Anime X-Plode!: Vilest CD Ever
Chris Zasada February 10, 2009

I was perusing through the bargain bin at Right Stuf, as I am wont to do when that little voice in my head tells me I need more anime, despite the fact I currently stock more titles than Best Buy (this is not a joke, though this is as much a testament to their cutbacks as it is to my insanity). I decided to check out something besides my precious DVDs and see what the Other Merchandise section had to offer, hoping I would stumble upon a cheap figurine or some other knick-knack to clutter my basement up with.

What I found wasn’t nearly as cool, but still warranted a look: Anime X-Plode!, a CD filled with “American Music Inspired by the Best in Japanese Animation.” For three bucks, I figured this was a potential horror well worth exploring, so I tossed it in the old shopping cart along with far worthier fair, like the Guyver TV series, which I had deprived myself of up until that little voice told me to cut it out.

I got the shipment in yesterday, so I popped the CD in on my way to work, expecting to be accosted with generic techno remixes or off-key covers belched out by singers who at least went through the trouble of singing in Japanese, translated the Japanese to English, or scoured the catalog of English-language anime themes for something they could get the rights to cover. I also ran the risk of stumbling upon a collection of Americanized anime music, a revelation that would have resulted in Anime X-Plode! competing for the world record in discus throwing.

And yet somehow, what I found was far worse…

Before ripping into the Satan-level evil that is the music, I’d like to comment on the selection of anime titles that “inspired” these songs. With the exception of Cowboy Bebop, I can’t for the life of me understand why these titles were highlighted as musical inspirations. I’m willing to let Beyblade slide because its mainstream conformity ratchet up the odds some wayward musician would stumble upon it and be “inspired,” and from a marketing standpoint, this franchise was about a year old when this CD came out, so it could have bolstered its popularity a tad.

This theory fails, however, when we consider some of the music contains profanity (though it isn’t stated on the cover), meaning it isn’t really for the youngsters, it has music “inspired” by anime meant for older audiences, and this CD is so obscure, no parent would happen by it in the first place, and a song “inspired” by a second-rate attempt at grabbing the American Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh pie isn’t going to do all that much to increase sales.

The other “inspirations” just don’t make any sense. Both Akira and Vampire Hunter D are popular titles, but Akira only has its haunting choral pieces to distinguish it musically, and these are not pop hit potential. Forget Vampire Hunter D; you’d have to be a hardcore fan to remember any music out of that one. Blue Submarine No. 6 obtained some success back in the day, but Demon Lord Dante, Stratos 4, and Gunparade March will never be accused of being big hits with the fans, and none of music besides Cowboy Bebop tunes have had their themes immortalized as separated entities.

There were other titles which were more popular than most of the ones listed here that had better music. Titles like Trigun, Inuyasha, Ranma ½, Tenchi Muyo!, and Hellsing, just to name a few, were immensely popular titles by the time this CD was made, and they had memorable music to boot. It seems impossible that these artists wouldn’t have been exposed to these titles and became “inspired” by them. As you will soon see, however, this is all for the best.

The odd thing is, none of these titles are licensed by ADV, the company who brought us this CD. This isn’t anything shocking, since anime and music licensing are two different beasts altogether, and companies have been swiping soundtrack rights to other company’s anime for years. It just seems odd that ADV didn’t commission music “inspired” by their own titles to help promote them, especially since a lot of them had great themes. Yet, as you will now see, this CD was perhaps a twisted marketing move to tarnish the names of these titles from competing companies with a repugnant CD filled with “inspirations” from the darkest realms of Hell.

You’ve no doubt noticed I’ve referred the songs on these CDs as “inspirations” without allowing the validity of a lack of quotation marks. For one thing, the back of the album actually has a legend that refers to the anime that a particular song is exploiting as “Inspiration.” More importantly, save for one song (which I’ll mention later), none of this music relates to the anime that “inspired” it in any meaningful way. This CD is actually an infernal congregation of generic rock and/or pop sprinkled with random profanity and obvious drug references, then grunted out by “aspiring artists” who will be serving me French fries before they’re ever allowed to appear on a CD again, even a demo CD burned from their own computer, which if attempted, will order the CD burner to spin at such speeds that the CD will rip apart and explode inside the burner, hopefully disabling it or, better yet, causing the bay door to soar off of the drive and into the head of the guilty “aspiring artist.” That last part is entirely possible and happened to me once, but that’s another article.

I’d bet the life of someone I sort of care about that these songs (save for the one, which I still will mention later) were not “inspired” by the anime titles in question, but rather were pre-existing works by unknowns that the producers of this despicable disc knew were unmarketable because these songs were done better by popular artists. Or mediocre artists, for that matter.

From that point, that just needed to pick out a few tunes that sort of vaguely related to a particular anime using such criteria like they both had a single word of dialog in common, send the artists some Denny’s coupons for the royalties, package it with a generic cover that rips off of other junky-yet-far-superior mainstream compilations, and presto! Instant profit sheet padding for the cost of a cup of coffee from Starbucks! Hey, four color printing for a CD insert would probably run all of a quarter, so at least they splurged somewhere on the actual production. And they had to pay the Indian guy his three dollars for designing the artwork.

Besides the one song that has anything to do with anime (I’ll point that out next, be patient and don’t X-Plode), the only other song that belongs on this CD is the first one, which purports to be the “Anime X-Plode! Theme.” I never thought a music CD needed a theme song, but these are the kinds lessons you learn when you purchase a random three dollar CD.

The sole relevant song that has anything to do with anime is a rap about Gunparade March, which of course isn’t based on the music in the show, but at least it belongs on this album. It’s not going to grab a Grammy or anything, and it doesn’t help my personal opinion about rap in general, which is not good. This track sounds like something that 4Kids would shove into an anime to make it more appealing, which after being subjected to their Ultimate Muscle trucker song about flatulence and the One Piece hip hop, I can safely say this would appeal to no one but the lower single-digit demographic, assuming you removed the swearing. I don’t see much of a point, since I’m guessing three-year-olds these days could make the rappers responsible for this song blush, but I don’t know since I’ve never been in charge of a child, a great mercy for all involved.

The winner of this hit parade of mediocrity (yes, there is a champion that stands on top of all others) is the piece Blue Submarine No. 6 “inspired” called Oceanic by Kaleo. This song falls under a genre I like to call “nerd rap,” featuring what I imagine is a severely white fellow in his early thirties who only had sex after wandering into a frat party by accident and being jumped by a severely drunken sorority pledge with more testosterone than him performing in a geeky, Kermit-like, somewhat electronically altered voice that sounds like something Kraftwerk would have put together if they were Star Trek nerds.

The fun part (it does get better) is you can tell the “singer” had too much salvia in his mouth, since you can hear it burble at one point. Either this was intended as some new kind of auditory art gone awry, the group was out of money, or they were too lazy to correct it, because they use the exact same sample over and over again, spit popping away with the beat. This is the thing I’ll remember most about a song preaching evolution, only to switch gears to a more competent rapper who goes on an environmentalist spiel.

This is Anime X-Plode! 1 in a nutshell. It makes my inner nerd weep to think ADV would allow someone to offend anime like this. Instead of giving me a CD filled with cheesy techno or horrible covers to laugh at, they presented me with a visage similar to that picture floating around involving Jesus’ skeleton and a rather randy demon. Unfortunately or fortunately, despite the “1” slapped on the end of the title, they never produced another CD in this series. Can’t imagine why.