Maximum the Hormone -- What's up, people?

 

I have to say that I hadn't watched "The Simpsons" in years. For me, their heyday was back in the 1990s when it was about the Bartman and "D'oH!". But then a few nights ago, I found out on YouTube that in their latest Halloween episode, the cast and crew along with some help from overseas created not just a parody but an homage to the anime "Death Note". At first, when I saw the sneak preview scenes, I assumed that it was some YouTuber's imaginative attempt at smashing together actual "Death Note" scenes and dialogue from "The Simpsons". Such was the skill of DR Movie, the South Korean studio which had a hand in the animation for the original "Death Note" years ago.

However, I have to be clear. I never saw the 2006-2007 anime although after catching the tribute to it on "The Simpsons", I gave myself a bit of a tutorial by catching some of the key scenes on YouTube and reading up about it on "TV Tropes" (probably one of the starker examples of absolute power corrupting absolutely). And even before then, I'd known of its fame through the other adaptations of the original manga and the notorious figure of Ryuk the Shinigami who had always struck me as being a fusion of the Joker from "Batman" and a gigantic gargoyle.

The first time that I'd even gotten any sort of "in" into "Death Note" was through the series of videos featuring misheard lyrics in anison, and this series seemed to have been one of the more popular targets especially for its second opening theme.

"What's up, people?" was the first song of metal band Maximum the Hormone's（マキシマム ザ ホルモン）6th single "Zawa...Zawa...Za..Zawa......Zawa"（ざわ…ざわ…ざ‥ざわ……ざわ）from November 2005. It's been called the hardest of hardcore anison and either the song is the representation of Light's deteriorating sanity and disdain of humanity, or someone had some really bad hooch at the izakaya on Friday night. I'm not a metal fan by any means, but there's something that's just undeniably catchy with Maximum the Ryo-kun's（マキシマムザ亮君）absolutely insane vocals (he was also responsible for words and music) and the surrounding cacophony of sound and fury. The single managed to reach No. 6 on Oricon.

One other question that I'd wanted answered was about the name of the band. Well, in the Wikipedia article for Maximum the Hormone, Maximum the Ryo-kun was pretty languid about it. He merely said that it could mean anything from having those pieces of grilled chewy cow intestine, known as horumon（ホルモン）, at the local yakiniku restaurant or having your glands go supremely crazy with the secretions. In any case, I'm happy to have one of the most unusual band names in KKP history finally on board.

Ah, and just for the record, it took me years, but I finally was able to eat horumon along with my kalbi and bulgogi after avoiding it for the longest time. Still, I will not touch the hot pot version.