What do pork cutlet and DJing have in common? It sounds like the setup to a bad pun, the result of an icebreaker gone haywire, or in the worst case scenario a curveball question at a job interview. Funny enough Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou seems most prepared for the third case. The links between these two completely unrelated topics are revealed through the aspiring DJ and third generation tonkatsu chef Agetarou and his attempts to enter the Shibuya DJ scene while discovering the positive side of his family business, and they range from abstract and broad to incredibly and comically specific. Whether it be learning how to best heat up the dance floor or the value of chilling out at the end of a long party night, the restaurant kitchen seems to have all the answers hidden in plain sight, and Agetarou’s focus on DJing as his passion keeps these lessons from becoming too preachy, or from assuming that the young generation is a bunch of know-nothing slackers. The key is comedy, after all.
Director Daichi Akitarou feels right in his element, drawing on his incredible experience with gag anime and lighthearted works such as Kamisama Kiss, Fruits Basket, and Animation Runner Kuromi to create this odd but grounded series of ten-minute parables about food and music. Nothing can be taken seriously, from the absurdity of the plot to the extensive list of characters named for their profession or defining traits. Once we see the lard-guzzling DJ named Oily or the black American DJ legend Big Master Fly—both playing to the American slang of “fly” and just one stereotypical switch away from being “fry” right alongside Agetarou (whose name has the character for frying in it)—it’s obvious that we can ditch any sense of tension and just laugh the whole way through. Ditto the cartoonish art style, which may be a turn-off to new viewers but eventually falls to the backdrop, a small but constant reminder that we should just be kicking back and enjoying the ride.
Besides the surface humor of seeing an up-and-coming DJ building his style and reputation around pork cutlet, there’s also an interesting theme of the generation gap pervading through the show. All the young people are either listening to DJs in clubs or are DJs themselves, and with a whole spectrum of artists from different countries and walks of life, we get a feeling of individualism and self-expression fairly rare to the traditional Japanese mentality. By contrast the older generation is represented by family restaurants, defined by remaining unchanged over the years and passing down skills and ownership based on heredity, and yet with hundreds of cutlet places in Tokyo these businesses thrive on having a technique or flavor that is different from the rest of the pack, something that is less understood by the current youth. We also see both sides crossing the aisle from time to time; Akitarou’s case is obvious enough, but there are also the older DJs who are seeing their place in the spotlight wane, or in the opposite case who approach youth culture from a more nuanced and knowledgeable place to help the newcomers find their way. With Tokyo standing as a bastion of youth increasingly in contrast to the aging of Japan and declining birthrate, I’ll be interested to see if Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou’s peaceful interplay between the traditional craftsmen and the young trailblazers will be a victim of the coming years, or if it will be the way that ultimately benefits everyone.