An Ode to Sturgill Simpson's Sound & Fury

 

Just watched Sturgill Simpson's Sound & Fury anime on Netflix again the other day - it really is something else.  If you're into anime, or smart music, or avenging motorcycle riding samurai with robot ghosts in machines (along with a wild mashup of other experimental anime storylines and styles), you'll dig this.

I'd done some digital art around samurai on motorbikes previously so I mashed up some of the samurai details from Sound & Fury with it and threw it together with the blog logo:

Disco!

Moto Anime: Bakuon!!

I've written about motorcycle related Japanese anime before, it's a whole sub genre of media from a country that is a motorcycle producing superpower with its own unique moto-culture.  You name the anime and there is probably a rider on the team who works in motorcycles somehow.  But there is one motorcycle anime where bikes aren't worked in, they're the main subject.  Bakuon!! tells the story of a group of high school girls who meet over a shared love of the sport.

Bakuon is Japanese onomatopoeia for the roar of a motorcycle's exhaust (the Japanese have some pretty funny word sounds).   In the opening of the show each of the main characters bond over their shared love of riding.  The experienced riders mentor the younger ones as they get their licenses and begin riding together, but don't assume this is a why so serious coming of age story.  Bakuon!! is edgy and laugh out loud funny.  Even non-riders would find this an accessible and funny thing to watch, but it'll challenge you.  Bakuon!! is shamelessly Japanese.  If you're unfamiliar with Japanese humour, which can feel very foreign to gaijin, this show might seem offensive.  All I can suggest is to maybe stow your Western superiority complex away and see if you can wrap your head around it.

Hane Chan is the character you follow into the story.  She's not really the main character, it's an ensemble,  but as a new rider trying to get her license you get to discover the joy of riding with her.  She also tends to explain to outsiders what craziness is going on in the group.  Her initial interest is sparked by her first day trying to ride her bicycle up the hill to her new school, and her actual interest in motorcycles is minimal, until she experiences riding for the first time:

How edgy is the humour?  At the riding school where Hane is getting her license she begins a conversation with the bike they lend her (as you do) who speaks to her with an older woman's voice. At one point Hane asks why the bike has such a masculine name when it has a woman's voice.  The bike tells her that because it's a practice bike at the academy it has had all the go-faster technology removed from it, so it was castrated.  When Hane discovers she's been riding a trans-gendered bike she just nods and goes about her day, as you do.  You might find this foreign in a Western mindset, but the lack of judgement around gender is refreshing.

An even edgier moment happens when the girls take a long trip up to Hokkaido.  When they reach the end of Japan they come across one of the teachers from their school who is attempting to commit suicide by jumping into the ocean because she's just broken up with another boyfriend.  She failed comedically (the point isn't a cliff and she falls onto rocks five feet below).  The girls take her back to their hotel where the teacher proceeds to get drunk and attempt to molest them.  At this point your appropriateness meter is probably pegged, but, as they do in all circumstances, the girls back each other up and get out of the situation themselves.  After that moment of girl-power the show signs off with them cleaning their bikes with their swim suits on.  Trying to keep up with the twists and turns in Bakuon!! is part of the challenge.

The humour in the show is unrelenting.  Each of the girls is smitten by a specific Japanese manufacturer (though Ducati sneaks in there too, but not without a lot of ribbing), and they're constantly giving each other a hard time over it.  At another point Suzunoki Rin, who tells a dramatic backstory about her accident prone father, has to explain how she has a Suzuki brand on her butt.  Physical humour operates on a different plane in Japanese culture.

In another episode Onsa, the Yamaha or nothing rider, accidentally licks Rin's drool (they both fall asleep on a train - it happens) and catches a Suzuki germ that makes her only like Suzukis.  This kind of brand fixation is a constant source of material in the show.  The only time it gets turned up even higher is when they make any reference to non-Japanese brands, who are all evidently incapable of making something that won't blow up on you regularly.  Considering the hard time they give each other, the shots at other manufacturers (like my beloved Triumph) comes across as funny rather than nasty.  If you're ever feeling hard done by when watching the show, at least you're not a bicyclist. They're relentless with the Tour de France types.

If you like motorcycles you'll love Bakuon!!  If you like anime you'll enjoy this show for its humour and a style that takes some interesting risks, like showing most men in the show without a face.  Yes, it can get edgy, but that tends to be a Western cultural dissonance thing more than any negative intent by the show.  The girls all play off each other for maximum comedic effect and the writing is willing to take unexpected turns to chase down a laugh, as it should.

As an anime with motorcycles but also about motorcycles, Bakuon!! offers you a deep dive into Japanese assumptions around riding that anyone on two wheels would find enlightening.  As a Japanese school girl anime it also breaks a lot of stereotypes.  A group of girls who ride makes this a feminist statement.  The girls are very self sufficient and never look to men or even adults for solutions.  The most skilled rider in the show is the untouchable club sempai (mentor) Raimu Kawasaki who always wears her helmet and never speaks, Top Gear Stig style.  At one point she lifts up her big Ninja effortlessly and frequently performs riding stunts that defy belief.  She was sitting in the school clubhouse alone when the girls show up and was evidently in the club when the school's current principal was at the school, she might not even be human!  I can't help but feel that she's presenting some autistic tendencies, further stretching the show's reach.

That Bakuon!! is also a comedy busts another malecentric stereotype.  If you can get your Japanese school girl mindset on (and everyone should), this'll amuse and entertain.  You should give it a watch.

