Golden Bomber with Cast of "Ixion Saga DT" -- DT Suteru/Let's Go ED （DT捨テル/レッツゴーED）

Ahhh...good times. A few years ago, I was watching "Ixion Saga DT" which was a mix of adventure, sword & sorcery, and hilarious innuendo-laden farce about a gamer who suddenly found himself in the game that he was playing in the real world and then joining the motley group of warriors including a noble hunk of a man, a transsexual maid and a tsundere princess (well, far more tsun than dere). One of the running themes was the testicular humour on hand along with the balls-to-the-wall (sorry) action.

There were a couple of seiyuu in there, Jun Fukuyama（福山潤）as Mariandale the maid and Hiroshi Kamiya（神谷浩史）as the not-so-villainous Erecpyle Dukakis who were also in a far more gentler anime at around the same time with their own contributions to the theme songs.

They were also involved in the opening and ending themes for "Ixion Saga DT" to a smaller extent. And true to the balls-to-the-wall pace, the band Golden Bomber（ゴールデンボンバー）kicks them up to warp speed.

Just an aside about Golden Bomber...the band has been a fixture on the Kohaku Utagassen for the last few years singing "Memeshikute"（女々しくて...Unmanly）. Active since 2004, I knew these guys were heavy into their Visual Kei thing but had no idea that they were actually an air band. I kinda see them as a combination of KISS and the comical Japanese outfit The Drifters. The current lineup has Sho Kiryuin（鬼龍院翔）, Yutaka Kyan（喜矢武豊）, Jun Utahiroba（歌広場淳 ）and Kenji Darvish（樽美酒研二）. That last fellow has been a regular sight on TV Japan via an NHK kids' program.

Anyways, opener "DT Suteru" (Losing My DT) always got the party started with the band, called Golden Ixion Bomber for the purposes of the single, starting off chanting "D, T, D, T...". The original game was called "Ixion Saga Dimensional Transfer" but as part of the bawdy humour of the anime, DT also stood for "dotei" or "virgin" which was the unfortunate nickname slapped onto the snarky main character of Kon on entering the world of Mira. The good guys of the cast including Mariandale put their two yen in as Kiryuin begged the girl to help him lose his DT. I didn't quite understand the lyrics as they were sung but judging by how my anime buddy giggled, I gathered that it was very much in the spirit of the show.

"DT Suteru" was based on a track from their second BEST compilation, "Golden Best: Brassiere" from 2010 originally titled "Moto Kare Korosu"（元カレ殺ス...Gonna Kill Your Ex-Boyfriend）. For the re-modeled version for "Ixion Saga", vocalist Kiryuin wrote and composed the song with co-writing credits for Yashikin（やしきん）and Kumo Yamada（山田くも）.

The trio also took care of the first ending theme for the show, "Let's Go ED". I may not have gotten the entire gist of the opener but even I had to laugh at the shout of "Gimme some BALLS!". Ah, so this is from the bad guys' side of things, and yep, Hiroshi Kamiya and his crew came in here. The innuendo continued to hold sway with ED not only standing for Erecpyle Dukakis but also for that sad condition "erectile dysfunction". And one of Erec's problems and running gags was somewhere in that area. I'm not a huge rock fan but having both of these themes for "Ixion Saga" was perfect. One to pump you up for the episode and the other to finish things off with a bang.

And as was the case for "DT Suteru", "Let's Go ED" came from another Golden Bomber original song "Let's Go KY" which is on another BEST album, "Golden Hour" also from 2010. I'm assuming that the KY here refers to the formerly "in" phrase "kuuki yomenai" which is roughly defined as "can't read the tea leaves" so I guess the translation for the title can be "Let's Go, Clueless". I'm pretty sure that the original song wasn't particularly a song of encouragement for Kentucky.

The single with both songs went as high as No. 5 on Oricon. Unlike poor Erec, it stood tall.