no concept of perspective drawing.  Things look unnaturally two-dimensional, but that’s the whole point, and it works very well with the style of the manga as a whole since everything is always a bit off kilter.

While at some points the volume was very difficult to read (due to how much Soichi embarrassed himself), it was always entertaining.  And long after the volume should have gotten old, it got more intriguing because of the relationship Soichi had with Kauser II.  It’s a relationship I hope the writer capitalizes on in future volumes.  And with that begins another promising manga series.