You can watch Bakuon!! on Crunchyroll online.

Moto Anime

Best. Wheelie. Ever! The Robotech Cyclone rocks!

At the end of the 1970s as a nine year old I came across Star Blazers, the English version of Space Battleship Yamato.  This was my first look at Japanese animation, which was quickly followed up by Battle of the Planets and Robotech.  It's safe to say anime was a major influence on my developing sense of aesthetics.  Being Japanese, there were an awful lot of motorbikes in the various stories, probably because many of the people making the animation were riders.

I've written about motorcycles and anime before, in fact you could probably call it a recurring theme.  The history of motorcycles in Japanese animation is a long and storied one.  Motorcycles themselves are deeply embedded in the Japanese psyche, in much the same way they are in Western history.  As a symbol of freedom and power, there is little that comes close.

If you haven't dug into Japanese anime and you're into two wheeling, you're missing out.  Anime offers a distinct angle on motorcycling that is often at odds with how it's presented in film and TV.  It's also quite culturally distinct.  Japan has a rebel biker culture similar to but distinct from Britain's cafe racers or North America's one percenters.  Anime films like Akira make that culture a big part of their story-lines.

Sometimes I forget how many times my formative, young mind saw motorcycles in anime in the 1980s and filed the idea away.  I'd actually forgotten that Princess rode a bike (albeit with rockets, missiles and it transformed into part of a spaceship - but who wouldn't want that?).

My life-long mecha メカ fixation (one I share with Guillermo del Toro) often merges with motorcycles.  The Japanese Shinto religion believes in a pan-theistic world where there are many gods or kami that can inhabit anything, including machines.  Many motorcyclists are prone to this Shinto-ist belief - if you don't believe me ask one what kind of personality their bike has.

Princess from Battle of the Planets rides like she stole it.

Have you tried tickling the carbs?

If you like the romance of riding, you'll find it in anime:

Akira is a seminal anime from the 1990s set in a dystopian future Tokyo where Bosozoku biker gangs have run amok!

Like Kaneda's bike?  It's two wheel drive pushed by a cold superconducting electrically driven power-train on a carbon/ceramic frame.  The whole thing comes in at just over 150 kilos.  You're seeing it folded down in the lower profile high speed mode, but it bends in the middle into a more standard shaped machine when needed.  It's rumoured to be a Honda, but any manufacturer's markings are gone from the stolen bike used by Kaneda in the film. Someone spent a mint making a working model of the thing.

There are a lot of anime that focus on motorcycles, usually with a dash of mecha thrown in for good measure.  Rideback is a near future anime with modern digital animation that focuses on robotic motorcycles, but the main relationship is between an injured ballerina and a modified bike that has all the rider aids turned off (she is the only one who can ride it because of her athleticism).  Once again you get a strong sense of Shinto as the bike itself is presented as a character in the series.  The relationship between it and Rin Ogata allows her to heal after her career ending injury, it's good stuff!

Baribari Densetsu is another moto-specific anime that's worth watching if you love riding. Have a watch below, you'll see what I mean.  This was obviously made by people who ride:

Racing on public, mountain roads by bosozoku on modified bikes was a social issue in 1980s Japan.  This anime follows the story of young men learning how to ride fast before going professional on track.  It parallels the lives of young racers at the time.

If you've never given Japanese animation a go, don't think it's all one thing.  You can get everything from violent, adult only feature length films to school girl soap operas, and you can bet there are bikes in pretty much all of them.

20 best anime with motorcycles:
https://www.ranker.com/list/best-anime-about-motorcycles/ranker-animeKino's Journey is a good one I forgot to mention - there are a pile on there I haven't seen before that are now on the hunt list.


Of course, there's always Sturgill Simpson's Sound & Fury on Netflix where the muscle car driving samurai becomes the moto-samurai with robot support...

Sturgill Simpson's Sound & Fury

I came across Sturgill Simpson's Sound & Fury on Netflex last month and I'm hooked!  I've been an anime fan since discovering Star Blazers in the early '80s, and I'm always on the lookout for the good stuff.  That anime fandom was a motivator in moving to Japan for a couple of years at the end of the 20th Century.  While there I did me some kendo and got pretty handy with the old katana, so I have a soft spot for samurai too.

The first time I watched Sound & Fury I was swept away by the cinemtic quality of the thing and quickly became a fan of the musician, though I hadn't heard of him before.  I especially enjoyed the disonance of a country music singer with a decidedly American sound being mixed with Japanese animation:

If you think the muscle car samurai is a cool opening, when she suddenly turns into a motorcycle wielding samurai with robot support it moves to a whole new level.  Just when you think vengence shall be hers everyone is suddenly line dancing - you won't get bored watching this unfold.  It's a visually stunning multimedia extravaganza that really pushes boundaries while offering a great way into a unique musical style that delivers intelligent and nuanced lyrics.  I'm not a particularly musical person, but this visual tour de force was right up my alley and encouraged me to engage with the songs.

One frustrating part of this is that Netflix seems particularly stingy with the art marketing of this project.  After looking for wallpapers online for the laptop, I gave up and made some of my own.  This is purely a work of fandom for this project.  I sincerely hope they come out with another visual album like this, it's my kind of music.

In the meantime, if you're a fan of the anime, these might satisfy the wallpaper itch for your digital device: