A DAY IN TOKYO - PART 2 - DESERT PUNK

Desert Punk is a cartoon that takes all the clichés in Anime history, and mocks them; that's right, there's no muscular hero, there's no daring relationship between protagonists, and best of all, there's no dramatic fight scene. If there was one way I would try to describe Desert Punk, I would describe it as a, "Fallout-New-Vegas-meets-Typical-Adult-Swim-meets-classic-Cartoon-Network" cartoon. Yeah, a wordy adjective, I know.



Desert Punk just seems to fix and succeed in every field that I typically hate about an anime: it's not over-the-top, the story is far form predictable and formulaic, and the characters are the complete opposite of a stereotype. The art style is even a little different from the average Anime: picture the love child of One Piece and Kirby: Right back at Ya!, and you have Desert Punk's art style.

Moral of the story? Tits. Yep. Just tits.

As for the series itself, it opens up with a narrator introducing the Kanto Desert (Pokémon is ALL that comes to mind...), the vast remains of Japan itself, which was ruined by an outbreak of war; in other words, this Anime takes place after a sort of man-made Armageddon. That just screams "FALL-OUT" for me, but that is definitely a good thing.

After an innocent travelling family is jumped by a few goons, Kanta, AKA the Desert Punk, enters the fray. Using his cunning tricks, he basically scares the shit out of the thieves. As they flee the area, Punk chanrges the family all of their money for saving them. This is what I was talking about with the whole, "This is not a cliché Anime" aspect.

A few more episodes in, and after Punk tries to bury his face in several pairs of conveniently-sized tits, he picks himself up an apprentice named Kosuna, a naive and inspired 14-year old girl. She looks up to Kanta, borderlining "Little Girl Crush", and the whole series she tries to walk in his footsteps and be just like him. Little does she know that, like the manipulative and horny man he is, he's just letting her tag along so that when she's older, they can fuck. As disturbing as that may seem, I found this whole scenario adding a lot of humor to the series; the Desert Punk is said to be a hero by many, but is nothing more than a plotting, selfish mercanary obsessed with money and women.

...And that's why this show is awesome.

The last few episodes of the series are wonderfully made, and I'm not giving out spoilers, but the series ends up being more about Kosuna than Desert, and reverts to the classic lesson of, "If you teach the student too much, they'll become the teacher". The ending of the series was oddly satisfying, unlike Witchblade's grim conclusions. I would have to say that the show, as a whole, makes it a personal favorite of mine.

As for voice acting, well, none of them were really familiar by ear, except Eric Vale of course, who provided the voice of Trunks in the Dragon Ball series. He also does a lot of supporting roles in other anime such as Fruits Basket, Claymore, Darker than Black, and One Piece. A lot of them have been featured in other Anime though, since it WAS Gonzo and Funimation working on this.

They don't call him "Demon of the Desert" for nothing, y'know.

The music itself is awesome; bringing that classic Big Band vibe that New Vegas also brought along (I know, a lot of referencing back to that game, but I swear, the two are almost the exact same!). The first season's theme song is one of the most catchy songs I've heard, providing a Disco/Ska-like performance, which is right up my alley. In fact, I'm listening to the MP3 as I write this! The other music in the series are mostly good, usually reflecting relaxing Reggae songs or Arabian-like flute and sitar music, except for the second season's theme, which goes back to the beaten-to-death J-Pop shit you hear in every Anime. It pissed me off, to say the least. In fact, it's sad to admit that, as the series went on, the Animé itself started to slip in a lot of places.

Whilst these slips aren't major, I have a few gripes. First of all: Why does Kanta become less capable of combat as the series goes on? He's the fuckin' Desert Punk, for crying out loud; nicknamed the "Demon of the Desert". If he claims to own the desert, why does every second antagonist seem to own HIM? It was something that bugged me, because he kicked so much ass in the few five or six episodes, but seems to fall back and become almost spineless by the second season.

My second gripe with the series is how it starts to land on a few Anime clichés in the end, such as "twists" in the plot that are just people dying, a rival becoming a companion in the end, and "fighting for what is right". The things I loved about Desert Punk was that it strayed AWAY from predictable things like that. Maybe it's a sneaky way of the series mocking those kinds of Anime, but if it was, they made it pretty damn convincing.

Kanta fantasizing about Kosuna and how hot she's going to look in the future years. Desert Punk, you sick bastard!

All in all though, the series is a great watch. The voice acting is spot-on and perfect, the script is a work of art in itself (I've never heard one person come up with so much slang for "tits" and "sex" in my life; it was truly remarkable. If I ever meet Andrew Rye, I will kiss him on both cheeks and pat his back), and some of the episodes that seem to be used as filler just end up running the plot forward later, or are just too hilarious to be even worth regarding for being irrelevant.

Desert Punk is underrated as an Anime and cartoon as a whole, and it pains me to admit that, because it's quite possibly the greatest Anime I've watched. It's like the Hipster of the Anime industry in the way that it perceives other Anime as overrated, which most of them are. However, Desert Punk lays this attitude on thin, as to not seem arrogant or like a plain and apparent asshole; it's like a sarcastic person making fun of some dumbass who doesn't get it, and maybe the reason that Desert Punk and I are so similar is why I love it so much.

Definitely go check it out; if you end up hating it, I'll eat my own foot. And possibly the other one, as well.


~WILL