Detroit Metal City

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Go to DMC!!

Detroit Metal City is an anime/manga series about the life of a Souichi Negishi, a young man who makes a living as a musician. He is very successful, but not in the genre of his dreams: while he loves to play relaxing music, his job demands that he play groove/thrash metal in the titular band as "Demon King Johannes Krauser II". Most of the story revolves around Negishi trying to balance being Krauser II, his love life, and his family responsibilities, with mostly hilarious results. The shows title is presumably a reference to the KISS song, "Detroit Rock City".

Not to be confused with that Metal City.

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Tropes employed:

• Affectionate Parody: Believe it or not, this show is really a comedy.
• And This Is For: "...And this is for Kuririn!!"
• Axe Crazy: The lead singer of Pipanic Chainsaw is named for good reason.
• Becoming the Mask: Played for laughs.
• Black Comedy Rape: Played repeatedly as one of the series' defining jokes.
  • Krauser's "Ten Rapes a Second", anyone?
  • Negishi tries to show his love 'everything' in the last chapter. This results in "something small just went into my mouth!"
  • Gets a bit less comedic when Negishi comes scarily close to realistically raping his love object in the "Kyushu Boy" chapter of the manga.
• Butt Monkey: Poor Yuri, the only character in the series with any degree of common sense.
• The Cameo: Gene Simmons plays Jack ill Dark in The Movie (live action).
• Camera Abuse: The opening credits end with Krauser II seizing the camera and spinning it violently around to face ... the show's logo.
• Chainsaw Good: The lead singer of Pipanic Chainsaw. She is all too willing to use it.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Fuckingham Palace, the chorus/hook is just "Fuck" being repeated over and over and over and over...
• Dark World / Evil Twin: Applied to music, as some D.M.C. lyrics happen to be an inverted version of Negishi's lyrics.
• Dead Baby Comedy
• Defictionalization: For The Movie, several CDs were released by Detroit Metal City as well as other bands in the film. This includes DMC's "SATSUGAI" & "Maoh" (coupled with Souichi Negishi's "Amai Koibito" and "Raspberry Kiss"), and Makai Yuugi, the Kintama Girls' "Detarame Mother-con Cherryboy", MC KIVA's "From NY City", and Tetra-pot Melon Tea's "Sally my Love". And this was in addition to the film's soundtrack and another album featuring songs by bands that Negishi wanted to emulate (one of which was in the film).
  • Because they were released in Real Life as under the fictional Death Records label, Detroit Metal City's "SATSUGAI" and Makai Yuugi were among the top Indies releases for 2008.
  • Vamps covered "SATSUGAI."
• Did Not Do the Research: From fans of death metal, one minor gripe would be that DMC is not a death metal band at all. Their sound is comparable to post-thrash/Groove Metal bands like Pantera, Sepultura, Soulfly, Machine Head and Lamb of God (although with a darker, more onimous feel reminiscent of some modern shock rockers.)
  • Not only that, but DMC's image would befit black metal rather than death metal, what with the corpse paint and all. Seeing as the title is a reference to KISS, though...
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: "My whipped cream on your face" seems a little... suggestive.
• Expy: Krauser himself is an expy of Gene Simmons from KISS, though it's likely he is also a reference to heavily image-based metal artists such as Mortiis.
  • DMC owe quite a lot to metal band Seikima II right down to their mythos and get-up.
• Extreme Doormat: The job of the Capitalist Pig (not that he doesn't like it). Negishi to some extent as well, specially at the expense of the manager.
• Fan Dumb: An in-universe example: Krauser's ENTIRE FANBASE.
• Fan Service: Negishi's job is basically to be Krauser II, to please the fans. Said fans are mostly really vulgar, to Negishi's dismay.
• Gratuitous English: DMC's songs are splattered with words like "rape", "kill", or "pig" without care for proper grammar.
  • Also, the manager. Coupled with Cluster F Bombs.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Negishi actually hates being Krauser II, despite his popularity.
  • Kafka Komedy: And you can bet your hiney he'll never be able to stop with it.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Negishi thinks that one of his fan is afflicted by this, but it's subverted by showing that the boy had a simple cold, and the surgery was just a circumcision.
• The Ladette: DMC's manager (and how!)
• Law of Disproportionate Response: Half of Negishi's Krauser episodes could've been avoided if he didn't overreact to damn near everything, but then again...
• Lolicon: Parodied in one episode when a toddler begins singing DMC songs, and picks up a large - and perverted - fandom; much to Negishi's dismay.
• Loony Fan: The entire DMC fanbase from where Negishi is standing.
