2 screenshot limit

It feels odd for me to be sharing so much of my non-anime fangirl interests in this blog, but hey, it’s probably the natural sequence of things: when I post more, I then talk about things that aren’t always 100% relevant to anime.

So, last week, I saw Weezer at a concert in New Jersey. Since then, I’ve been gorging myself on all of their videos, old and new. I’m sure I’ve seen this video before , but now, it was different having an anime or Japan fan mindset.

Dope Nose

OMG WTF cultural appropriation Weezer!… I really wouldn’t say that, because honestly, aren’t both cultures appropriating from each other? Cross-cultural cultural appropriation? The band is using the bōsōzoku to project an image of the tough-cool for their (mostly) Western audience, almost in the same way that the Japanese have picked up elements of American culture and fashion to project their own idea of what it means to be tough-cool in Japan.

I admit, it is cool to see the pimped up motorcycles of the bōsōzoku. This is a subculture that I think most anime/manga fans remember best from Great Teacher Onizuka (or Shonan Junai Gumi if you want to be picky). Maybe somebody who currently lives in Japan can confirm whether there are still packs of these motorcycle gangs riding around, but I have a feeling that this trend is dying out, if not already dead. This group has always felt to me somewhat of a more “romantic ideal” of the young deliquent — think the Jets and the Sharks from West Side Story — they project a tough image, but are actually not as gritty as they seem on the inside. As with most things in Japanese culture, the aesthetic matters more, if not defines, than the actual content.