• Lost in Translation: Chapter 21 in the manga has Krauser starring in an indie film. At the climax, he ends up spitting into the mouth of the male co-star and ad-libs the line "You are already... Unfashionable.", a bastardization of Kenshiro's well-known Catch Phrase. The film's director, following suit, makes the man's head explode in post-production. Sadly, the official translators completely failed at picking up the reference, mistranslated it as "chic doesn't suit you anymore" and ruined the effect.
• Made of Iron: The manager, who stubs out cigarettes on her tongue.
• Medium Awareness
• Memetic Badass: In-universe. A major contributing factor to the success of Krauser and co. is the way the details of their various fan-pleasing exploits (e.g., the Tokyo Tower incident) are exaggerated to divine proportions (e.g., Krauser becoming the supposed father of the Roppongi Hills) by their more rabid followers.
• Nakama: Played straight with the DMC fans, and hilariously for laughs with scatolo-metal band Deathism/Deazm.
• Nobody Poops: Averted to hell and back, and used for laughs.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: DMC's manager--especially noteworthy in the movie.
• Non-Indicative Name: The story does not take place in Detroit.
• Now That's Using Your Teeth: Krauser knows how to do this, but Negishi recognizes that it's not very good for himself.
• On the Next Episode of FUCK!!!
• Power Born of Madness: The only reason Negishi gets away with half of what he does. He's just so crazy that nobody can quite figure out what to do with him. That, and the legions of insane fans who do his bidding.
• Refuge in Audacity: This trope basically defines the band.
• Sentai: Krauser ends up crashing a Sentai show in an amusement part. Most people assume it's All Part of the Show, up until the point when he starts harassing the audience.
• Sex, Drugs and Rock And Roll: Parodied. Negishi is dumped into a world that thrives on this, but it's all Played for Laughs. Negishi himself is a timid loser, a virgin, and never partakes of anything heavier than sake.
• Slice of Life: Negishi's.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Played with hilariously.
• Super-Powered Evil Side: When Negishi can't solve his problem as himself, he changes to his alter ego Krauser II. Most of the time, it actually works.
• Suspiciously Apropos Music
  • Justified in that Negishi is the lyricist, though.
• Tastes Like Diabetes: Negishi's lyrics. It's even acknowledged in-universe, so there's nothing subjective about it.
• The Movie: Starring Kenichi Matsuyama (Live Action L) in the lead role and Gene Simmons of Kiss as Jack ill Dark, the reigning Demon God of Rock and Roll.
• Those Two Guys: Technically more than two - a bunch of rabid DMC fans who go to every one of their concerts.
• Tokyo Tower: Krauser lights it up.
• Too Dumb to Live: Any fans of any of the bands featured in the manga, especially DMC and Helvete's. Not to mention many of the people throughout the DMC universe...
• Up to Eleven: Episode 8, where Krauser attempts to beat his own record of yelling "Rape!" ten times a second.
• Victim Falls For Rapist: With the TOKYO TOWER no less!
• Weirdness Censor: Usually inverted; DMC's fans seem to have a Normalcy Censor. In one case they ignore a radio report of an incoming storm, only to later attribute the storm to the original Krauser's demonic powers.
• Willing Suspension Of Disbelief: DMC are Death Metal, the police will neglect looking for someone who obviously sticks out and reportedly caused much suffering and committed many crimes, you can play an electric guitar unplugged and successfully perform songs with said unplugged guitar without the rest of the band, you can leave concerts that YOU are playing in without being mauled by disappointed fans, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
  • Refuge in Audacity and the Japanese public's version of the Weirdness Censor tending to be "ignore and shun as if it does not exist" as opposed to the American version of You Can Panic Now (and the Yakuza connections of some Visual Kei labels and management) meant Visual Kei artists could, for a while, get away with some activities that would have a "normal" Japanese arrested instantly. So this is arguably Truth in Television to some degree.
  • The unplugged electric guitar is also Truth in Television to some degree now, though you could not play full songs without the rest of the band with it in Real Life. Battery power and a wireless amp (or an amp wired into a guitar itself) could allow for such - though the sound would definitely be weaker.
  • Leaving concerts you are playing in without being mauled by disappointed fans? Also Truth in Television. See Guns N' Roses or X Japan for quite a few examples of this. It depends on how much the audience understands the reason and how good the band is at getting out of there fast (or canceling at first)
• Visual Kei: DMC is arguably a Visual Shock Visual Kei band, taking major inspiration primarily from SEIKIMA-II, from Kiss, and to a lesser degree from other early Visual Kei.
• X Meets Y: Metalocalypse meets Beck.